Proglacial icings as indicators of glacier thermal regime : ice thickness changes and icing occurrence in Svalbard

Proglacial icings (also known as naled or aufeis) are frequently observed in the forefields of polar glaciers. Their formation has been ascribed to the refreezing of upwelling groundwater that has originated from subglacial melt, and thus the presence of icings has been used as evidence of polythermal glacier regime. We provide an updated analysis of icing occurrence in Svalbard and test the utility of icings as an indicator of thermal regime by comparing icing presence with: (1) mean glacier thickness, as a proxy for present thermal regime; and (2) evidence of past surge activity, which is an indicator of past thermal regime. A total of 279 icings were identified from TopoSvalbard imagery covering the period 2008-2012, of which 143 corresponded to icings identified by Bukowska-Jania and Szafraniec (2005) from aerial photographs from 1990. Only 46% of icings observed in 2008-2012 were found to occur at glaciers with thicknesses consistent with a polythermal regime, meaning a large proportion were associated with glaciers predicted to be of a cold or transitional thermal regime. As a result, icing presence alone may be an unsuitable indicator of glacier regime. We further found that, of the 279 glaciers with icings, 63% of cold-based glaciers and 64% of transitional glaciers were associated with evidence of surge activity. We therefore suggest that proglacial icing formation in Svalbard may reflect historical (rather than present) thermal regime, and that icings possibly originate from groundwater effusion from subglacial taliks that persist for decades following glacier thinning and associated regime change

Post-Acute Care Payment Reform Demonstration: Final Report Volume 4 of 4

This is the Final Report for the Post-Acute Care Payment Reform Demonstration (PAC-PRD), authorized by section 5008 of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, Public Law 109-171. The report has 12 sections, which are divided into four volumes: Volume 1: Executive Summary. Volume 2: Sections 1-4 (Section 1: Introduction; Section 2: Underlying Issues of the PAC-PRD Initiating Legislation; Section 3: Developing Standardized Measurement Approaches: The Continuity Assessment Record and Evaluation (CARE); Section 4: Demonstration Methods and Data Collection) Volume 3: Sections 5-6 (Section 5: Framework for Analysis; Section 6: Factors Associated with Hospital Discharge Destination) Volume 4: Sections 7-12; References (Section 7: Outcomes: Hospital Readmissions; Section 8: Outcomes: Functional Status; Section 9: Determinants of Resource Intensity: Methods and Analytic Sample Description; Section 10: Determinants of Resource Intensity: Lessons from the CART Analysis; Section 11: Determinants of Resource Intensity: Multivariate Regression Results; Section 12: Conclusions and Review of Findings; References

Post-Acute Care Payment Reform Demonstration: Final Report Volume 3 of 4

This is the Final Report for the Post-Acute Care Payment Reform Demonstration (PAC-PRD), authorized by section 5008 of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, Public Law 109-171. The report has 12 sections, which are divided into four volumes: Volume 1: Executive Summary. Volume 2: Sections 1-4 (Section 1: Introduction; Section 2: Underlying Issues of the PAC-PRD Initiating Legislation; Section 3: Developing Standardized Measurement Approaches: The Continuity Assessment Record and Evaluation (CARE); Section 4: Demonstration Methods and Data Collection) Volume 3: Sections 5-6 (Section 5: Framework for Analysis; Section 6: Factors Associated with Hospital Discharge Destination) Volume 4: Sections 7-12; References (Section 7: Outcomes: Hospital Readmissions; Section 8: Outcomes: Functional Status; Section 9: Determinants of Resource Intensity: Methods and Analytic Sample Description; Section 10: Determinants of Resource Intensity: Lessons from the CART Analysis; Section 11: Determinants of Resource Intensity: Multivariate Regression Results; Section 12: Conclusions and Review of Findings; References

