Geological Engineering Commons^™

The New Map: Energy, Climate, And The Clash Of Nations, Jay Nathan

Journal of Global Awareness

No abstract provided.

The Living Breakwaters Pdr Efforts Econcrete Resource Analysis, Guianina Ferrari, Shervon Stephens, Calvin O. Walters Jr.

Publications and Research

On October 29, 2012, Superstorm Sandy impacted 443,000 people and caused nearly $19 billion (about $58 per person in the US) worth of damage within New York City. As part of the New York City infrastructure reparation plan, the Living Breakwaters project in Tottenville addressed coastal resilience, allocating $100M of public funds to a series of artificial breakwaters by the southwest coast of Staten Island. Each breakwater is constructed and designed to mitigate water flow in storm events. ECOncrete, a primary element of the breakwater, is a specialty cast cementitious product that is marine organism-friendly that encourages biocalcification and photosynthesis. …

Geology-Based Shear-Wave Velocity Model Of Reference Site Conditions In South Carolina For Seismic Site Response Analysis, Camilius Amevorku

All Dissertations

Assessing earthquake hazard in the State of South Carolina is important because it is one of the most seismically active regions of the eastern United States and has experienced earthquakes of damaging levels in the historical past. Examples of these damaging seismic events are the 1886 Charleston earthquake (M 6.7 to 7.5) and the 1913 Union County earthquake (M 4.5 to 5.5).

Small-strain shear-wave velocity (V_S) is an important parameter in performing site response analysis. The deep nature of the top of reference firm rock (i.e., V_S ≥ 760 m/s or B-C boundary) due to …

Project Khepri: Mining Asteroid Bennu For Water, Erika Frost, Gowtham Boyala, Adam Gremm, Ahmet Gungor, Amirhossein Taghipour, Massimo Biella, Jiawei "Jackson" Qiu, Athip Thirupathi Raj, Arjun Chhabra, Adam Gee, Saanjali Maharaj, Erin Richardson, Julia Empey, Haidar Ali Abdul-Nabi, Lindsay Richards, Ariyaan Talukder, Aaron Groh, Brie Miklaucic, Jd Carlson, Kristina Kim, Maverick Cue

Undergraduate Student Research Internships Conference

Deep space asteroid mining presents the opportunity for the collection of critical resources required to establish a cis-lunar infrastructure. In specific, the Project Khepri team has focused on the collection of water from asteroid Bennu. This water has the potential to provide a source of clean-energy propellant as well as an essential consumable for humans or agriculture on crewed trips to the Moon or Mars. This would avoid the high costs of launching from Earth - making it a highly desirable element for the future of cis-lunar infrastructure. The OSIRIS-REx mission provided a complete survey of asteroid Bennu and is …

Application Of Fuzzy Logic And Fractal Modeling Approach For Groundwater Potential Mapping In Semi-Arid Akka Basin, Southeast Morocco, Fatima Zahra Echogdali, Said Boutaleb, Rosine Basseu Kpan, Mohammed Ouchchen, Amine Bendarma, Hasna El Ayady, Kamal Abdelrahman, Mohammed S. Fnais, Kochappi Sathyan Sajinkumar, Mohamed Abioui

Michigan Tech Publications

Groundwater potential delineation in the Akka basin, southwest Morocco, has been determined through the combination of geospatial techniques and geological data. The geometric average and expected value are two multi-criteria approaches used to integrate a set of factors–data for which the weights of each factor are assigned using the fuzzy logic function, which transforms values of factors influencing groundwater presence in a range of [0, 1]. The efficiency factors used in this study are the lineament density, node density, drainage density, distance from rivers, distance from lineament, permeability, slope, topographic witness index, plan curvature, and profile curvature. Thereafter, the groundwater …

Experimental Study On Co2-Sensitive Polyacrylamide As Potential In-Situ Sealing Agent For Co2 Leakage Pathways In Geological Storage Sites, Iris Laihmen Quan Lopez

