Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Slides: Colorado's Water Plan, Lauren Ris

Innovations in Managing Western Water: New Approaches for Balancing Environmental, Social and Economic Outcomes (Martz Summer Conference, June 11-12)

Presenter: Lauren Ris, Assistant Director for Water, Colorado Department of Natural Resources

23 slides

The Effects Of Environmental Factors On Bromeliad Invertebrate Biodiversity, Maya E. Navarro

DePaul Discoveries

Bromeliaceae is a family of Neotropical plants that retain water between leaves of a rosette arrangement. Each water-retaining tank is referred to as a phytotelma. This particular system is important to consider in the understanding of biodiversity because it creates an ecosystem of its own, providing a habitat for many invertebrates and larvae. In this study, the relationship between environmental factors such as water quality and the biodiversity of invertebrates in epiphytic bromeliads was examined in two different settings. Sample sizes of ten bromeliads were taken from the primary and secondary forests of the Las Cruces Biological Station in Coto …

Environmental Social Activism In The San Diego-Tijuana Transborder Region, Christina M. Hirt

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This paper examines the obstacles and opportunities social activists face when attempting to fight environmental injustices in the San Diego-Tijuana transborder region. The study undertakes a case study of the Environmental Health Coalition (EHC) - the leading environmental justice organization in the region, which operates on both sides of the US-Mexico Border. The analyses conclude that despite a strong rhetoric of binationalism employed throughout border activists’ campaigns, the strategies that are utilized on the ground have been vastly local and short-term in focus. While activist organizations like the EHC demonstrate a keen awareness of the binational implications of environmental injustices …

Phytoplankton Ecology: Algal Assemblages In Correlation With Water Quality In High Elevation Lakes, North Cascades, Wa, Anna Nakae

Scholars Week

High- elevation lakes are unique ecosystems that are exposed to extreme environmental conditions and, as a result, are relatively simple systems in which changes can be detected. Phytoplankton communities within these systems are of interest because can be greatly influenced by the chemical components of the surrounding environment. This relationship allows phytoplankton assemblages to act as bioindicators that can give a greater insight into the water characteristics of lakes and vice versa. For this research, seven lakes were studied: Terminal, Upper Bagley, Lower Bagley, Heather Meadows Pond, Sunrise , Picture and Highwood. All seven are located in the headwaters watershed …

Aquatic Macroinvertebrate Diversity Within An Urbanized Gradient, Brian E. Lovejoy Jr., Jacob Torres

Urban Watershed Project

No abstract provided.

Sources Of Nutrient And Escherichia Coli Contamination Within The Otter Creek Watershed, Madison County, Kentucky, Nathaniel C. Crockett, Walter S. Borowski

EKU Faculty and Staff Scholarship

The Otter Creek watershed exhibits dissolved nutrient (ammonium, NH₄; nitrate, NO₃; phosphate, PO₄) and Escherichia coli contamination that compromises its water quality. The watershed covers a substantial portion of Madison County and consists of Lake Reba, Dreaming Creek, and east and west forks, all of which enter the trunk of Otter Creek before flowing into the Kentucky River. Suspected contaminate sources include leaky sewage system pipes, runoff from pasture land, and septic system leachate. We collected 330 water samples on three occasions during summer 2014 to determine the extent and sources of contamination. Nutrients …

Quality Of Water From Tile Drains In Fields Treated With Poultry Litter In Mclean County, Kentucky, E. Glynn Beck, Lisa Y. Blue, David A. Atwood

Information Circular--KGS

Poultry litter (a mixture of feed, manure, and bedding material) is commonly used as a soil amendment to row-crop fields in western Kentucky. Because of feed additives, litter typically has elevated concentrations of contaminants, including metals and anions. These metals and anions can accumulate in the soil and therefore could be transported to surface water through drainage tiles. In order to assess water quality in tile drains, a pilot study was conducted in 2008 in McLean County, Kentucky, in which 10 tile drains and six drainage ditches were sampled for total metals and anions. Seven of the tile-drained fields were …

