Hydrology Commons^™

Alkalinity Enhanced Mass Reduction Of Uranium Contaminated Sediment, Cullen Edward Meurer

Theses and Dissertations

Uranium is a toxic and radioactive metal that is naturally occurring in the Earth’s crust. The uranium mining boom of the 1950’s produced many contaminated aquifers throughout the United States. Monitoring of groundwater data suggests that uranium concentrations may take 100’s of years to naturally attenuate to below the maximum contamination limit. This project examines a potential and novel remediation technique of groundwater contaminated with uranium through alkalinity enhanced desorption from the solid phase. Alkalinity enhances the desorption of uranium by complexing uranyl (UO22+) with Ca and CO3 which allows for further desorption. Since remediation is time consuming and expensive, …

Mass Transport Of Uranium During Recharge Of Surface Water To Contaminated Groundwater, Kendyl Nicole Hoss

Theses and Dissertations

This study characterized the predominant mass transport mechanisms of uranium during river water recharge to contaminated groundwater to better characterize its mobility. It was hypothesized that the mass transfer of uranium from the solid phase to the aqueous phase was occurring during periods of river water to groundwater recharge via concentration-driven desorption. Sediment data confirmed the presence of uranium on the solid phase via nitric acid extraction. The recharge of river water to the saturated zone of a uranium-contaminated aquifer was simulated in a multi-well tracer test. The injection fluid was Little Wind River water and was traced with added …

Water Chemistry And Lake Dynamics Of Laguna Bacalar, Quintana Roo, Mexico, Ryan Matzuk

Theses and Dissertations

Laguna Bacalar in the Quintana Roo region is the second largest lake in Mexico and contains freshwater derived solely from groundwater. Local geology on the Yucatan Peninsula is karstic and the southern shoreline of Laguna Bacalar is spotted with a handful of cenotes that contribute substantial amounts of inflowing groundwater to the lake. This is shown by sonde profile data taken in one of the largest cenotes in the area. Outflow is dominated by a surface water outlet in the southern portion of the lake and an unknown amount of outflowing groundwater. During January of 2017 through 2019, UWM researchers …

Development Of A Hydrodynamic And Sediment Transport Model For Green Bay, Lake Michigan, Bahram Khazaei

Theses and Dissertations

Sediment dynamics are strongly linked with biogeochemical and physical changes in estuarine systems. Understanding the links between sediment processes and ecosystem responses is necessary for the restoration of degraded systems. Located in Northern US, and one of the largest freshwater estuaries on earth, Green Bay is a distinct example of these degraded systems. Rapid development and anthropogenic activities increased nutrient loading rates into the bay and led to a major disruption of the pre-existing biogeochemical regimes in the ecosystem. Contaminated and nutrient-rich sediments were discharged to the bay by the Fox River for almost half a century. Green Bay’s seasonal-, …

Pesticides In Urban/Suburban Water Wells In Milwaukee, Ozaukee, Washington, And Waukesha Counties In Wisconsin, Leslie Bychinski

Theses and Dissertations

The professional lawn care business has developed into a multibillion-dollar industry over the last few decades with a rise in home and garden market sector for urban/suburban use. Some homeowners purchase and apply the pesticides themselves while others hire professional lawn care companies. The US EPA states that “all pesticides are toxic to some degree” and the prevalent, widespread use of pesticides is both a major environmental problem and a public health issue. There have been many studies tracing agricultural pesticides application and contamination of public drinking water, and less on (sub)urban, residential pesticide application. This study targets active, private …

The Dynamics And Speciation Of Arsenic In Drinking Water Wells In Eastern Wisconsin, Evvan Plank

Theses and Dissertations

Arsenic typically develops in Eastern Wisconsin groundwater as a result of oxidation of sulfide bearing minerals in the limestone bedrock (Schreiber et al. 2000). Naturally occurring arsenic exists in groundwater as oxyanions which have two oxidation states, As(III) and As(V). Under ambient pH conditions As(V) is primarily present as an anion (i.e., H2AsO4-) while As(III) tends to be uncharged (i.e., H3AsO3), making it much more difficult to remove through the existing treatment techniques such as adsorption and reverse osmosis (RO). Although many studies exist establishing arsenic concentrations across Wisconsin, there is a lack of investigations into the concentrations of each …

Anthropogenically Driven Changes To Shallow Groundwater In Southeastern Wisconsin And Its Effects On The Aquifer Microbial Communities, Madeline Jean Salo

Theses and Dissertations

This study investigates if, and to what extent, the microbial community present in the shallow groundwater of southeastern Wisconsin is affected by the influx of treated municipal wastewater effluent. The primary study area consisted of three wells located in the shallow sand and gravel aquifer along the upper Fox River in Waukesha, Wisconsin. One well is located roughly 1500 feet from the river and pumps pristine groundwater. Two riverbank inducement wells are located within 200 feet of the river and pump a mixture of groundwater and river water that contains effluent from three upstream wastewater treatment plants. Water from all …

