UNC-Chapel Hill Climate Change Resources // Carolina Digital Repository

Works (784)

781. Raiding the Toolbox - Techniques for Assessing Historical, High-Resolution Records of Coastal and Estuarine Sediment Erosion, Transport and Sedimentation

Title Tesim:: Raiding the Toolbox - Techniques for Assessing Historical, High-Resolution Records of Coastal and Estuarine Sediment Erosion, Transport and Sedimentation
Creator:: Elliott, Emily
Date Created:: July 6, 2017
Date of publication:: May 2017
Abstract Tesim:: Estuaries act as a buffers to material transport from terrestrial to oceanic environments. Characterizing mechanisms of erosion, transport and deposition within estuaries is crucial for understanding material flux to the marine environment and compositional transformations. However, obtaining multi-decadal high-resolution records of sediment flux, source, and composition within estuaries is a major challenge in coastal research due to dynamic processes that actively erode, resuspend and/or rework the sedimentary record. For this reason, estuarine sedimentology has dominantly focused on either long-term (decadal to millennial) records that show constant sedimentation rates often matching the rate of sea-level rise, or short-term (multi-year to decadal) studies that show variable sedimentation rates associated with events. This dissertation presents a monthly record of estuarine sedimentation that spans ~40 years within a highly accreting mini-basin, Cape Lookout Bight (CLB), NC, utilizing existing and newly-developed methods. This long-term high-resolution record is used to identify the dominant physical drivers of sediment flux within the estuary. Chapter 1 of this dissertation uses the lithologic and the long-term geochronology of this basin to determine its formation and sediment sources through time. Chapter 2 presents and tests the efficacy of a modified uni-directional time-integrated mass suspended-sediment sampler for use within the bi-directional flow of a tidal (estuarine) environment. Modified collectors are then used to verify the dominant estuarine sediment source to the CLB basin. Chapter 3 applies and tests different geochronological models for excess Pb-210 within the estuarine system, showing the strengths and weaknesses of each model application within our system, and presents a method for applying tempestite horizons for increased resolution and accuracy of estuarine geochronologies. Finally, Chapter 4 uses this established high-resolution multi-decadal geochronology, along with historical physical data obtained for the system, to identify sediment source and drivers of sediment transport within the estuary to the coastal ocean through time. This study identifies multiple sedimentation events that are triggered by conditions that have a recurrence interval of ~1 year (+/- 0.5) and advances our understanding of how storms, and therefore climate change may impact sediment erosion, transport and deposition within the coastal zone.
Resource type:: Dissertation
Affiliation Label Tesim:: Department of Marine Sciences
Degree:: Doctor of Philosophy
Degree Granting Institution:: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Graduate School
Deposit Record:: 10f8a7b2-ce97-42e3-bb7e-4cd0a7130652
Type:: http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/Text
DOI:: https://doi.org/10.17615/rde9-c870
Graduation Year:: 2017
Keyword:: Sedimentary geology, Marine geology, Geomorphology, Coastal Sedimentation, Pb-210 Analysis, Coastal Geomorphology, Estuarine Transport, Estuarine Erosion, and Geochronology
Language Label:: English
ORCID:
Other Affiliation:
Person:: McKee, Brent, Lambert, W., Rodriguez, Antonio, Cable, Jaye, Seim, Harvey, and Elliott, Emily
Rights Statement Label:: In Copyright

782. LOW EMISSIONS, HIGH CONCERN: HOW CLIMATE COMMUNICATORS GRAPPLE WITH A TRANSNATIONAL ISSUE IN THE PHILIPPINES

Title Tesim:: LOW EMISSIONS, HIGH CONCERN: HOW CLIMATE COMMUNICATORS GRAPPLE WITH A TRANSNATIONAL ISSUE IN THE PHILIPPINES
Creator:: Evans, Suzannah
Date Created:: July 5, 2017
Date of publication:: May 2016
Abstract Tesim:: Climate change is one of the most pressing scientific and social issues of the 21st century. Communication about climate change has been the subject of intense interest by social scientists for the last two decades. However, the vast majority of scholarly studies about climate communication have focused on the wealthy nations that are major carbon polluters. Little is known about how climate change is communicated in the poorer nations that produce few emissions and are the first to experience the effects of climate change. This study addresses that gap in in scholarship by focusing on climate communication in the Philippines, a developing nation where climate change has been on the national agenda since increasingly devastating typhoons struck the country in the last five years. The study uses a mixed-methods design that includes semi-structured interviews and a quantitative social media analysis. Climate activists and journalists were interviewed in Manila to understand three aspects of climate communication in the developing world: journalists’ climate reporting, and activists’ social movement frame-building as well as social media strategies. A quantitative analysis of social media strategies was conducted on activist messages on Twitter targeting the U.N. climate negotiations in Paris in December 2015. This mixed-methods study of three aspects of climate communication in the developing world is informed by theories from mass communication and social movement scholarship. In particular, the study is concerned with public sphere theory and its applicability to a transnational issue – climate change – and the advent of borderless digital media systems. In general, the study finds that climate communicators in the developing world continue to be disempowered in the global debate about emissions despite the rise of global forms of journalism and open-access digital media networks. Climate journalism is still nascent and reporters struggle to connect local effects of climate change to the global issue due to organizational and cultural constraints. Activists are better-positioned to engage with climate on a transnational scale; they do this through the climate justice frame and in their social media strategies. However, developing nation voices still struggle to be heard as they compete with a multitude of other actors even in the supposedly democratic networked media space.
Resource type:: Dissertation
Affiliation Label Tesim:: Mass Communication Graduate Program
Degree:: Doctor of Philosophy
Degree Granting Institution:: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Graduate School
Deposit Record:: c11758a0-58e4-482e-a854-c193fd8757da
Type:: http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/Text
DOI:: https://doi.org/10.17615/xtd4-gz72
Graduation Year:: 2016
Keyword:: Sociology, climate change advocacy, Journalism, social media, mixed methods, Mass communication, social movements, climate journalism, and Philippines
Language Label:: English
ORCID:
Other Affiliation:
Person:: Reese, Stephen, Riffe, Daniel, Folkerts, Jean, Andrews, Kenneth, Kreiss, Daniel, and Evans, Suzannah
Rights Statement Label:: In Copyright

