Public concerns about high levels of arsenic in well water have prompted a recent and continuing testing program in the area around Sweet Home, Ore., and may raise a warning flag for other areas of the state that could also face problems with this toxin due to geology or land use practices.
Produced by Oregon State University Professor Harry Yeh and computer technologist Jonathan Karon, six computerized simulations show where people might go when the Cascadia subduction earthquake and tsunami hit Cannon Beach.
"We don't know where all the seismic faults exist in Oregon. We don't know how often they cause earthquakes," says Michael Olsen, an assistant professor of engineering at Oregon State University.
In the new study researchers led by Andreas Schmittner from Oregon State University focused on the climate during the last ice age, about 19,000 to 23,000 years ago, to estimate how sensitive the climate system is to changing amounts of CO2 (in the ice age scenario, a reduction of CO2 helped cool the globe).
Researchers at Oregon State University have developed a new system that will enable highway construction engineers in the field to immediately analyze soil movements caused by active landslides and erosion and use the powerful tool of LIDAR to better assess and deal with them.
First Study Assesses Risks, Opportunities From Warm-Up
At just over 400 pages, the first legislatively mandated report from the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute attempts to spell out the likely regional effects of projected warmer temperatures and sea level increases, exacerbated by expected population growth.
The study was done by researchers from Oregon State University and other agencies, and concluded that heavy loads of parasites can affect salmon growth, weight, size, immune function, saltwater adaptation, swimming stamina, activity level, ability to migrate and other issues.
Bob Dziak, an Oregon State University marine geologist based at Hatfield Marine Science Center (HMSC), said this is the second leg of deployment under the Cascadia Initiative, a $10-million project funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 to build an offshore/onshore network of seismic and geodetic (earth) stations ranging from Cape Mendocino, Calif., to Cape Flattery, Wash.
The western United States has experienced increasing drought conditions in recent years "and conditions may worsen if global climate change models are accurate“ yet the country is doing little to prepare for potential catastrophe, a group of scientists said today.
The project team includes more than 30 scientists from UI, Washington State University and Oregon State University.
Oregon Sea Grant takes tsunami preparedness very seriously. The coast of Oregon is on the Cascadia subduction zone - a 600 mile long fault line similar to the one near Japan.
No-logging zones along state forest streams are making a difference in keeping temperatures cool for fish, according to a study issued Wednesday by Oregon State University.
Now an Oregon State University professor is studying algae strains at a series of Oregon waterways to determine whether these individual strains can produce toxins capable of sickening and killing people or whether they are nothing more than gross, smelly scums producing no greater public-health danger than swimmer's itch.
Submarine landslides triggered by major quakes on land have sent layers of sediments onto the seabed, and by dating those sediments researchers led by Chris Goldfinger, a marine geologist at Oregon State University, have calculated that the temblors rupture the ground roughly every 240 years on what is called the Cascadia Subduction Zone.
Oregon State University scientists say they've discovered an eruption of an undersea volcano about 250 miles off the Oregon Coast.
The panel of scientists took issue with a recent Science magazine report led by Andreas Schmittner of Oregon State University that looked at pollen and seafloor records of the last Ice Age that was more than 19,000 years ago.
Chris Goldfinger, an Oregon State University marine geology professor, happened to be in Japan on March 11 and experienced the magnitude-9 quake, which cut short an earthquake conference he was attending.
Oregon State University scientist Solomon Yim, director of the O.H. Hinsdale Wave Research Laboratory, says that each time a major tsunami hits, his $20 million lab sees an uptick in research projects from his average of $2 million in annual grants. "Before 2004, tsunamis were not on the radar screen of Americans," says Yim. That all changed with the Indonesian tsunami, and in 2005, the departments of transportation for the three western coastal states commissioned more research.
