Geology topics

M.Y. McPartland

Publications and source records attributed to M.Y. McPartland.

2 recordsLinked to original sources

USGS2026

Quantifying methane emissions from a rich fen with uncrewed aircraft systems in boreal Alaska

Thawing of permafrost in northern latitudes is accelerating, potentially releasing substantial amounts of methane (CH 4 ) as forested permafrost plateaus transition into wetlands. This ecosystem shift alters the carbon exchange between the soil and atmosphere, influencing the permafrost-carbon feedback. Monitoring these changes may require measurement platforms operating across varied spatial and temporal scales. Recent advancements in small uncrewed aircraft systems (sUAS) enable high resolution CH 4 flux quantification in remote, complex terrains; however, comparisons with established methods such as eddy covariance flux towers remain limited. We used a hexacopter sUAS to quantify CH 4 emissions from the Alaska Peatland Experiment, a wetland within the Bonanza Creek Experimental Forest. Using an ensemble of methods to define the background CH 4 concentration, along with near surface emissions from soil chambers, helped constrain our flux estimates. The sUAS method yielded an average flux of 0.0077 ± 0.0019 mol s −1 CH 4 , within a factor of two concurrent tower-derived total source flux estimates (0.0036 ± 0.00042 mol s −1 CH 4 ). To assess spatial drivers of observed fluxes, we conducted a 2D footprint analysis and overlaid the results with high-resolution hyperspectral land cover classification, quantifying vegetative contributions within each footprint. This revealed higher fen representation in sUAS measurements (73.8%) than in tower footprints (58.8%), and lower tussock meadow representation (15.6% and 30.3%, respectively). These differences were consistent with known variation in vegetation-specific CH 4 emissions. Our results highlight that combining footprint modeling with land cover characterization can enhance interpretations of CH 4 fluxes and guide cross-platform comparisons.

JGR Atmospheres↗

USGS2020

Does signal-free detrending increase chronology coherence in large tree-ring networks?

Over the past decade, dendrochronologists have increasingly adopted the signal-free detrending (SFD) method to remove age-size trends in tree-ring measurement series, amplify the common stand-wide signal in composite chronologies, and recover medium- to low-frequency patterns that may be inadvertently removed by other detrending approaches. However, since its introduction in 2008, no systematic evaluation of the effects of SFD on tree-ring chronologies has been performed. Here we conduct the first review of SFD in dendrochronology and assess its effects when applied to large tree-ring networks. We analyzed the PAGES North America 2 K database of nearly 300 temperature-sensitive chronologies and the Missouri River database of over 350 chronologies curated for the purpose of reconstructing Missouri River streamflow. Both databases contain multiple versions of each chronology generated by different detrending methods, including those produced with (and without) the signal-free procedure applied. We evaluated (i) whether SFD increases chronology coherence at the site level by boosting the between-tree agreement, (ii) whether SFD increases coherence on a regional basis by making neighboring chronologies more similar to each other, and (iii) whether signal-free chronologies retained more medium- to low-frequency variability than their traditional counterparts. We find that, while SFD increased the strength of common signals in many instances, the effect was not universal and some sites even show a decrease in signal coherence. At regional scales, SFD increases chronology coherence in temperature-sensitive records but had no detectable effect on moisture-sensitive records. Our results demonstrate the importance of evaluating the effects of SFD prior to deploying this method for chronology development and paleoclimate reconstruction.

Dendrochronologia↗