This repository is supplemental data (raw data) from my doctoral dissertation (2024). My research focused on how flowering plants respond to changing climates, not only with fossil plants in the geologic past, but also to make predictions on how living flowering plants will respond to human-derived climate change. We can examine these responses by examining functional traits, which are strongly associated with environmental and climatic factors. Studying functional traits in leaves is particularly helpful in this case, because they are a plant’s direct interaction with outside abiotic and biotic influences. I explored these plant-climate interactions in non-woody flowering plants (monocots) and ZIngiberaceae (the ginger family) because they are wildly understudied but have great ecological and agricultural importance. The research portion of my dissertation spanned four chapters (2-5). In Chapter 2, I examined the evolutionary and ecological impacts on a well-known leaf functional trait, vein length per area (VLA) in the entire monocot clade. This work revealed that monocot VLA was more associated with a plant’s environment and its habit (size/form), rather than overall evolutionary history. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 focused on Zingiberaceae. In Chapter 3, I tested leaf functional trait-climate relationships and dicot leaf trait reconstruction methods on fossil Zingiberaceae. I found that methods used to reconstruct leaf area and leaf mass area (important leaf functional traits) in fossil dicots were not comparable for use with Zingiberaceae, and likely other monocots. Leaf venation traits, including VLA and two new traits vein thickness (VT) and distance between veins, were largely driven by changes in temperature, which may provide useful information on past plant-climate interactions. In Chapter 4 I explored leaf functional trait response to elevated temperature and [CO2] in two species of living Zingiberaceae. Venation traits were largely driven by temperature, while stomatal and leaf mass traits were strongly associated with both temperature and [CO2]. This work provided potential implications for how living flowering plants may respond to anthropogenic climate change impacts and possibly offer a plant physiology model for fossil gingers, one that is not attainable with fossils. Lastly in Chapter 5 I focused on plant climate niches across the last 100 million years and explored differences in niche expansion and contraction in woody (Metasequoia sp.) and herbaceous (Zingiberaceae) plants. This work revealed that differences in climate niches are largely due to plant growth and dispersal strategies. My results call into question assumptions made for plant-based paleoclimate reconstruction methods, and recommend further training of these methods with additional plant groups. This dissertation provides new insight on living and fossil plant-climate interactions of monocot flowering plants, and lays the foundation for future research.
This dataset is part of a research project that aims to study how liana and tree seedlings differ in terms of wood anatomy and demography in three tropical forests in Colombia. These forests are located in the municipalities of Cotove (Antioquia), Colorados (Bolivar) and Tyrona (Magdalena).
González-M., R., Posada, J.M., Carmona, C.P., Garzón, F., Salinas, V., Idárraga-Piedrahita, Á., Pizano, C., Avella, A., López-Camacho, R., Norden, N., Nieto, J., Medina, S.P., Rodríguez-M., G.M., Franke-Ante, R., Torres, A.M., Jurado, R., Cuadros, H., Castaño-Naranjo, A., García, H. and Salgado-Negret, B. (2021), Diverging functional strategies but high sensitivity to an extreme drought in tropical dry forests. Ecology Letters, 24: 451-463. https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.13659
The study aims to describe how children worldwide progress through a sequence of theory of mind understandings in their development of insights into persons and minds. The focus is on the studies using Wellman and Liu's (2004) Theory of Mind Scale. A comprehensive search was run in PsycINFO, PsycArticles, Child Development & Adolescent Studies, Education Abstracts, Family & Society Studies Worldwide, and Social Sciences Abstracts. The dataset includes 91 studies using Wellman and Liu's (2004) Theory of Mind Scale.
The four specimens (GSI SR/YS/1, GSI SR/YS/2, GSI SR/YS/3, and GSI SR/YS/4) are identified as tail clubs that are attributed to the basal sauropod Kotasaurus yamanpalliensis. The specimens were collected by the Geological Survey of India Southern Region (GSI SR) and, in 2018, the specimens were studied as a collaboration between GSI SR and the University of Michigan Museum of Paleontology. The specimens are housed in the collections of the GSI SR (Hyderabad, India).
Kareem, T. A., S. Chakraborty, and J. A. Wilson Mantilla. (in prep.) Sauropod tail clubs from the Kota Formation (Early to Middle Jurassic) of India and their implications for early sauropod evolution. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology
The matlab code, digital elevation data, and landslide volume data here support the findings of Medwedeff et al. (2024) in JGR: Earth Surface. In this article, we study past landslides to understand how the strength of rocks and soil vary across the landscape and below the ground. We develop a matlab-based model that uses the length, width, slope angle, and thickness of landslides that have occurred in the past to estimate how strong the rock or soil was before it gave way. We improve upon previous studies by using elevation data from before and after landslides occurred to measure how thick the sliding mass was for each landslide. The thickness measurements help us understand how the strength of the ground changes as a function of depth below the surface, like for example, when rocks get weaker near the surface due to increased weathering. We apply our model to landslides that occurred during earthquakes in Greece and Nepal, and we compare the results to rock strength field data. In addition to our model code, we include in this data repository the landslide volume and elevation data for Nepal and Greece that we used to run our model for this study.
Medwedeff, W.G., Clark, M.K., Zekkos, D. (in review 2024) Regional Back-Analysis of Earthquake Triggered Landslide Inventories: a 2D Method for Estimating Rock Strength from Remote Sensing Data. In review in JGR Earth Surface.
This dataset is part of a research project that aims to study how bark and wood traits shape species ecological strategies at the seedling stage in four tropical forests in Colombia. These forests are located in the municipalities of Jabiru (Tolima), Cotove (Antioquia), Colorados (Bolivar) and Tyrona (Magdalena). Detailed information on the location of these forests can be found in: https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.13659
This collection contains estimates of the water balance of the Laurentian Great Lakes that were produced by the Large Lakes Statistical Water Balance Model (L2SWBM). Each data set has a different configuration and was used as the supplementary for a published peer-reviewed article (see "Citations to related material" section in the metadata of individual data sets). The key variables that were estimated by the L2SWBM are (1) over-lake precipitation, (2) over-lake evaporation, (3) lateral runoff, (4) connecting-channel outflows, (5) diversions, and (6) predictive changes in lake storage. and Contact: Andrew Gronewold
Office: 4040 Dana
Phone: (734) 764-6286
Email: [email protected]
Smith, J. P., & Gronewold, A. D. (2017). Development and analysis of a Bayesian water balance model for large lake systems. arXiv preprint arXiv:1710.10161., Gronewold, A. D., Smith, J. P., Read, L., & Crooks, J. L. (2020). Reconciling the water balance of large lake systems. Advances in Water Resources, 103505., and Do, H.X., Smith, J., Fry, L.M., and Gronewold, A.D., Seventy-year long record of monthly water balance estimates for Earth’s largest lake system (under revision)