Engineering Commons^™

Evaluating Policy And Climate Impacts On Water Resources Systems Using Coupled Human-Natural Models, Hassaan Furqan Khan

Doctoral Dissertations

Extensive human intervention in the terrestrial hydrosphere means that virtually every river basin globally reflects the interaction between human and natural hydrologic processes. Thus, sustainable watershed management needs to not only account for the diverse ways humans benefit from the environment but also incorporate the impact of human actions on the natural system. Informed policy making to address our water challenges requires a comprehensive understanding of these feedbacks and how they might be affected by future changes in climate. This work develops coupled human-natural models for improved surface water and groundwater management in water-scarce regions under future changes in climate. …

Evaluation Of The Erodibility Of Soft Clays And The Influence Of Biopolymers, Pamela Judge

Doctoral Dissertations

Erosion of silts and clays is less well understood than erosion of sands. Further, current and anticipated climate change impacts along coastlines compel consideration of new approaches to coastal protection measures; seawalls and breakwaters designs now include natural and nature-based measures. The first research topic consists of the Adaptive Gradients Framework which was a theoretically-informed facilitation tool. The framework was intended to aid a collaborative and interdisciplinary decision-making process to encourage inclusion of natural and nature-based measures in coastal protection planning and design. This research is the culmination of a series of workshops and fieldtrips executed by the Sustainable Adaptive …

Crowdsourcing The Georeferencing Of Historical Pictures, Timothée Produit, Nicolas Blanc, Sarah Composto, Jens Ingensand, Loic Furhoff

Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial (FOSS4G) Conference Proceedings

Countless organizations own archive pictures which are not used due to the difficulty of localizing them. Only the participation of volunteers can help to identify the image content. Through an accessible web interface called smapshot, citizens are able to georeference historical images without any prior specific competence. To avoid the volunteers to face the complexity of 3D digitization and navigation, we implemented a state of the art photogrammetry camera orientation algorithm in the platform. Currently several thousand images from all around Switzerland have been georeferenced by the crowd. At this time the tool is mainly used by the population for …

Seasonal Impacts Of Climate Change On Future Peak River Discharge In The U.S. Northeast, Christina Wu

Environmental & Water Resources Engineering Masters Projects

This research uses projected changes in future precipitation to calculate the changes in the magnitude, frequency, and timing of streamflow, particularly peak annual flows, in the U.S. Northeast through 20 representative watersheds. Temperature and precipitation data on a 3-hourly time step from five climate projection from the North American Regional Climate Change Assessment Program (NARCCAP) are downscaled and bias- corrected using the Spatial Downscaling and Bias Correction (SDBC) method. These data are used to force a regional hydrological model (WRF-Hydro) to estimate daily future streamflow. The changes in magnitude at various return intervals of peak flow events are determined through …

Formation Of Low-Molecular-Weight Dissolved Organic Nitrogen In Two-Stage And Four-Stage Pre-Denitrification Biological Nutrient Removal Processes, Siwei Chen

Environmental & Water Resources Engineering Masters Projects

To alleviate the eutrophication caused by excessive loading of nutrients, the upgrading of conventional activated sludge (CAS) process to biological nutrients removal (BNR) process has been widely applied in USA. In this study, we found that the dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) release can be effectively controlled by this upgrading, but dissolved organic nitrogen (DON) especially LMW-DON, which now is regarded as another important N source for supporting growth of phytoplankton in coastal water, cannot be removed effectively by BNR systems, especially by four-stage BNR systems. Different pre-denitrification BNR processes have different LMW-DON production rates. A four-stage pre-denitrification BNR releases more …

Application Of Ce-Qual-W2: Wachusett Reservoir Contaminant Spill Modeling, William Yan

Environmental & Water Resources Engineering Masters Projects

This research was done to investigate the fate and transport of a simulated contaminant spill into Wachusett Reservoir using the CE-QUAL-W2 model. The reservoir is located in central Massachusetts (north east of Worcester) and was first filled in 1908. The Massachusetts Water Resource Authority (MWRA) uses the reservoir as a primary source of drinking water for the metropolitan Boston area. The 65-billion-gallon reservoir is replenished by 9 tributaries and also supplemented by the transfer of water from Quabbin Reservoir (412 billion-gallon capacity) through the Quabbin Aqueduct. This transfer is used to meet system water demands, manage the water surface elevation …