Anthropogenically Driven Changes To Shallow Groundwater In Southeastern Wisconsin And Its Effects On The Aquifer Microbial Communities, Madeline Jean Salo

Theses and Dissertations

This study investigates if, and to what extent, the microbial community present in the shallow groundwater of southeastern Wisconsin is affected by the influx of treated municipal wastewater effluent. The primary study area consisted of three wells located in the shallow sand and gravel aquifer along the upper Fox River in Waukesha, Wisconsin. One well is located roughly 1500 feet from the river and pumps pristine groundwater. Two riverbank inducement wells are located within 200 feet of the river and pump a mixture of groundwater and river water that contains effluent from three upstream wastewater treatment plants. Water from all …

A Conceptual Modeling Framework For Hydrological Ecosystem Services And Its Application To The Impacts Of Climate Change And Urban Expansion, Feng Pan

Theses and Dissertations

Ecosystem services (ESs) are used as intermediates for researchers, stakeholders, and the public to understand and deal with the current environmental situation and problems, and ESs-related studies have drawn increasing attention. The quantitative assessments of ESs to calculate how much the ecosystem can benefit human beings and society, are still under development. Hydrological ESs, a subset of ESs that is related to water bodies and the surrounding environment, carry several challenges and opportunities for both hydrological and ESs modeling. Specifically, new quantitative tools with the capability to simulate explicit spatial and temporal scales are desired, and such tools should be …

Evaluating Ecohydrological Separation With Geochemical Tracers, Δ2h And Δ18o, From Northern California In An Irrigated And Semi-Arid Setting, Erin Bulson

Theses and Dissertations

The two water worlds hypothesis challenges the widely accepted ecohydrology tenet that plant roots access a single, homogeneous reservoir of soil water (McDonnell, 2014). This project aspired to advance the understanding of the two water worlds, or ecohydrological separation (ES) of soil water reservoirs, applied to an irrigated agricultural setting. This study also aimed to correlate plant root morphology with plant water uptake. Using geochemical tracers, δ2H and δ18O, isotopic analysis of soil and plant tissue was used to evaluate irrigated plant water acquisition. Field work was conducted on two irrigated farms, Full Belly Farm and Riverdog Farm, in the …

Point Of Use Biosand Filters Of The Rural Dominican Republic, Kurtis Quamme

Theses and Dissertations

The point of use biosand filter (BSF) is used globally as a drinking water treatment solution. In this research, point of use BSFs were inoculated with active biosand from the Linnwood Drinking Water Treatment plant slow sand filter beds (Milwaukee, Wisconsin) and with sands collected from point of use filters operating in the Dominican Republic. These filters were maintained with varying source waters (surface water, groundwater, or tap water to simulate chlorination encountered in the field). The microbial community of filters with varied influents and biosand inoculum were analyzed quantitatively by sequencing and qPCR. Filter efficacy and microbial community were …

High Capacity Wells And Baseflow Decline In The Wolf River Basin, Northeastern Wisconsin, Susan A. Borchardt

Theses and Dissertations

The baseflow of the Wolf River (drainage area of 1 200 km2) in northeastern Wisconsin has declined by over 30% during the last thirty years, whereas climatic, land cover, and soil characteristics of the basin have remained unchanged. Because groundwater basins do not always coincide with surface water basins, estimating groundwater discharge to streams using variables only pertinent to the surface water basin can be ineffective. The purpose of this study is to explain the decline in the baseflow of the Wolf River by developing a multiple regression model. To take into account variables pertaining to the groundwater basin, withdrawal …

Transport Of Potential Microbial Source Tracking Markers In Sandy Material, Jennifer J. Johanson

Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

TRANSPORT OF POTENTIAL MICROBIAL SOURCE TRACKING MARKERS IN SANDY MATERIALS

by

Jennifer J. Johanson

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee 2016

Under the Supervision of Professor Shangping Xu

Groundwater, a primary source of drinking water for nearly half the people in the United States, can be contaminated by pathogenic bacteria from fecal materials causing outbreaks of waterborne illness. Therefore, early identification of the presence of fecal contamination in groundwater can help prevent such outbreaks, and determining whether bacteria originate from human or animal feces can narrow down the location of potential pollution sources, allowing timely remediation and reduced potential for future …

Assessing The Effects Of Riverbank Inducement On A Shallow Aquifer In Southeastern Wisconsin, Laura Rachel Fields-Sommers