The Importance Of Lake-Specific Characteristics For Water Quality Across The Continental United States, Emily K. Read, Vijay P. Patil, Samantha K. Oliver, Amy L. Hetherington, Jennifer A. Brentrup, Jacob A. Zwart, Kirsten M. Winters, Jessica R. Corman, Emily R. Nodine, R. Iestyn Woolway, Hilary A. Dugan, Aline Jaimes, Arianto B. Santoso, Grace S. Hong, Luke A. Winslow, Paul C. Hanson, Kathleen C. Weathers

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Lake water quality is affected by local and regional drivers, including lake physical characteristics, hydrology, landscape position, land cover, land use, geology, and climate. Here, we demonstrate the utility of hypothesis testing within the landscape limnology framework using a random forest algorithm on a national-scale, spatially explicit data set, the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s 2007 National Lakes Assessment. For 1026 lakes, we tested the relative importance of water quality drivers across spatial scales, the importance of hydrologic connectivity in mediating water quality drivers, and how the importance of both spatial scale and connectivity differ across response variables for five …

Evaluation Of The Performance Of A Rural Municipal Wastewater Treatment Plant In Nacogdoches, East Texas (Usa) (Abstract), Kefa Karimu Onchoke, Michael Janusa, Salomey Asantewaa Sasu

Faculty Publications

The performance of a rural wastewater treatment facility, Nacogdoches Wastewater Treatment Plant

(NWWTP), in East Texas, USA, was assessed from January 2013 through June 2014. The elemental concentrations (Na, Mg, Ca, Ni, Pb, Mn, Cr, Mo, and Cu, Al, As, B, Ba, Ag, Cd, Fe, Hg, K, Se, Zn, Co, P, and S) were measured using inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry. The anion concentrations (Br−, NO3- , NO2- , PO34-,F−, Cl−, and SO24−) were measured by ion chromatography. In general, the NWWTP was found efficient in removal to ≥ 96% for metals. The removal efficiency for anions was in …

Linking Water Quality And Beach Morphodynamics In A Heavily Impacted Tidal Creek In Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, Brittany Lynne Hoffnagle

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The morphological changes of small tidal creeks, driven by coastal processes, can pose risks to infrastructure and engineered coastlines and often rely on dredging to maintain them. These changes along the beachface can negatively affect the health of associated estuaries where open exchange between the ocean and creek basins is vital. This study used Real Time Kinematic-Differential Global Positioning System equipment to survey a small tidal creek in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina that often experiences migration to the south and requires dredging to maintain an open exchange between the ocean and the estuary. In order to understand the relationships between …

Master's Project: Evaluating The Effectiveness Of Best Management Practices On Rural Backroads Of Vermont: A Retrospective Assessment And Cost Analysis, Joanne S. Garton

Rubenstein School Masters Project Publications

Repeated erosion of over 7,000 miles of unpaved roads in Vermont is degrading water quality and draining limited town budgets. Best Management Practices (BMPs), including stone-lined ditches, turn outs, check dams, revetments, culverts and vegetative controls, are recommended by the Vermont Department of Transportation as low cost means of reducing the sediment and phosphorous run-off from backroads. However, their effectiveness, longevity and cost benefit are unknown. To address this gap, I assessed 100 BMPs at 43 erosion control projects constructed between 2005 and 2012 with funding from the Vermont Better Backroads program. BMP condition was compared to environmental factors that …

Habitat Preferences Of Adult Spotted Seatrout, Cynoscion Nebulosus, In Lake Pontchartrain, Louisiana, Noelle Marie Bramer

LSU Master's Theses

Spotted seatrout (Cynoscion nebulosus) are a highly sought after sportfish, making up over 90% of the recreational fishery in Louisiana. As a significant portion of every life history stage is spent within its natal estuary, it is an ideal bio-indicator of estuarine health. As one of the largest estuaries in Louisiana, Lake Pontchartrain represents one such supporting ecosystem. From November 2012 to April 2014 acoustic tagging of individual fish, a lake-wide receiver array, and ArcGIS mapping software were utilized to determine the spatial distribution of spotted seatrout within the lake. Receivers were placed in representative locations including man-made and natural …

