Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

A Theoretical Model Of Underground Dipole Antennas For Communications In Internet Of Underground Things, Abdul Salam, Mehmet C. Vuran, Xin Dong, Christos Argyropoulos, Suat Irmak

Faculty Publications

The realization of Internet of Underground Things (IOUT) relies on the establishment of reliable communication links, where the antenna becomes a major design component due to the significant impacts of soil. In this paper, a theoretical model is developed to capture the impacts of change of soil moisture on the return loss, resonant frequency, and bandwidth of a buried dipole antenna. Experiments are conducted in silty clay loam, sandy, and silt loam soil, to characterize the effects of soil, in an indoor testbed and field testbeds. It is shown that at subsurface burial depths (0.1-0.4m), change in soil moisture impacts …

Development Of A Water Quality Status And Trend Detection Tool*, Ruchir Aggarwal, Valeria Mijares, Margaret W. Gitau

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Water Quality Index (WQI) models have been developed since the early 1970s. They present a means by which water quality status and trends can be compared across time and space on the basis of a composite value computed using existing water quality data. There is a need for a tool that can bring the different water quality parameters together and calculate the WQIs so as to facilitate data use in predictive modeling and water quality management. We are developing a software tool that can be used by water quality managers and others with different technical backgrounds to calculate WQI of …

Exploring Regional And Telecoupled Land Use Change Impacts From Environmental Shocks, Kevin Hill, Liz Wachs, Brady Hardiman, David Yu, Shweta Singh

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Natural disasters or environmental shocks have the potential to disrupt local agricultural systems as well as distant agricultural systems through cascading effects. In this work we selected two distinct environmental shocks and traced their cascading effects on land use change. Quantifying cascading effects is a salient issue because climate change forecasts indicate an increase in frequency and intensity of global environmental shocks. This study incorporated the concept of telecoupled systems involving interrelating ecological, economic and political/social components. A telecoupled framework involving cascading effects was implemented using three approaches. The first approach involved using bilateral agricultural trade matrix data to analyze …

Gdd(Growth Degree Day) Module For Vinsense Visual Analytics System, Pradeep K. Lam, David Ebert , Phd, Jiawei Zhang

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Limited resources and increasing costs require vineyards to develop optimized methods of planting, growing, and harvesting crops in order to ensure max yield and stay competitive in the marketplace. Data from sensors planted within the soil paired with weather reports and observation data from farmers could help develop competitive farming strategies. While automatic computation models are usually a black box that cannot explain how the input data are transformed into output, the farmers require an approach that allows them to interactively manipulate and supervise the computation process. The VinSense project was developed for this purpose. In this paper, we focus …

Simulation Of Flow And Water Quality From Tile Drains At The Watershed And Field Scale, Colleen Moloney

Open Access Theses

Simulation models such as the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) have become widely used in determining the water quality impacts of various management practices. Ensuring that the algorithms accurately represent the processes simulated has become an important goal. Tile drainage is a standard practice in the Midwest, US in order to reduce risk of yield loss due to excess water. Multiple tile drainage and water table algorithms have been available in the SWAT model between the initial SWAT release and revision 638 used in this study. Testing of those algorithms is often limited. Furthermore, algorithms in the current version …

Investigation Of Climate Variability And Climate Change Impacts On Corn Yield In The Eastern Corn Belt, Usa, Ruoyu Wang

Open Access Dissertations

The increasing demand for both food and biofuels requires more corn production at global scale. However, current corn yield is not able to meet bio-ethanol demand without jeopardizing food security or intensifying and expanding corn cultivation. An alternative solution is to utilize cellulose and hemi-cellulose from perennial grasses to fulfill the increasing demand for biofuel energy. A watershed level scenario analysis is often applied to figure out a sustainable way to strike the balance between food and fuel demands, and maintain environment integrity. However, a solid modeling application requires a clear understanding of crop responses under various climate stresses. This …

Simulation Of Conservation Practice Effects On Water Quality Under Current And Future Climate Scenarios, Carlington W. Wallace

Open Access Dissertations

Analysis of the effects of implementing different conservation practices, as well as increased levels of conservation practices under existing and projected future climate, will determine if current conservation practice recommendations will be sufficient to maintain soil and water resources. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) was used to study four watersheds of different sizes (CCW = 680 km2, F34 = 183 km2, AXL = 42 km 2 and ALG = 20 km2) located in Northeastern Indiana. The overarching goal of this study was to evaluate the effect of various agricultural practices on runoff and agricultural chemical losses under current …