783. SELF-ORGANIZATION OF THE CLIMATE SYSTEM: SYNCHRONIZED POLAR AND OCEANIC TELECONNECTIONS

Title Tesim:: SELF-ORGANIZATION OF THE CLIMATE SYSTEM: SYNCHRONIZED POLAR AND OCEANIC TELECONNECTIONS
Creator:: Reischmann, Elizabeth
Date Created:: June 30, 2017
Date of publication:: December 2016
Abstract Tesim:: Synchronization is a widespread phenomenon in nonlinear, physical systems. It describes the phenomena of two or more weakly interacting, nonlinear oscillators adjust their natural frequencies until they come into phase and frequency lock. This behavior has been observed in biological, chemical and electronic systems, including neurons, fireflies, and computers, but has not been widely studied in climate. This thesis presents a study of several major examples of synchronized climatic systems, starting with ice age timings seemingly caused by the global climate’s gradual synchronization to the Earth’s 413kyr orbital eccentricity band, which may be responsible for the shift of ice age timings and amplitudes at the Mid-Pleistocene transition. The focus of the thesis, however, is centered the second major example of stable synchronization in the climate system: the continuous, 90 degree phase relationship of the polar climate signals for the entirety of the available ice record. The existence of a relationship between polar climates has been widely observed since ice core proxies became available in both Greenland and Antarctica. However, my work focuses on refining this phase relationship, utilizing it’s linear nature to apply deconvolution and establish an energy transfer function. This transfer function shows a distinctly singular frequency, suggesting that climate signal is predominately communicated north to south with a period of 1.6kyrs. This narrows down possible mechanisms of polar connection dramatically, and is further investigated via a collection of intermediate proxy datasets and a set of more contemporary, synchronized, sea surface temperature dipoles. While the former fails to show any strong indication of the nature of the polar signal due in part to the overwhelming uncertainties present on the centennial and millennial scales, the latter demonstrates a large set of synchronized climate oscillations exist, communicate in a variety of networks, and have a direct connection to larger climate patterns (in this case, precipitation anomalies). Overall, this thesis represents a clear advance in our understanding of global climate dynamics, presents a new method of climate time series analysis, evidence of 16, stable, synchronized sea surface temperature dipoles, and provides a detailed sediment core database with explanations of age model limitations for future investigation.
Resource type:: Dissertation
Affiliation Label Tesim:: Department of Geological Sciences
Degree:: Doctor of Philosophy
Degree Granting Institution:: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Graduate School
Deposit Record:: f43288b7-6e80-460a-babe-010609cfc257
Type:: http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/Text
DOI:: https://doi.org/10.17615/0rw9-e995
Graduation Year:: 2016
Keyword:: Geophysics, Paleoclimate science, and Climate change
Language Label:: English
ORCID:
Other Affiliation:
Person:: Wise, Erika, Pavelsky, Tamlin, Lees, Jonathan, Surge, Donna M., Rial, Jose, and Reischmann, Elizabeth
Rights Statement Label:: In Copyright

784. Forecasting Tourist Decisions Regarding Zoo Attendance Using Weather and Climate References

Title Tesim:: Forecasting Tourist Decisions Regarding Zoo Attendance Using Weather and Climate References
Creator:: Perkins, David Richard, IV
Date Created:: February 13, 2015
Date of publication:: May 2012
Abstract Tesim:: Tourism climatology studies relationships among people, business, weather, and climate within the tourism industry. This research tests these interfaces in the southeast United States at the North Carolina Zoo and Zoo Atlanta. Historical weather data are paired with zoo attendance. Weather variables include observed variables of temperature, humidity, cloud cover, and wind speed; derived variables of wind chill and heat index; and biometeorological index variables of Physiologically Equivalent Temperature (PET), Standard Effective Temperature (SET), and Predicted Mean Vote (PMV). Three analyses are used: correlation, multiple regression, and probabilistic. Correlation analysis compares direct relationships between weather variables and attendance. Multiple regression analysis combines standard variables in predictive models. Probabilistic analysis studies seasonal scale climate-attendance relationships. Results indicate weather influences on zoo attendances change by season, social influences, and geography of the zoo. Complex composite weather variables improve attendance predictability as they provide better assessments of how humans sense outdoor environments.
Resource type:: Masters Thesis
Affiliation Label Tesim:: Department of Geography
Degree:: Master of Arts
Deposit Record:: 6e197fa0-ddbd-495a-93cc-8c97b54922e4
Type:: http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/Text
DOI:: https://doi.org/10.17615/njws-rz09
Graduation Year:: 2012
Keyword:: Geography
Language Label:: English
ORCID:
Other Affiliation:
Person:: Robinson, Peter J. and Perkins, David Richard, IV
Publisher:: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Rights Statement Label:: In Copyright

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