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Full-Text Articles in Engineering

Understanding The Weather- And Soil-Related Variability In Agricultural Water Footprints: Case Study Of Maize And Soybeans Grown In The St. Joseph Watershed, Karleigh M. Krieg Jan 2021

Understanding The Weather- And Soil-Related Variability In Agricultural Water Footprints: Case Study Of Maize And Soybeans Grown In The St. Joseph Watershed, Karleigh M. Krieg

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Introduced in 2002, the water footprint is a valuable tool for understanding the consumption of freshwater resources. The traditional approach to quantifying the water footprint is to sum the green, blue, and gray water footprint components. The green water footprint is the volume of water that comes from precipitation, is stored in the soil, and used by vegetation. The blue water footprint is the volume of surface or ground water that is withdrawn and applied to cultivated lands via irrigation. These components are based on the evapotranspiration of green and blue water resources, respectively. The gray water footprint is the …


Predicting The Impacts Of Climate Change On The Great Lakes Water Levels Using A Fully Coupled 3d Regional Modeling System, Miraj Kayastha Jan 2021

Predicting The Impacts Of Climate Change On The Great Lakes Water Levels Using A Fully Coupled 3d Regional Modeling System, Miraj Kayastha

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

The Great Lakes of North America are the largest surface freshwater system in the world and many ecosystems, industries, and coastal processes are sensitive to the changes in their water levels. The recent changes in the Great Lakes climate and water levels have particularly highlighted the importance of water level prediction. The water levels of the Great Lakes are primarily governed by the net basin supplies (NBS) of each lake which are the sum of over-lake precipitation and basin runoff minus lake evaporation. Recent studies have utilized Regional Climate Models (RCMs) with a fully coupled one-dimensional (1D) lake model to …


Case Study Of Gravity-Fed Mountain Spring Tap System In Ha Leronti, Lesotho, Africa, Sarah Peterson Jan 2021

Case Study Of Gravity-Fed Mountain Spring Tap System In Ha Leronti, Lesotho, Africa, Sarah Peterson

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Water security has been declining rapidly in Lesotho, Africa in recent years. Lack of water has led to food insecurity, livestock deaths, and the spread of disease. Rural Basotho depend on rainfall to sustain their livelihoods; however, precipitation variability has recently increased due to climate change. For those who reside in the highlands of Lesotho, mountain springs can be a clean source of water. The tap system in the village of Ha Leronti relies on gravity to distribute water from two mountain springs to the ten village taps and nearby school campus. However, it is incapable of transporting the basic …


Mapping Michigan's Historic Coastlines, Ryan A. Williams Jan 2021

Mapping Michigan's Historic Coastlines, Ryan A. Williams

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

This five-year project, sponsored by the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy, is working to map how Michigan’s Great Lakes shorelines have changed over the past 80+ years. Products of this project include publicly available digital, georeferenced, historic aerial photography datasets, as well as map layers depicting the locations of historic shorelines and bluff lines from 1938, 1980, 2009, 2016, 2018, and 2020. Additional products include bluff retreat risk areas, shoreline rate of change map layers, and tools to assist in the development of future Coastal Vulnerability Index projects for the Great Lakes. All products are available as …