Effect Of Bioenergy Crops And Fast Growing Trees On Hydrology And Water Quality In The Little Vermilion River Watershed, Tian Guo

Open Access Dissertations

Energy security and sustainability require a suite of biomass crops, including woody species. Short rotation woody crops (SRWCs) such as Populus have great potential as biofuel feedstocks. Quantifying biomass yields of bioenergy crop and hydrologic and water quality responses to growth is important should it be widely planted in the Midwestern U.S. Subsurface tile drainage systems enable the Midwest area to become highly productive agricultural lands, but also create environmental problems like nitrate-N contamination of the water it drains. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) has been used to model watersheds with tile drainage, but the new tile drainage …

Investigating U.S. Resident Perceptions Of Corporate Social Responsibility In Food And Agriculture, Carissa Jae Morgan

Open Access Theses

Corporations are prioritizing corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities by investing in and actively promoting their social practices. In the U.S. of the modern food supply chain creates a unique challenge for corporations to address concerns about social issues of consumers and non-consumers alike. This study is motivated by the need to better understand individuals’ perceptions of CSR as it pertains to the food supply chain. In April 2015 an online survey collected information from 1,201 U.S. residents with the objective of investigating individuals’ perceptions of relative importance of eight prominent CSR areas relevant to food and agriculture. Demographic, household consumption, …

Development And Evaluation Of A Watershed-Scale Hybrid Hydrologic Model, Younghyun Cho

Open Access Dissertations

A watershed-scale hybrid hydrologic model (Distributed-Clark), which is a lumped conceptual and distributed feature model, was developed to predict spatially distributed short- and long-term rainfall runoff generation and routing using relatively simple methodologies and state-of-the-art spatial data in a GIS environment. In Distributed-Clark, spatially distributed excess rainfall estimated with the SCS curve number method and a GIS-based set of separated unit hydrographs (spatially distributed unit hydrograph) are utilized to calculate a direct runoff flow hydrograph, and time-varied SCS CN values and conditional unit hydrograph approach for different runoff depth-based flow convolution are also used to compute long-term rainfall-runoff flow hydrographs. …

Hydrologic And Water Quality Impacts From Perennial Crop Production On Marginal Lands, Qingyu Feng

Open Access Dissertations

Marginal lands are proposed as a viable option for producing biofeedstocks as these lands are not heavily engaged in agricultural production or may not be suitable for intensive row-crop food/feed production. However, meeting biofeedstock production goals will require large amount of marginal lands and the unintended consequences of producing biofeedstocks on marginal lands are not fully clear. The overall goal of this study was to evaluate the productivity of biofeedstocks on marginal lands and the potential impacts on hydrologic and water quality processes from the land use conversion.

This study was conducted in the Upper Mississippi River Basin (UMRB). First, …

Estimating The Water Quality Condition Of River And Lake Water In The Midwestern United States From Its Spectral Characteristics, Jing Tan

Open Access Dissertations

This study focuses on developing/calibrating remote sensing algorithms for water quality retrieval in Midwestern rivers and lakes. In the first part of this study, the spectral measurements collected using a hand-held spectrometer as well as water quality observations for the Wabash River and its tributary the Tippecanoe River in Indiana were used to develop empirical models for the retrieval of chlorophyll (chl) and total suspended solids (TSS). A method for removing sky and sun glint from field spectra for turbid inland waters was developed and tested. Empirical models were then developed using a subset of the field measurements with the …

Effect Of Maleic Acid On The Selectivity Of Glucose And Fructose Dehydration And Degradation, Ximing Zhang

Open Access Dissertations

5-Hydroxymethyfurfural (HMF), a platform chemical can upgrade to a variety of fuels and polymers, can be manufactured from lignocellulose. This study focuses on the Lewis and Brønsted acid effect on hexose dehydration for HMF production. We report the positive effect of maleic acid, a dicarboxylic acid used as Brønsted acid, on the selectivity of hexose dehydration to 5-hydroxymethyfurfural (HMF), and subsequent hydrolysis to levulinic and formic acids. We also describe the kinetic analysis of a Lewis acid (AlCl ₃) alone and in combination with HCl or maleic acid to catalyze the isomerization of glucose to fructose, dehydration of fructose …

Climate Change Impact Assessments Using The Water Erosion Prediction Project Model, Joseph Trotochaud

