ABSTRACT Shorelines formed by terminal lakes record past changes in regional moisture budgets. In the western Great Basin of North America, winter precipitation accounts for nearly half of the annual total and is well correlated with northeast Pacific storm track activity and moisture transport. We evaluated these relationships and found that historical precipitation between 1910 and 2012 was better correlated to moisture transport (0.78, p < 0.01) than to storm track activity (0.54, p < 0.01) because moisture transport better captures dynamics associated with the Sierra Nevada rain shadow. We derived modern analogs of enhanced and reduced storm track activity and moisture transport from reanalysis products and used associated winter precipitation anomalies with these analogs as inputs to a coupled water balance and lake evaporation model of the Walker Lake basin. Simulated lake-level responses were compared with a radiocarbon-dated lakeshore chronology spanning the past 3700 yr. Wet analogs developed from winters in the 90th and 75th percentiles for storminess and moisture transport produced lake levels that exceeded estimated late Holocene highstands by 50 m. Dry analogs (10th and 25th percentiles) produced lake levels corresponding to Medieval megadrought lowstands. The twentieth century is shown to be as wet as any century in the past 3700 yr. Our results demonstrate the sensitivity of terminal lakes to winter season circulations and highlight the value of using moisture transport as a predictor of cool season precipitation and to evaluate how past or future changes in regional circulations will influence the water balance of dryland regions.

Abstract The reuse of traditional construction materials attests to their high value over the long term. In fact, the practice has always demonstrated the inherent value of traditional raw materials and their products in confronting the issues of sustainability, in the broader sense of preserving resources – material and immaterial – for future generations. Throughout the history of building, the symbolic value of spolia (i.e. the use of ancient architectural elements in new construction) has gone hand-in-hand with the practice of recycling, demonstrating, at various levels, an intrinsic awareness of reuse as a tool for minimizing waste of materials and energy. Today, sustainability is rarely considered from a long-term perspective, and when it is, the approach tends to be from a broad theoretical standpoint. In the past, however, it was a common and necessary aspect of construction management, when the waste of materials was a forbidden luxury. This paper presents a review of the reuse of geomaterials, mainly stone, throughout the Italian history of construction, indicating major examples selected for their value as memorable references, describing common practices from antiquity to modern times, and concluding with a description of the actual state of the art of the practice, based on very recent and outstanding cases.

As a medical student, Steno (1638–1686) entirely belonged to the seventeenth-century cultural context in which the problem of glossopetrae , or fossilized sharks’ teeth, was given special attention by a number of scholars. In his Canis (1667), Steno entered the realm of geological studies and advanced, on the basis of his medical knowledge and chemical expertise, a hypothesis concerning the animal origin of glossopetrae . Here, I show that the Canis offers an excellent text in which to understand the changes in geological studies between the Aristotelian and Cartesian frameworks. Thus, based upon the legacy of the medical and chemical traditions, Steno’s synthesis of previous views on the animal origin of glossopetrae with Descartes’ particle theory becomes a very good example for showing the nature of the transition between Renaissance and early modern geology.

Steno’s life was punctuated by two conversions: (1) from anatomy and medicine to geology, and (2) from Lutheran to Roman Catholic confession. Why was Steno (1638–1686) motivated to solve geological problems soon after he entered the Tuscan region of Italy? Was there any link between his scientific conversion and the religious one, which occurred almost simultaneously and produced a revolution in his life? The origin of marine fossils found in mountains had been debated in Italy for one and a half centuries. Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) had already given a modern scientific explanation for the problem. Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522–1605) later tackled the problem with an experimental-taxonomic approach (his famous museum and studio), and it was he who coined the word “geology” in 1603. Italy provided spectacular exposures of rocky outcrops that must have impressed the Danish scientist who had lived in the forested north European lowlands. Since the time of Giotto and his successors, such as Mantegna, Pollaiolo, Leonardo, and Bellini, the imposing Italian landscape had stimulated the visualization of geology. Inevitably, science and art merged perfectly in the work of painter and paleontologist Agostino Scilla (1629–1700). Steno was methodologically skilled and intellectually curious and was thus open to the stimuli that Italy had to offer in order to unwittingly rediscover, after Leonardo, the principles of geology and to solve the problem of fossils. Steno’s inclination to detailed “anatomical” observation of natural objects and processes as well as his religious conversion were influenced by his acquaintance with the circle of Galileo Galilei’s (1564–1647) disciples who formed the Accademia del Cimento. They were firm Roman Catholic believers. To the inductive mild rationalist and open-minded Steno, this connection could not be dismissed, and it prepared him for changing his paradigms for the sake of consistency. This occurred when a Corpus Domini procession triggered a revelation and led to his religious conversion.