Book Chapters

Orogenic processes operate at scales ranging from the lithosphere to grain-scale, and are inexorably linked. For example, in many orogens, fault and shear zone architecture controls distribution of heat advection along faults and also acts as the primary mechanism for redistribution of heat-producing material. This sets up the thermal structure of the orogen, which in turn controls...

Ion microprobe U-Pb zircon rim ages from 39 samples from across the accreted terranes of the central Blue Ridge, eastward across the Inner Piedmont, delimit the timing and spatial extent of superposed metamorphism in the southern Appalachian orogen. Metamorphic zircon rims are 10–40 µm wide, mostly unzoned, and dark gray to black or bright white in cathodoluminescence, and truncate and...

The polar bear (Ursus maritimus) is an obligate apex predator of Arctic sea ice and as such can be affected by climate warming-induced changes in the extent and composition of pack ice and its impacts on their seal prey. Sea ice declines have negatively impacted some polar bear subpopulations through reduced energy input because of loss of hunting habitats, higher energy costs due to...

Global biodiversity loss is proceeding at an accelerating pace (Newbold et al. 2015, 2016) in large part due to land use and, climate change, and associated spread of disease and non-native species (Hobbs et al. 2006, Williams and Jackson 2007, Ellis 2011, Radeloff et al. 2015). Over the last century, U.S. average temperature has increased 0.7–1.1°C, leading to an increased frost-free...

No abstract available

Unlike the major anthropogenic changes that terrestrial and coastal habitats underwent during the last centuries such as deforestation, river engineering, agricultural practices or urbanism, those occurring underwater are veiled from our eyes and have continued nearly unnoticed. Only recent advances in remote sensing and deep marine sampling technologies have revealed the extent and...

Biological soil crusts (biocrusts) are formed by soil-surface communities of biota that live within, or immediately on top of, the uppermost millimeters of soil. They consist of cyanobacteria, algae, mosses, microfungi, and lichenized fungi (hereafter, lichens). Cyanobacterial and microfungal filaments, rhizinae and rhizomorphs of lichens, and rhizinae and protonemata of bryophytes weave

No abstract available.

The framework presented herein supports a changing paradigm in the approaches used by coastal researchers, engineers, and social scientists to model the impacts of climate change and sea level rise (SLR) in particular along low-gradient coastal landscapes. Use of a System of Systems (SoS) approach to the coastal dynamics of SLR is encouraged to capture the nonlinear feedbacks and dynamic...

No abstract available

This chapter demonstrates the economic concept of ‘value of information’(VOI), and how biosecurity managers can use VOI analysis to decide whether or not to reduce uncertainty by collecting additional information through monitoring, experimentation, or some other form of research. We first explore how some uncertainties may be scientifically interesting to resolve, but ultimately...

Oil shales are fine-grained sedimentary rocks formed in many different depositional environments (terrestrial, lacustrine, marine) containing large quantities of thermally immature organic matter in the forms of kerogen and bitumen. If defined from an economic standpoint, a rock containing a sufficient concentration of oil-prone kerogen to generate economic quantities of synthetic crude...