Post-Acute Care Payment Reform Demonstration: Final Report Volume 1 of 4

This is the Final Report for the Post-Acute Care Payment Reform Demonstration (PAC-PRD), authorized by section 5008 of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, Public Law 109-171. The report has 12 sections, which are divided into four volumes: Volume 1: Executive Summary. Volume 2: Sections 1-4 (Section 1: Introduction; Section 2: Underlying Issues of the PAC-PRD Initiating Legislation; Section 3: Developing Standardized Measurement Approaches: The Continuity Assessment Record and Evaluation (CARE); Section 4: Demonstration Methods and Data Collection) Volume 3: Sections 5-6 (Section 5: Framework for Analysis; Section 6: Factors Associated with Hospital Discharge Destination) Volume 4: Sections 7-12; References (Section 7: Outcomes: Hospital Readmissions; Section 8: Outcomes: Functional Status; Section 9: Determinants of Resource Intensity: Methods and Analytic Sample Description; Section 10: Determinants of Resource Intensity: Lessons from the CART Analysis; Section 11: Determinants of Resource Intensity: Multivariate Regression Results; Section 12: Conclusions and Review of Findings; References

Post-Acute Care Payment Reform Demonstration: Final Report Volume 2 of 4

This is the Final Report for the Post-Acute Care Payment Reform Demonstration (PAC-PRD), authorized by section 5008 of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, Public Law 109-171. The report has 12 sections, which are divided into four volumes: Volume 1: Executive Summary. Volume 2: Sections 1-4 (Section 1: Introduction; Section 2: Underlying Issues of the PAC-PRD Initiating Legislation; Section 3: Developing Standardized Measurement Approaches: The Continuity Assessment Record and Evaluation (CARE); Section 4: Demonstration Methods and Data Collection) Volume 3: Sections 5-6 (Section 5: Framework for Analysis; Section 6: Factors Associated with Hospital Discharge Destination) Volume 4: Sections 7-12; References (Section 7: Outcomes: Hospital Readmissions; Section 8: Outcomes: Functional Status; Section 9: Determinants of Resource Intensity: Methods and Analytic Sample Description; Section 10: Determinants of Resource Intensity: Lessons from the CART Analysis; Section 11: Determinants of Resource Intensity: Multivariate Regression Results; Section 12: Conclusions and Review of Findings; References

Complexities in barrier island response to sea level rise : insights from numerical model experiments, North Carolina Outer Banks

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2010. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research 115 (2010): F03004, doi:10.1029/2009JF001299.Using a morphological-behavior model to conduct sensitivity experiments, we investigate the sea level rise response of a complex coastal environment to changes in a variety of factors. Experiments reveal that substrate composition, followed in rank order by substrate slope, sea level rise rate, and sediment supply rate, are the most important factors in determining barrier island response to sea level rise. We find that geomorphic threshold crossing, defined as a change in state (e.g., from landward migrating to drowning) that is irreversible over decadal to millennial time scales, is most likely to occur in muddy coastal systems where the combination of substrate composition, depth-dependent limitations on shoreface response rates, and substrate erodibility may prevent sand from being liberated rapidly enough, or in sufficient quantity, to maintain a subaerial barrier. Analyses indicate that factors affecting sediment availability such as low substrate sand proportions and high sediment loss rates cause a barrier to migrate landward along a trajectory having a lower slope than average barrier island slope, thereby defining an “effective” barrier island slope. Other factors being equal, such barriers will tend to be smaller and associated with a more deeply incised shoreface, thereby requiring less migration per sea level rise increment to liberate sufficient sand to maintain subaerial exposure than larger, less incised barriers. As a result, the evolution of larger/less incised barriers is more likely to be limited by shoreface erosion rates or substrate erodibility making them more prone to disintegration related to increasing sea level rise rates than smaller/more incised barriers. Thus, the small/deeply incised North Carolina barriers are likely to persist in the near term (although their long-term fate is less certain because of the low substrate slopes that will soon be encountered). In aggregate, results point to the importance of system history (e.g., previous slopes, sediment budgets, etc.) in determining migration trajectories and therefore how a barrier island will respond to sea level rise. Although simple analytical calculations may predict barrier response in simplified coastal environments (e.g., constant slope, constant sea level rise rate, etc.), our model experiments demonstrate that morphological-behavior modeling is necessary to provide critical insights regarding changes that may occur in environments having complex geometries, especially when multiple parameters change simultaneously.This work was partially supported by the U.S. Geological Survey, Woods Hole Science Center and a sabbatical leave fellowship from Oberlin College to Laura Moore from the Mellon‐8 Consortium