Theses and Dissertations

As the world pushes for ‘greener’ technologies and carbon neutrality, efforts have focused on creating novel ways to mitigate humankind’s carbon footprint. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) has become a prevalent technique that has proven to be an effective long-term method to safely relocate excess carbon dioxide (CO₂) into subsurface formations. However, CCS is a newer technique which requires constant monitoring due to potential leakage pathways present in CO₂ storage sites; therefore, a preventive approach to seal leakage pathways is recommended. This dissertation explores the potential of CO₂-sensitive polyacrylamide (CO₂-SPAM) as a novel …

Microbiological, Environmental, And Compositional Factors In Efficacy Of Micp Treatment In Clayey Soils, Somaye Asghari

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Expansive clayey soils can cause billions of dollars of damage to infrastructure such as roads and foundations annually. Researchers propose many techniques (e.g., pre-wetting, soil replacement, and chemical stabilization) to improve the mechanical properties of these soils; however, some of these methods are impractical in certain situations, and are unsustainable in others due to the economic and environmental impacts. One possible method for enhancing soil’s mechanical properties is Microbial Induced Calcium Carbonate Precipitation (MICP). This environmentally friendly technique is a biological process where microbes play a key role in precipitating calcium carbonate. This precipitating calcium carbonate can coat soil particles …

Challenges Of Modeling Rainfall Triggered Landslides In A Data-Sparse Region: A Case Study From The Western Ghats, India, C. L. Vishnu, T. Oommen, Snehamoy Chatterjee, K. S. Sajinkumar

Michigan Tech Publications

Accurate rainfall estimates are required to forecast the spatio-temporal distribution of rain-triggered landslides. In this study, a comparison between rain gauge and satellite rainfall data for assessing landslide distribution in a data-sparse region, the mountainous district of Idukki, along the Western Ghats of southwestern India, is carried out. Global Precipitation Mission Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for GPM-Late (GPM IMERG-L) rainfall products were compared with rain gauge measurements, and it was found that the satellite rainfall observations were underpredicting the actual rainfall. A conditional merging algorithm was applied to develop a product that combines the accuracy of rain gauges and the spatial …

Flood Hazard Index Application In Arid Catchments: Case Of The Taguenit Wadi Watershed, Lakhssas, Morocco, Mustapha Ikirri, Farid Faik, Fatima Zahra Echogdali, Isabel Margarida Horta Ribeiro Antunes, Mohamed Abioui, Kamal Abdelrahman, Mohammed S. Fnais, Abderrahmane Wanaim, Mouna Id-Belqas, Said Boutaleb, Kochappi Sathyan Sajinkumar, Adolfo Quesada-Román

Michigan Tech Publications

During the last decade, climate change has generated extreme rainfall events triggering flash floods in short periods worldwide. The delimitation of flood zones by detailed mapping generally makes it possible to avoid human and economic losses, especially in regions at high risk of flooding. The Taguenit basin, located in southern Morocco, is a particular case. The mapping of the flood zones of this basin by the method of the Flood Hazard Index (FHI) in a GIS geographic information systems environment was based on the multi-criteria analysis, taking into consideration the seven parameters influencing these extreme phenomena, namely rainfall, slope, flow …

Evaluation Of Various Data Acquisition Scenarios For The Retrieval Of Seismic Body Waves From Ambient Noise Seismic Interferometry Technique Via Numerical Modeling, Haitao Cao, Erdi Apatay, Garvie Crane, Boming Wu, Ke Gao, Roohollah Askari

Michigan Tech Publications

Seismic interferometry is often proposed as a cost-efficient technique for reservoir monitoring including CO2 sequestration due to its low cost and environmental advantages over active source imaging. Although many studies have demonstrated the ability of seismic interferometry to retrieve surface waves, body wave imaging remains challenging due to their generally lower amplitudes of body waves in seismic interferometry data. An optimum data acquisition strategy can help retrieve low amplitude body waves better, however, rare attempts have been made to evaluate various data acquisition strategies. In this study, we use numerical modeling to examine three different acquisition schemes to evaluate the …

Novel Mlr-Rf-Based Geospatial Techniques: A Comparison With Ok, Waqas Ahmad, Khan Muhammad, Hylke Jan Glass, Snehamoy Chatterjee, Asif Khan, Abid Hussain