Great South Bay, Long Island, New York Summer Water Quality Monitoring Program, Cercom, Molloy University, John Tanacredi Ph.D., Sixto E. Portilla

CERCOM Reports

The Center for Environmental Research and Coastal Oceans Monitoring (CERCOM) visits 15 locations in Great South Bay to monitor for dissolved oxygen (DO), pH, salinity, clarity, total and fecal coliforms and temperature. This monitoring program has been conducted for the past 13 years. These parameters are critical in determining long-term water quality conditions in Long Island estuaries. Methodologies for monitoring parameters are provided by the Standard Methods for the Examination of Water and Wastewater 20th Edition (1998). Criteria for determining water quality conditions in marine eco-systems are based on the type of contact (uses) people have with the water system. …

New Insights For The Future Of Lake Champlain: Practical Approaches And Useful Tools For Grappling With Uncertainty And Weighing Trade-Offs In Watershed Management., Philip Halteman

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

The effective management of non-point source nutrient pollution continues to prove elusive. Though the scientific literature is unequivocal that all anthropogenic land uses contribute to non-point source (NPS) pollution, variable levels of contribution over time and across location and complex relationships between cost and effect make finding technologically effective management solutions difficult. In addition, these solutions are implemented in a world of scarce resources, diverse and often competing concerns and values, and intense public scrutiny. Clearly, making the best possible decision about how to manage NPS pollution under these conditions is not simple. My overarching goal was to develop and …

Surface Runoff Characteristics From Claypan Soil In Southeastern Kansas Receiving Different Plant Nutrient Sources And Tillage, D. W. Sweeney, Philip Barnes, Gary Pierzynski

Kansas Agricultural Experiment Station Research Reports

Preliminary results show that two-year average total nitrogen (N) runoff losses and ortho-phosphorus (P) and total P runoff losses in the second year were greater with N-based turkey litter/no-till applications than P-based turkey litter or fertilizer-only applications. Incorporation of turkey litter applied based on N requirements resulted in N and P losses that did not differ from losses from P-based or fertilizer-only treatments. Chemical and statistical analyses of third-year samples will allow for final results and interpretation.

Monitoring Soil Response To Decreasing Acidic Deposition In A Western Adirondack Tributary Over A 16 Year Period, Michael Robert Antidormi

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Abstract

Performance Quantification Of Extensive Green Roof Substrate Blend: Expanded Shale And Biochar, James Sheats

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Urban stormwater management practices often involve the redirection of runoff to local waterbodies. As such, the quality of runoff directly affects the condition of these receiving waters. Green roofs offer many benefits to the urban environment including attractive aesthetics, thermal insulation for buildings and stormwater runoff reduction. Unfortunately, in order to promote the spread of vegetation, fertilization is often practiced that can lead to elevated nutrient concentrations in runoff and, ultimately, nearby streams, rivers and bays. Different amounts of biochar, pyrolyzed biomass, were added to model green roof trays to test for the ability of this charcoal-like substance to prevent …

River Health In Puyo, Ecuador The Use Of Macroinvertebrates As Bioindicators Of Water Quality And Alternatives To Chlorine For Whitening Clothes In The Puyo River Watershed, Allison Rowe

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Fresh water is an important resource in Puyo, Ecuador, a city named after the Kichwa word for ‘cloudy’ in reference to its overcast weather. However, the Puyo River watershed is the most contaminated in all of Pastaza Province. The objective of this investigation was first to evaluate the health of the Puyo River using macroinvertebrate analyses and measurements of chlorine concentrations, temperature, pH, turbidity, velocity, and flow rate. The second objective was to learn about practices used to whiten clothes in Puyo and perceptions of water quality in order to understand the magnitude of bleach pollution and the population’s awareness …

Transport Of Fecal Pollution Indicators: Impacts From The Land Spreading Of Liquid Manure On Water Quality, Derek Lee Street

