This thesis is composed of three Chapters. Chapter 1 is a preface that outlines the degree program and components of my thesis. Chapter 2 is the main body of the thesis; it is an investigation into pore pressures in the Auger basin and how they are related to fluid venting at the seafloor. I map the distribution of subsurface pressures in thick interconnected sand bodies that are present across...

Ecological succession is one of the most important concepts in ecology. However for microbial community succession, there is a lack of a solid theoretical framework regarding succession in microorganisms. This is in part due to microbial community complexity and plasticity but also because little is known about temporal patterns of microbial community shifts in different kinds of ecosystems, in...

The northern piedmont of the western Kunlun mountains (Xinjiang, China) is marked at its easternmost extremity, south of the Hotan-Qira oases, by a set of normal faults trending N50E for nearly 70 km. Conspicuous on Landsat and SPOT images, these faults follow the southeastern border of a deep flexural basin and may be related to the subsidence of the Tarim platform loaded by the western Kunlun...

In dynamical systems examples are common in which two or more attractors coexist, and in such cases the basin boundary is nonempty and the basins often have fractal basin boundaries. The purpose of this paper is to describe the structure and properties of unbounded basins and their boundaries for two-dimensional diffeomorphisms. Frequently, if not always, there is a periodic saddle on the bound...

[1] Among countries with river basin organizations to manage their water resources, Spain’s experience is one of the longest. One of the first basin agencies established in Spain was for the Guadalquivir River in the south. A case study of that river basin and its management indicates how basin management is shaped by political economy factors such as the historical path of the agency’s evoluti...

New data on the distribution of fossil fish together with floral and tetrapod evidence are used to develop an internal correlation of the strata of the early Mesozoic Newark Supergroup of eastern North America. Within the Newark, we recognize five informal biostratigraphic zones, each characterized by a particular fish fauna. These fish zones are then related to other Mesozoic freshwater deposi...

Large closed basins are often associated with regions of active tectonics. In contrast, we provide the example of the Great Divide Basin, in southern Wyoming, where climate change, through its impact on erosion and fl exure, provides the primary mechanism of basin closure. Twoand three-dimensional fl exural models that incorporate the effects of local basin abandonment due to aridity as well as...

The geometry of foreland basins is controlled by a dynamic balance between thrust-belt migration, fl exural subsidence, and fl uvial deposition. To improve our ability to quantify the relationships between tectonics, climate, and foreland basin geometry, I developed analytic solutions for basin topography and stratigraphy using a classic two-dimensional mathematical model of foreland basin evol...

An overflow of magnitude 0.25 Sv (Sv 10 m 3 s ) has been predicted to enter the Makarov Basin (part of the Canadian Basin in the Arctic Ocean) from the Eurasian Basin via a deep gap in the dividing Lomonosov ridge. The authors argue that this overflow does not ventilate the deep Makarov Basin (below 2400 m) where the water is too warm and salty to be compatible with such a large cold fresh infl...