Coastal Flooding in Florida’s Big Bend Region with Application to Sea Level Rise Based on Synthetic Storms Analysis

Flooding is examined by comparing maximum envelopes of water against the 0.2% (= 1-in-500-year return-period) flooding surface generated as part of revising the Federal Emergency Management Agency\u27s flood insurance rate maps for Franklin, Wakulla, and Jefferson counties in Florida\u27s Big Bend Region. The analysis condenses the number of storms to a small fraction of the original 159 used in production. The analysis is performed by assessing which synthetic storms contributed to inundation extent (the extent of inundation into the floodplain), coverage (the overall surface area of the inundated floodplain) and the spatially variable 0.2% flooding surface. The results are interpreted in terms of storm attributes (pressure deficit, radius to; maximum winds, translation speed, storm heading, and landfall location) and the physical processes occurring within the natural system (storms surge and waves); both are contextualized against existing and new hurricane scales. The approach identifies what types of storms and storm attributes lead to what types of inundation, as measured in terms of extent and coverage, in Florida\u27s Big Bend Region and provides a basis in the identification of a select subset of synthetic storms for studying the impact of sea level rise. The sea level rise application provides a clear contrast between a dynamic approach versus that of a static approach

Communications Considerations in the Context of an Interdisciplinary Sea Level Rise Impacts Assessment Project

Source: ICHE Conference Archive - https://mdi-de.baw.de/icheArchiv

Mapping the protistan 'rare biosphere'

The use of cultivation-independent approaches to map microbial diversity, including recent work published in BMC Biology, has now shown that protists, like bacteria/archaea, are much more diverse than had been realized. Uncovering eukaryotic diversity may now be limited not by access to samples or cost but rather by the availability of full-length reference sequence data

Robust and stable transcriptional repression in Giardia using CRISPRi.

Giardia lamblia is a binucleate protistan parasite causing significant diarrheal disease worldwide. An inability to target Cas9 to both nuclei, combined with the lack of nonhomologous end joining and markers for positive selection, has stalled the adaptation of CRISPR/Cas9-mediated genetic tools for this widespread parasite. CRISPR interference (CRISPRi) is a modification of the CRISPR/Cas9 system that directs catalytically inactive Cas9 (dCas9) to target loci for stable transcriptional repression. Using a Giardia nuclear localization signal to target dCas9 to both nuclei, we developed efficient and stable CRISPRi-mediated transcriptional repression of exogenous and endogenous genes in Giardia. Specifically, CRISPRi knockdown of kinesin-2a and kinesin-13 causes severe flagellar length defects that mirror defects with morpholino knockdown. Knockdown of the ventral disk MBP protein also causes severe structural defects that are highly prevalent and persist in the population more than 5 d longer than defects associated with transient morpholino-based knockdown. By expressing two guide RNAs in tandem to simultaneously knock down kinesin-13 and MBP, we created a stable dual knockdown strain with both flagellar length and disk defects. The efficiency and simplicity of CRISPRi in polyploid Giardia allows rapid evaluation of knockdown phenotypes and highlights the utility of CRISPRi for emerging model systems

Surface Roughness Parameterization Using Land Use / Land Cover Enhanced by Lidar Point Cloud Data

Source: ICHE Conference Archive - https://mdi-de.baw.de/icheArchiv

Development of a High-Resolution, Wind-Wave, Tide, and Hurricane Storm Surge Model for Southern Mississippi

Source: ICHE Conference Archive - https://mdi-de.baw.de/icheArchiv

Resolving the Intracoastal Waterway in a Storm Surge Model Applied for Floodplain Mapping for Northeast Florida

Source: ICHE Conference Archive - https://mdi-de.baw.de/icheArchiv