Undergrad Research

[James Clark]

Well, I am in the honors program at my school, and one of the requirements for graduation (still a couple years away) is do do a thesis over my major area of study, which is Physical Science. I want to do something weather-related since that is what I am going to be studying at the Masters ad PhD level. I was going to attempt to model air pressure in such a way that it would account for the almost unquantifyable, but my mentor and I decided that would be prohibitive at this level of education, and since his knowledge of meteorology is intermediate at best, he would not be much help (he is a paleogeologist). Normally at the undergrad level, you might go under the wing of a grad student and do the grunt work of the thesis, and get third or fourth credit for the paper, but since my school has no graduate level science programs, it is just my mentor and me.

Well, this is where we are... We decided that it might be interesting to do research in the area of the water-bearing capacity of certian types of soils, and under various conditions (with vegatation, without, angle of sunlight, presense of man made chemicals like fertilizer, and other things) and its effect on low-level humidity. That way, he could be instrumental in the research, and it plays into my future education aspirations.

Well, took me long enough to get here, but do you guys know of anyone that is doing research in this area, any suggestions for how to go about it, and if this would be feasable under lab conditions?

 

[Kiel Ortega]

Try searching on scholar.google.com for any previous studies on this. I swear I saw a paper out of MSU on differences in soil type (I think it was mainly the pourousness of the soil) which led to differences in LL RH.

 

[James Clark]

Thank you sir, I did not even know that scholar.google existed, appreciate it! Did not find that paper yet though, will keep looking.

 

[Joe Nield]

Try searching on scholar.google.com for any previous studies on this. I swear I saw a paper out of MSU on differences in soil type (I think it was mainly the pourousness of the soil) which led to differences in LL RH.
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I know David Arnold at Ball State University and someone else whose name escapes me at the moment at Penn State have done work on land use concerns and their potential contribution to hail and other severe climatologies.

 

[Walker Ashley]

James:

The following study partially investigated soil/land-use types and tornadoes in Arkansas:
http://gis.esri.com/library/userconf/proc04/docs/pap1062.pdf

I believe that Dr. Mike Brown at Miss. State Univ. has examined tornadoes and land-use in areas of the Southeast. I think that article was in The Professional Geographer or Physical Geography. I can't remember, but do a search for his name. Mike and Dave Arnold do have this one in IJC: Brown, M.E., and D.L. Arnold, 1998: Land-Surface-Atmosphere Interaction Associated with Deep Convection in Illinois. International Journal of Climatology. 18: 1637 - 1653

Somewhat indirectly related is an article by McPherson et al. in MWR: McPherson, R.A., D.J. Stensrud, and K.C. Crawford, 2004: The impact of Oklahomas winter wheat belt on the mesoscale environment. Mon. Wea. Rev., 132,405-421.

Hope this helps.
Walker