Open Access Theses

This study was conducted to develop a simplified method of obtaining future climate data inputs for natural resource models and apply that method to three locations within the continental United States to assess the effect of climate change on soil erosion, runoff, and fire risk. A method was developed for quickly obtaining future climate data over a wide range of scenarios, General Circulation Models (GCMs), and timescales from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) and Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) model families using the MarkSim^® DSSAT Weather Generator and a Microsoft Excel VBA Macro, the …

Watershed Delineation In The Field: A New Approach For Mobile Applications Using Lidar Elevation Data, Samuel Adam Noel

Open Access Theses

With the advancement of mobile devices, opportunities to take watershed management tasks out of the office and into the field can be realized. In turn, field workers can utilize these technologies to expedite the decision-making process so that they may focus on meeting with clients and addressing agricultural watershed management issues. High-resolution (∼1.5 m postspacing) elevation data gathered by light detection and ranging (LiDAR) provides the topographic detail necessary to model hydrology at the field-scale (∼1 km2).

Non-artifactual surface depressions lead to erroneous surface flow patterns when using existing algorithms. So a sequential depression-filling algorithm (SDFA) has been developed to …

Physical And Chemical Attributes Of A Genetically Modified Fruit Pectin, Carl Patrick Littrell

Open Access Theses

Pectin is an important polymer used in the food industry as a thickening and gelling agent. Though pectin is ubiquitous in plants, chemical and structural differences among pectin molecules prevent most from being viable for industrial use. Enzymes found naturally in fruit cell walls during the ripening process impair many desirable attributes of fruit pectins, rendering them unsuitable for industrial applications. Pectin methylesterase (PME) is one such enzyme whose expression can be altered during ripening through the use of recombinant genetic engineering. Reduction in levels of PME results in increased degree of methylation and molecular size of pectin, greatly increasing …

A Farm Management Information System With Task-Specific, Collaborative Mobile Apps And Cloud Storage Services, Jonathan Tyler Welte

Open Access Theses

Modern production agriculture is beginning to advance beyond deterministic, scheduled operations between relatively few people to larger scale, information-driven efficiency in order to respond to the challenges of field variability and meet the needs of a growing population. Since no two farms are the same with respect to information and management structure, a specialized farm management information system (FMIS) which is tailored to the realities on the ground of individual farms is likely to be more effective than generalized FMIS available today.

This thesis presents the design of a FMIS using proven user-centered design principles. This approach resulted in the …

Driftwatch Pollinator Mapping Application, Shreyas G. Sundararaman, Larry Theller, Bernard Engel

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Over 65% percent of food consumed in the United States is pollinated by bees. Unfortunately, due to poor farming practices, pesticides are sprayed in bee sensitive areas unknowingly and as a result, the bee population is dwindling at an alarming rate. With lesser bees to pollinate crops, produce is compromised on a very large scale and this could have disastrous impacts on the nation's needs for food. Apiarists and beehive owners face the major responsibility of ensuring that their hives aren't affected by dangerous insecticides and pesticides from the farming areas that they might visit during their crop pollination cycles …

Direct And Indirect Greenhouse Gas Emissions From Biomass Storage: Implications For Life Cycle Assessment Of Biofuels, Isaac Robert Emery

Open Access Dissertations

Ethanol and other biofuels from cellulosic feedstocks are currently the most promising candidates to replace a large fraction of gasoline consumption in the United States and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Gaps in current approaches to estimating the net greenhouse gas emissions from second-generation biofuels may lead to underestimation of the carbon intensity of these fuels. Current life cycle assessment models of biofuels do not sufficiently account for biomass losses and emissions associated with the harvest and storage of biomass feedstocks, which can require additional fuel and materials use on the farm as well as reducing the effective yield of a …

Specific Salt Effects On The Formation And Thermal Transitions Among Β-Lactoglobulin And Pectin Electrostatic Complexes, Stacey Ann Hirt

Open Access Theses

Factors of ion specificity and ionic strength (I~0-100) were studied in the electrostatic complex formation and protein particle formation by thermal treatment for a β-lactoglobulin and pectin system. ζ-potential showed β-lactoglobulin and pectin began to interact near pH 5.50 and interactions were strengthened with decrease in pH. Visible light turbidimetry and light scattering at 90° revealed a trend in critical pH transitions for electrostatic complex formation based on both the ionic strength and the anion of the salt species, while effects of the monovalent cation was insignificant. Critical pH values for complex formation and separation (pHc and pHΦ) decreased with …