Theses and Dissertations

The state of Wisconsin is heavily reliant upon groundwater resources. In order to induce river water, implementation of shallow wells with close proximity to river systems is being used as a method to augment groundwater supplies in portions of southeastern Wisconsin. However, river bank wells (RBI) are vulnerable to contamination due to their close interaction with the surface water. The vulnerability increases when induced surface waters contain municipally treated waste water. The objective of this study was to determine the current and potential influences of riverbank inducement, recharge mechanisms of the well field, and to discriminate the sources of sodium …

The Mixing Of A River Into Coastal Waters At Two Beaches: Environmental Factors, E. Coli Contributions And Applications For Predictive Models, Adrian Jordan Koski

Theses and Dissertations

Beach closures and public health protection are confounded by analytical procedures that result in delays in notification of adverse water quality conditions and the lack of affordable analytical methods to identify pollutant sources. Attempts have been made to develop predictive frameworks using ancillary hydrometeorological data to statistically anticipate deteriorated water quality. Many urban coastal beaches are impacted by river runoff. In Kenosha Wisconsin, beach sanitary survey data from two beaches adjacent to the mouth of the Pike River were examined to ascertain whether simple river-lake mixing models identified river influence on coastal water quality and improved predictions of beach advisories. …

Monitoring And Modeling The Hydrological Performance Of Extensive Green Roof Systems, Joseph Seidl

Theses and Dissertations

Urban stormwater runoff causes many problems for watersheds located within large metropolitan areas, including such detrimental effects as flooding, erosion, pollution, and the increased risk of combined sewerage overflows. Increased amounts of impervious areas resulting from urban sprawl have also been shown to escalate stormwater flows, which exacerbates water management issues in these metropolitan areas. Water resource engineers have progressively turned toward green infrastructure to solve stormwater problems, and green roof systems represent one type of this green infrastructure. As of current, however, green roof systems are largely underused in as an effective stormwater management tool.

The major factor limiting …

Addressing Potential Risks And Challenges Of Co2 Geologic Sequestration, Ethan Guyant

Theses and Dissertations

Carbon Capture and Geologic Storage is a viable technology to reduce the concentration of CO2 emitted to the atmosphere, however there remains challenges and risks associated with implementing this technology. One of the challenges, and the focus of Chapter 2, is maintaining the injectivity of the reservoir throughout the entire injection period of a project. While potential risks include the pressurization of the reservoir and the leakage of CO2 and/or brine out of the storage reservoir which is the focus of Chapter 3. A consequence of injecting dry-supercritical CO2 is that it results in salt precipitation in the near well …

Climate Impact On Groundwater Flow Processes In The Cedar Creek Watershed And Cedarburg Bog, Jackson Graham

Theses and Dissertations

A local-scale groundwater-flow model of the Cedar Creek Watershed and Cedarburg Bog area was constructed to determine the effects of future changes in temperature and precipitation on water resources. The Cedar Creek Watershed is a 330 km2 sub-basin of the Milwaukee River Watershed located about 30 km north of Milwaukee. The importance of this watershed lies in its location at the sub-continental divide separating the Mississippi River Basin from the Great Lakes Basin. The coupled steady-state and transient flow models incorporate interaction between surface water features and groundwater-surface water interactions. The 4 layer model simulates the influence of recharge on …

A Soil Parameters Geodatabase For The Modeling Assessment Of Agricultural Conservation Practices Effects In The United States, Mauro Di Luzio, Martin L. Norfleet, Jeffrey G. Arnold, Jimmy R. Williams, James R. Kiniry

International Journal of Geospatial and Environmental Research

Soil parameters for hydrology modeling in cropland dominated areas, from the regional to local scale, are part of critical biophysical information whose deficiency may increase the uncertainty of simulated conservation effects and predicting potential. Despite this importance, soil physical and hydraulic parameters lack common, wide-coverage repositories combined to digital maps as required by various hydrology-based agricultural water quality models.

This paper describes the construction of a geoprocessing workflow and the resultant hydrology-structured soil hydraulic, physical, and chemical parameters geographic database for the entire United States, named US-SOILM-CEAP. This database is designed to store a-priori values for a suit of models, …

An Analysis Of Co2-Driven Cold-Water Geysers In Green River, Utah And Chimayo, New Mexico, Zachary T. Watson

Theses and Dissertations

The eruption periodicity, CO2 bubble volume fraction, eruption velocity, flash depth and mass emission of CO2 were determined from multiple wellbore CO2-driven cold-water geysers (Crystal and Tenmile geysers, in Utah and Chimayó geyser in New Mexico). Utilizing a suite of temporal water sample datasets from multiple field trips to Crystal geyser, systematic and repeated trends in effluent water chemistry have been revealed. Crystal geyser has a four part eruption cycle composed of a minor eruption period (mEP), major eruption period (MEP), aftershock eruption period (Ae) and recharge (R). Tenmile geyser has a four part eruption cycle composed of MEP, drainage …