Michigan Tech Publications

Geostatistical estimation methods rely on experimental variograms that are mostly erratic, leading to subjective model fitting and assuming normal distribution during conditional simula-tions. In contrast, Machine Learning Algorithms (MLA) are (1) free of such limitations, (2) can in-corporate information from multiple sources and therefore emerge with increasing interest in real-time resource estimation and automation. However, MLAs need to be explored for robust learning of phenomena, better accuracy, and computational efficiency. This paper compares MLAs, i.e., Multiple Linear Regression (MLR) and Random Forest (RF), with Ordinary Kriging (OK). The techniques were applied to the publicly available Walkerlake dataset, while the exhaustive …

The Tertiary Sequence Of Varkala Coastal Cliffs, Southwestern India: An Ideal Site For Global Geopark, K. S. Sajinkumar, M. Santosh, V. R. Rani, Subhash Anand, A. P. Pradeepkumar, Anil Chavan, K. P. Thrivikramji, P. V. Ramachandran

Michigan Tech Publications

Varkala, along the southwestern coast of Peninsular India, has a unique place in Indian geology and geomorphology due to the presence of coastal lateritic cliffs, which exposes the entire Mio-Pliocene sequence of Warkalli Formation, and is declared as the type area. Stratigraphically, this formation exposes carbonaceous clay with lenses of lignite and sticks of marcasite, followed by variegated clays and sandstone. The presence of variegated lithounits endows beauty to these cliffs. Varkala cliffs, edging the Arabian Sea, run for a length of 7.5 km. These cliffs, together with confined beaches, made Varkala a popular tourist destination. Several geodiversity spots within …

The Living Breakwaters Pdr Efforts: Conceptual Scheduling, Calvin O. Walters Jr.

Publications and Research

On October 29, 2012, Superstorm Sandy caused nearly $19 billion in damages in New York City including 69,000 residential units across the five boroughs. This disaster precipitated a post-disaster-rebuilding (PDR) project including roughly $4.2 billion in a Community Development Block Grant allocated towards PDR projects. A portion of the grant was used to construct a living breakwater in Tottenville, Staten Island, consisting of a resiliency approach to risk reduction through erosion prevention, wave energy attenuation, and enhancement of ecosystems and social resiliency to improve resistance to storms for the community of Tottenville. The ridges of each breakwater are designed with …

Strain-Based Design Of Steel-Polymer-Steel Composite Pipes, Vul Thang

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Many offshore single-wall pipelines and structural failures have occurred in the past. As a result, lives were lost, and billions of dollars were spent. In addition, natural disasters such as earthquake fault zones can cause a large volume of soil movement. This can easily damage single-wall pipelines or piles of fixed offshore platforms in the earthquake fault zone.

Currently, the single-wall pipelines are used for the offshore and onshore oil and gas industry. This research investigated the use of double-wall composite pipe steel-polymer-steel (SPS) in place of single-wall pipe to prevent such failures. The double-wall composite pipe has a larger …

Fate And Transport Of Toxoplasma Gondii Oocysts In Saturated Porous Media: Effects Of Electrolytes And Natural Organic Matter, Christian Pullano

All Theses

Toxoplasma gondii is a pathogenic microorganism that is currently a threat to public health. Understanding the fate and transport of T. gondii through the soil and groundwater is vital in determining the risk it poses to water resources and human health. The physico-chemical interactions between the groundwater and the bio colloid within an aquifer will dictate its mobility and its ability to infect humans. This research examines how various naturally occurring groundwater chemistries containing organic compounds and monovalent and divalent salt solutions will alter the fate and transport of T. gondii. Solutions containing various concentrations of humic acid, fulvic …

Final Inversion Of The Midcontinent Rift During The Rigolet Phase Of The Grenvillian Orogeny, Eben B. Hodgin, Nicholas L. Swanson-Hysell, James M. Degraff, Andrew R.C. Kylander-Clark, Mark D. Schmitz, Andrew C. Turner, Yiming Zhang, Daniel A. Stolper

