Category: Articles


Fluvial activity in major river basins of the eastern United States during the Holocene

Really excited to have been a part of new paper by UA grad student (and CoRPS member) Ray Lombardi in “The Holocene” on paleoflooding. “This paper presents the first meta-analysis of fluvial reconstructions focused on regional watersheds of the eastern United States,…”

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Nature paper in UA news

A  UA News feature covers our recent Nature paper on Mississippi River flooding “More than Climate, Engineering Worsening Flooding Along Mississippi” “TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Through discovering ancient floods along the Mississippi River, a group of scientists, including a University of Alabama professor, found human-led engineering, not climate, is the largest influence on worsening floods.”

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The search for Fort Armstrong: Dendroarchaeology of the Williamson “Snow Hill” Plantation, Cherokee County, Alabama, USA

Discussed this project in an earlier post. Matt Gage from the UA Office of Archaeological Research and I carried out some tree-ring dating on three historical log buildings in northeastern Alabama to determine if any of the structures could have been associated with historic Fort Armstrong. Fort Armstrong was constructed near Cedar Bluff, Alabama by militia members under the ultimate command of Andrew Jackson to support actions against the “Red Stick” faction of Creeks during the First Creek War in 1813. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dendro.2017.02.001

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A multi-century tree-ring record of spring flooding on the Mississippi River

Really proud of this article that my former grad student Emma Bialecki and I recently published. This work developed out of Emma’s masters research at Big Oak Tree State Park in southern Missouri. It is the first publication to report using flood rings in bottomland hardwoods to develop long flood history records for the Mississippi River.   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2014.11.005

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Climate and the Mfecane

The mfecane is thought to be a massive upheaval and devastation of Nguni tribal chiefdoms in the second decade of the 19th century in what is now KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape of South Africa. We show that pervasive cycles of drought and cold periods in southern Africa are significantly amplified and extended by volcanic eruptions and that, in particular, the eruption of Tambora in 1815 triggered a prolonged and extreme climatic event which bears all of the characteristics ascribed […]

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Response of Non- Native Invasive Plants to Large Scale Wind Damage

The objective of this study was to determine if a large-scale wind disturbance facilitated the invasion of forest interiors by non-native invasive plant species in the northern portion of LaRue Pine Hills – Otter Pond Research Natural Area in the Shawnee National Forest of southern Illinois. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3375/043.033.0309

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