Development Of Application Software For Water System Data Management, Visualization, And Analysis With The Shiny Framework, Nicholas Zinck

Environmental & Water Resources Engineering Masters Projects

A comprehensive watershed protection plan includes the collection of water quality, meteorological, and hydrological data. Large amounts of data can be difficult to manage if proper systems are not put in place for data management. Poor data management can be detrimental and may result in data loss, poor quality data, or underutilized data due to the lack of an efficient process of querying, visualizing, and analyzing data. Database software is a great solution to store and organize large datasets, yet database software often lack data visualization and analysis tools. Commonly, databases are paired with an outside application specialized for data …

Determination Of The Rate Constant For Reaction Of Ozone With 1-Hexene In Water, Pranav Mashankar

Environmental & Water Resources Engineering Masters Projects

Low molecular weight aldehydes such as formaldehyde may be formed as disinfection byproducts (DBPs) of ozonation when low molecular weight, aliphatic, alpha olefins are present as contaminants in water. Such alkenes form a small but significant part of crude oil, and would therefore be present in water contaminated with an oil spill. This project studied the kinetics of the reaction between ozone and 1-hexene in water as part of a study to predict the effects of an oil spill on the water quality in the Wachusett reservoir in Massachusetts. The data for the reaction rate constant for the aqueous ozonolysis …

Factors Impacting The Cultivation, Structure, And Oxygen Profiles Of Oxygenic Photogranules For Aeration-Free Wastewater Treatment, Megan Hann

Environmental & Water Resources Engineering Masters Projects

Oxygenic photogranules (OPGs) are novel biogranules which have successfully treated wastewater without external aeration at the bench scale. The formation of OPGs under both static and hydrodynamic conditions is a unique phenomenon which has no known counterpart. This report examines some of the granulation mechanisms and structural and functional differences between statically and hydrodynamically cultivated OPGs. As previously reported, filamentous cyanobacteria are an essential component of both types of OPGs. The addition of Oscillatoria in augmented activated sludge inoculum showed successful static OPG formation in a shorter time (28 vs 35 days) and produced more settled OPGs than native sludge …

Origins And Seasonal Variation Of Disinfection Byproduct Precursors, Ran Zhao

Doctoral Dissertations

Disinfection byproducts (DBPs) are formed from the disinfectant (e.g., chlorine) reacting with components of natural organic matter (NOM) in water drawn from surface water supplies, and are considered as the cause of potential serious human health problems. DBP precursors originate in large reservoirs from at least three types of sources: (1) watershed or allochthonous, (2) algal or autochthonous, and (3) bottom sediments or benthic. The properties of the NOM and the DBP precursor content of that NOM are unique to each source. The first objective of this dissertation was to use temporal and spatial water quality data from a drinking …

Role Of Manganese Oxide In The Formation Of Disinfection Byproducts In Drinking Water Treatment, Arianne A. Bazilio

Doctoral Dissertations

This work examined the role of manganese oxide (MnO_x) in the formation of disinfection byproducts (DBPs) in drinking water treatment. DBPs are of increasing concern as more is being learned about their carcinogenicity and genotoxicity. Studies were performed to determine the impact of MnO_x and free chlorine (Cl₂), used for dissolved manganese (Mn(II) removal, on the formation of these undesirable byproducts. Batch experiment results showed that the presence of MnO_x did not significantly increase the haloacetic acid or trihalomethane concentrations. Rates of DBP formation were also similar in the absence and presence of Mn(II) …

Effect Of Substrate Roughness, Slope, And Body Size On Climbing Behavior And Performance Of Juvenile American Eels (Anguilla Rostrata), Zahra Anwar

Environmental & Water Resources Engineering Masters Projects

The effect of ramp slope and substrate grain size on the passage of juvenile American Eel (Anguilla rostrata) over indoor ramps was tested from May – August 2016. Two size classes of fish (300 glass eels 50 – 70 mm and 300 elvers 90-114 mm), five substrates varying in coarseness (Substrate 1: 0.18-0.25 mm grain size, Substrate 2: 0.25-0.60 mm grain size,

Substrate 3; 0.60-1.00 mm grain size, Substrate 4: 1.00 – 2.00 mm grain size, Substrate 5: 2.00-

4.00 mm grain size), and three ramp slopes (25, 35 and 45 degrees) were explored. Individual fish were placed …