Masters Theses

This thesis is a case study to determine if groundwater and/or drainage tiles are important pathways for fecal migration to streams resulting from the application of liquid manure to cropland at a small dairy farm, the Little River Animal and Environmental Unit, near Townsend, TN. Traditional biological indicators, coliforms and E.coli, were used in conjunction with a bovine specific Bacteroides assay to measure fecal microbes. Total nitrates, turbidity, and other chemical parameters for water quality also were used to identify related fecal contamination. This thesis covers three separate manure applications. The first manure application occurred in May 2013, the …

Goomig Farmlands Development Baseline Water Quality In The Lower Keep River, D L. Bennett, Richard J. George Dr

Resource management technical reports

In 2008 the Ord Irrigation Expansion Project was approved by the Western Australian Government to develop irrigated agriculture on the Weaber Plain. By mid-2014 construction of almost all of the water supply, drainage, access, monitoring and other infrastructure for the 7400ha Goomig Farmlands development had substantially been completed. An important concern is the effect the Goomig Farmlands development may have on the water quality of the downstream lower Keep River aquatic environment, particularly as it relates to threatened species that inhabit or may inhabit the area. Possible increases in salinity, nutrients, suspended sediment, heavy metals and farm chemicals delivered in …

Water Conservation To Reduce Wet Weather Pollution Loads To The Gowanus Canal, Brooklyn, Ny, Suzanne Carol Stempel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Public participation plays an important role in wet weather pollution management. However, the effects of participation programs on local water quality are often difficult to quantify. This project aims to quantify the potential effects of a community based, non-structural, BMP aimed at controlling inputs to combined sewage systems by encouraging residents to reduce their water use during rain events. A household could participate by reducing the amount of water they use for flushing toilets, washing dishes, taking showers, etc. during rain events; thereby reducing stress on the system during the time of highest demand. The Gowanus Canal sewershed in Brooklyn, …

Catchment-Scale Water Quality Monitoring, Control And Management Framework Using Collaborative Wireless Sensor Networks, Huma Zia, Nick Harris, Geoff Merrett

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

Improving water quality is a global concern, with agricultural practices being the major contributors to reduced water quality. The reuse of nutrient-rich drainage water can be a valuable strategy to maximise water resources and gain economic-environmental benefits. Transmitting event information across a catchment, as the event occurs upstream, allows prediction of the outflow dynamics of the expected discharges downstream. Here, we propose a framework architecture which utilises increasingly common local farm-scale networks and other water-quality monitoring networks across a catchment, adding provision for collaborative information sharing. The key part is that individual networks learn their environment, predicting the impact of …

Developing Landsat Based Algorithms To Augment In Situ Monitoring Of Freshwater Lakes And Reservoirs, Eliza Deutsch, Ibrahim Alameddine, Mutasem El-Fadel

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

Many lakes and reservoirs lack adequate water quality monitoring programs. With little information on the state of these systems, managing these resources and their contributing watersheds is a challenge. The use of remote sensing presents an opportunity to better characterize these freshwater systems. The full potential of using the Landsat program to measure optically active water quality parameters, such as chlorophyll-a, suspended sediments and water clarity was explored using the Qaraoun Reservoir in Lebanon as a case study. An in situ monitoring program was developed and synchronized with the overpass of Landsat 7 and the newly launched Landsat 8 satellites …

Enhancing Water Quality Data Service Discovery And Access Using Standard Vocabularies, Jonathan Yu, Bruce A. Simons, Nicholas J. Car, Simon J.D. Cox

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

There is a growing need for consistency across the publishing, discovering, integrating and access to scientific datasets, such as water quality data. Such datasets may have varying formats and service interfaces. The Network Common Data Form (NetCDF) is both a software package and a data format for producing array-oriented scientific data, which is commonly used to exchange data, including water quality data. NetCDF datasets are also published through service interfaces using the THREDDS data server. Alternatively water quality datasets can be encoded with standard XML formats such as WaterML 2.0, which can be published with services such as the Open …

A Harmonized Vocabulary For Water Quality, Simon J.D. Cox, Bruce A. Simons, Jonathan Yu