Fault-Controlled Advective, Diffusive, And Eruptive Co2 Leakage From Natural Reservoirs In The Colorado Plateau, East-Central Utah, Na-Hyun Jung

Theses and Dissertations

This study investigated a natural analogue for CO2 leakage near Green River, Utah, aiming to understand the influence of various factors on CO2 leakage and to reliably predict underground CO2 behavior after injection for geologic CO2 sequestration. Advective, diffusive, and eruptive characteristics of CO2 leakage were assessed via a soil CO2 flux survey and numerical modeling. The field results show anomalous CO2 fluxes (> 10 g m-2 d-1) along the faults, particularly adjacent to CO2-driven cold springs and geysers (e.g., 36,259 g m-2 d-1 at Crystal Geyser), ancient travertines (e.g., 5,917 g m-2 d-1), joint zones in sandstone (e.g., 120 …

The Spread Of Emerging Contaminants In The Soil-Groundwater System, Lucia Feriancikova

Theses and Dissertations

In recent years the risks of emerging contaminants (ECs) have received substantial attention as potential environmental pollutants that persist in the environment due to their continual release. This research presents the work of three studies that provide critical insight into the spread of ECs, particularly antibiotic resistant bacteria derived from dairy manure and potentially harmful particles originated from nanomaterials in the soil-groundwater system. The adhesion of particles to mineral surfaces was quantified with the extended Derjaguin-Landau-Verwey-Overbeek (XDLVO) theory that includes Lifshitz-van der Waals, Lewis acid-base, electrostatic double layer and steric repulsion interactions. The transport of ECs was conducted in column …

Simulating Recharge In A Wisconsin Watershed: The Effect Of Sub Annual Precipitation Patterns, Alice Egan

Theses and Dissertations

A watershed, the Prairie River in north-central Wisconsin was used to analyze why the same annual precipitation generates variable annual recharge rates. Global Climate Models (GCMs) with three greenhouse gas emission scenarios (B1, A1B and A2) for two time series 2047-2065 and 2082-2100 were used to examine the annual and monthly differences between the Prairie River watershed future projections and the Prairie River watershed historical record, 1954-2009. The USGS soil water balance (SWB) model was used to calculate recharge.

In the Prairie River watershed, there is a strong correlation (R²=0.84) between growing season recharge and growing season precipitation, and there …

Development Of Green Solvent Modified Zeolite (Gsmz) For The Removal Of Chemical Contaminants From Water, Elizabeth Stapleton

Theses and Dissertations

Sorption represents an important strategy in the remediation of groundwater contamination. As a naturally-occurring mineral with large cation exchange capacity, zeolite is negatively charged and has been widely used as an inexpensive and effective sorbent for the removal of positively charged contaminants. The negative charges of zeolite, however, make it generally ineffective in the sorption of anionic contaminants such as chromate and arsenate. In order to improve the capacity for sorption of anionic species, the surface charge of the zeolite must be modified. Cationic surfactants can be used to alter the surface charge of the minerals so that the negatively …

Applying Geochemistry To Investigate The Occurrence Of Riverbank Inducement Into A Shallow Aquifer In Southeastern Wisconsin, Anna Maria Thorp

Theses and Dissertations

Increased urbanization in southeastern Wisconsin has led to significant drawdown in both the shallow and deep aquifer. In Waukesha County combined radium activity levels exceeding the limit set forth by the USEPA have been detected within the deep aquifer. This has prompted the community to consider alternative, long term, drinking water supply solutions.

One possible solution is riverbank inducement (RBI), in which river water is induced into the adjacent aquifer as recharge. This would make the shallow aquifer an effective addendum to growing water supply demands, and reduce the effects of excessive pumping. Using basic geochemical analyses, this study examines …

Regionalization Of Hydrologic Response In The Great Lakes Basin: Considerations Of Temporal Variability, Jonathan Martin Kult

Theses and Dissertations

Methods for predicting streamflow in areas with limited or nonexistent measures of hydrologic response commonly rely on regionalization techniques, where knowledge pertaining to gaged watersheds is transferred to ungaged watersheds. Hydrologic response indices have frequently been employed in contemporary regionalization research related to predictions in ungaged basins. In this study, regionalization models were developed using multiple linear regression and regression tree analysis to derive relationships between hydrologic response and watershed physical characteristics for 163 watersheds in the Great Lakes basin. These models provide a means for predicting runoff in ungaged basins at a monthly time step without implementation of any …

Snowmelt Runoff Modeling: Limitations And Potential For Mitigating Water Disputes, Jonathan Kult, Woonsup Choi, Anke Petra Maria Keuser

Geography Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.