Michigan Tech Publications

Despite being a prominent continental-scale feature, the late Mesoproterozoic North American Midcontinent Rift did not result in the break-up of Laurentia, and subsequently underwent structural inversion. The timing of inversion is critical for constraining far-field effects of orogenesis and processes associated with the rift’s failure. The Keweenaw fault in northern Michigan (USA) is a major thrust structure associated with rift inversion; it places ca. 1093 Ma rift volcanic rocks atop the post-rift Jacobsville Formation, which is folded in its footwall. Previous detrital zircon (DZ) U-Pb geochronology conducted by laser ablation–inductively coupled plasma–mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) assigned a ca. 950 Ma maximum …

Sources Of Hydrothermal Fluids Inferred From Oxygen And Carbon Isotope Composition Of Calcite, Keweenaw Peninsula Native Copper District, Michigan, Usa, Thomas Bodden, Theodore J. Bornhorst, Florence Bégué, Chad Deering

Michigan Tech Publications

The Mesoproterozoic North American Midcontinent Rift hosts the world’s largest accu-mulation of native copper in Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula. During a regional metamorpho-genic‐hydrothermal event, native copper was deposited along with spatially zoned main‐stage minerals in a thermal high. This was followed by deposition of late‐stage minerals including minor copper sulfide. Inferences from the oxygen and carbon isotopic composition of main‐stage hydrothermal fluids, as calculated from 296 new and compiled isotopic measurements on calcite, are consistent with existing models that low‐sulfur saline native copper ore‐forming fluids were domi-nantly derived by burial metamorphic processes from the very low sulfur basalt‐dominated rift fill at …

A New Stefan Equation To Characterize The Evolution Of Thermokarst Lake And Talik Geometry, Noriaki Ohara, Benjamin M. Jones, Andrew D. Parsekian, Kenneth M Hinkel, Katsu Yamatani, Mikhail Kanevskiy, Rodrigo C. Rangel, Amy L. Breen, Helena Bergstedt

Michigan Tech Publications

Thermokarst lake dynamics, which play an essential role in carbon release due to permafrost thaw, are affected by various geomorphological processes. In this study, we derive a three-dimensional (3D) Stefan equation to characterize talik geometry under a hypothetical thermokarst lake in the continuous permafrost region. Using the Euler equation in the calculus of variations, the lower bounds of the talik were determined as an extremum of the functional describing the phase boundary area with a fixed total talik volume. We demonstrate that the semi-ellipsoid geometry of the talik is optimal for minimizing the total permafrost thaw under the lake for …

Characterizing Hydrostratigraphic Communication Of The Semi-Consolidated Sediment Aquifers Of The Flathead Valley In Northwestern Montana Through Hydrogeophysical Surveys, Elizabeth Katherine Breitmeyer

Graduate Theses & Non-Theses

To accurately forecast the cascading effects of increased stress to a hydrologic system, characterization of the continuity and permeability of the primary confining layer (PCL) separating the shallow and deep intermontane alluvial aquifers is required. Geophysical methods provide a faster cost-effective alternative to drilling to acquire additional information on the changes of hydrostratigraphy with depth. Geoelectric resistivity models recovered through inversion of TEM central loop sounding data to delineate changes in geoelectric properties with depth, providing information on the depth, thickness and resistivity of the hydrostratigraphy. Comparison of geoelectric resistivity models with well completion report lithologies yield information about the …

Treatment Of Mine Tailings Through Two Methods Of Calcite Precipitation: (I) Using Natural Mineral Trona, (Ii) Microbially Induced Calcite Precipitation Via Denitrification, Nathaniel Small

Graduate Theses & Non-Theses

Mine tailings not only pose environmental risks such as dust emission and acid mine drainage but also present geotechnical risks in cases of tailings dam failures which could lead to loss of human life and severe damages to infrastructure. In-situ cementation of tailings has the potential to reduce the risks associated with such failures as well as the related environmental problems. Over the years, different methods of chemically and microbially induced cementation of tailings have been examined many of which have shown promising results on a laboratory scale and some even on a ϐield scale. In this paper, a new …