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

Interoperability of water quality data depends on the use of common models, schemas and vocabularies. However, terms are usually collected during different activities and projects in isolation of one another, resulting in vocabularies that have the same scope being represented with different terms, using different formats and formalisms, and published in various access methods. Significantly, most water quality vocabularies conflate multiple concepts in a single term, e.g. quantity kind, units of measure, substance or taxon, medium and procedure. This bundles information associated with separate elements from the OGC Observations and Measurements (O&M) model into a single slot. We have developed …

Soft Sensing The Potential Amount Of Calcium Carbonate Precipitate In Drinking Water Distribution Infrastructure And Warm Water Household Appliances, Dirk Vries, Joost Van Summeren, Benjamin Van Den Akker, Alex Van Der Helm, Ignaz Worm, Peter Van Thienen

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

A soft sensor is developed to predict the potential amount of precipitation of calcium carbonate (CCPP) in warm water household devices and scaling or corrosive behavior in water distribution networks. With the aid of a water supply network model, it is shown that the soft sensor is able to predict CCPP levels at pre-specified downstream nodes using only measurements at a limited set of upstream nodes. Furthermore, the soft sensor consists of a data assimilation algorithm to provide for best estimates of the CCPP and confidence intervals.

Adaptive, Decentralized, And Real-Time Sampling Strategies For Resource Constrained Hydraulic And Hydrologic Sensor Networks, Brandon Preclaro Wong, Branko Kerkez

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

We discuss the development and performance of a low-power sensor node (hardware, software and algorithms) that autonomously controls the sampling interval of a suite of sensors based on local state estimates and future predictions of water flow. The problem is motivated by the need to accurately reconstruct abrupt state changes in urban watersheds and stormwater systems. Presently, the detection of these events is limited by the temporal resolution of sensor data. It is often infeasible, however, to increase measurement frequency due to energy and sampling constraints. This is particularly true for real-time water quality measurements, where sampling frequency is limited …

Hydrodynamic And Water Quality Surrogate Modeling For Reservoir Operation, Juan Aguilar, Schalk-Jan Van Andel, Micha Werner, Dimitri P. Solomatine

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

A methodology is developed for reservoir release decisions considering forecasted downstream dissolved oxygen local conditions. River water quality management using reservoirs focuses mainly on how to develop a release schedule that may improve downstream conditions based on the seasonal change of the water quality within the reservoir. This improvement, however does not take into account the downstream local water quality state, which in certain cases might be more important, as the pollutant load downstream could be diluted with the upstream available volume released from the reservoir. Field sampling collected data suggest that the dissolved oxygen concentration decay produced by polluted …

Optimal Tank Design And Operation Strategy To Enhance Water Quality In Distribution Systems, Alemtsehay G. Seyoum, Tiku T. Tanyimboh, Calvin Siew

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

Water storage tanks are key components of water distribution networks (WDNs) and are primarily designed and operated to meet demand variations and pressure needs. However, the common practice in the design of WDNs is to incorporate large storage tanks that may possibly create long residence time. Long residence time is a major contributing factor for loss of disinfectant, increased formation of disinfection by products and microbial regrowth. Also, poor choice in tank geometry, location and operation can play a role in deterioration of water quality. Most of the previous approaches on optimisation of WDNs design and operation do not take …

Numerical Study On Climate Variation And Population Growth Impacts On An Australian Subtropical Water Supply Reservoir, Edoardo Bertone, Rodney Stewart, Hong Zhang, Kelvin O'Halloran

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

Proactively managing high manganese (Mn) concentrations in drinking water supply reservoirs can be problematic for treatment plant operators. Typically, Mn monitoring is conducted manually and costly on a regular basis (e.g. weekly) throughout the entire year through water samplings and laboratory analysis. However, in the major water supply reservoir of the sub-tropical Gold Coast City region in Australia (i.e. Hinze Dam), a vertical profiling system (VPS) was installed and enabled a real-time data acquisition of many physical parameters of water. But these VPS parameters are not able to directly collect and analyse Mn concentrations. In the present study, a Decision …