Water Resource Management Commons^™

Stage And Discharge Prediction From Documentary Time-Lapse Imagery, Kenneth W. Chapman, Troy E. Gilmore, Mehrube Mehrubeoglu, Christian D. Chapman, Aaron R. Mittelstet, John E. Stranzl Jr.

Biological Systems Engineering: Papers and Publications

Imagery from fixed, ground-based cameras is rich in qualitative and quantitative information that can improve stream discharge monitoring. For instance, time-lapse imagery may be valuable for filling data gaps when sensors fail and/or during lapses in funding for monitoring programs. In this study, we used a large image archive (> 40,000 images from 2012 to 2019) from a fixed, ground-based camera that is part of a documentary watershed imaging project (https://plattebasintimelapse.com/). Scalar image features were extracted from daylight images taken at one-hour intervals. The image features were fused with United States Geological Survey stage and discharge data as …

Water Resources Planning Under Deep Uncertainty For Physically, Socially, And Politically Complex Systems, Sarah St. George Freeman

Doctoral Dissertations

Water supply systems, particularly those of large cities, are complex systems linking supply, regulatory and distribution infrastructure, and points of use. Despite their physical complexities, it is infrequent that full supply, distribution, end use, and feedbacks therein are considered in an integrated manner. These complex systems-of-systems face large uncertainties related to physical aspects such as degradation of infrastructure, changing demand, and climate variability and change. Though great, such physical uncertainties often pale in comparison to the those related to the human systems in place to manage them and yet uncertainty in the decision-making landscape is often grossly simplified in our …

Impact Of Eastern Redcedar Encroachment On Water Resources In The Nebraska Sandhills, Yaser Kishawi, Aaron R. Mittelstet, Troy E. Gilmore, Dirac Twidwell, Tirthankar Roy, Nawaraj Shrestha

Biological Systems Engineering: Papers and Publications

Worldwide, tree or shrub dominated woodlands have encroached into herbaceous dominated grasslands. While very few studies have evaluated the impact of Eastern Redcedar (redcedar) encroachment on the water budget, none have analyzed the impact on water quality. In this study, we evaluated the impact of redcedar encroachment on the water budget in the Nebraska Sand Hills and how the decreased streamflow would increase nitrate and atrazine concentrations in the Platte River. We calibrated a Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT model) for streamflow, recharge, and evapotranspiration. Using a moving window with a dilate morphological filter, encroachment scenarios of 11.9%, 16.1%, …

Sources Of Variability And Uncertainty In Food-Energy-Water Nexus Systems, Heydi Calderon-Ambelis, Deepak R. Keshwani

Biological Systems Engineering: Papers and Publications

A nexus approach contributes to the strategic allocation of resources to secure food, energy, and water for the world population. Integrated models considering the complex interactions across food, energy, and water (FEW) enhance decision-making and strategic planning towards resilience. However, a significant number of the existing integrated models leave unaddressed the inherent variability and uncertainty present in the FEW sectors. Here, we review the importance of characterizing variability over spatial and temporal scales and the importance of decreasing the uncertainty present within a FEW nexus systems. The review also discusses existing modeling tools that address variability and uncertainty on single …

Data Fusion And Synergy Of Active And Passive Remote Sensing; An Application For Freeze Thaw Detections, Zahra Sharifnezhadazizi

Dissertations and Theses

There has been a recent evolvement in the field of remote sensing after increase of number satellites and sensors data which could be fused to produce new data and products. These efforts are mainly focused on using of simultaneous observations from different platforms with different spatial and temporal resolutions. The research dissertation aims to enhance the synergy use of active and passive microwave observations and examine the results in detection land freeze and thaw (FT) predictions. Freeze thaw cycles particularly in high-latitude regions have a crucial role in many applications such as agriculture, biogeochemical transitions, hydrology and ecosystem studies. The …

Promoting The Sustainable Utilization Of Groundwater Resources In Ethiopia Using The Integrated Groundwater Footprint Index, Xinyu Lin

Honors Scholar Theses

The country of Ethiopia is highly vulnerable to human-caused climate change and is already suffering from the effects. The predominately rural population relies heavily on small-scale agriculture, with 78% of households having at least one member engaged in the field, yet staple crops are highly susceptible to droughts and other weather shocks. Total and agricultural GDP growth in the country have been strongly linked to inter-annual rainfall variability, of which Ethiopia has among the highest in sub-Saharan Africa. A decrease in rainfall since the 1970s has been one of the primary causes of low crop yields, and stresses the immediate …

Tracing Sources Of Natural Organic Matter, Trihalomethanes And Metals In Groundwater From A Karst Region, Connie O'Driscoll, Eoin Mcgillicuddy, Peter Croot, Pamela Bartley, John Mcmyler, Jerome Sheahan, Liam Morrison

Articles

Groundwater offers an important source for drinking water around the world; however, groundwater quality is under increasing pressure and is particularly vulnerable in karst areas. Total organic carbon (TOC) is significantly related to groundwater quality and when not removed by water treatment processes can give rise to the formation of disinfection by-products trihalomethanes (THMs) above the level of compliance. This study investigated the source of organic matter giving rise to the THM exceedances in a groundwater supply in a karst area. Results highlighted that source water for this groundwater supply was prone to surface water infiltration linked to rainfall events; …

Future Changes Of Hydroclimatic Extremes In Western North America Using A Large Ensemble: The Role Of Internal Variability, Mohammad Hasan Mahmoudi

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Increases in the intensity and frequency of extreme events in Western North America (WNA) can cause significant socioeconomic problems and threaten existing infrastructure. In this study we analyze the impacts of climate change on hydroclimatic extremes and assess the role of internal variability over WNA, which collectively drain an area of about 1 million km². We used gridded observations and downscaled precipitation, maximum and minimum temperature from seven General Circulation Models (GCMs) that participated in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) and a large ensemble of CanESM2 model simulations (CanESM2-LE; 50 members) for this analysis. Spatial …

Season-Ahead Forecasting Of Water Storage And Irrigation Requirements – An Application To The Southwest Monsoon In India, Arun Ravindranath, Naresh Devineni, Upmanu Lall, Paulina Concha Larrauri

Publications and Research

Water risk management is a ubiquitous challenge faced by stakeholders in the water or agricultural sector. We present a methodological framework for forecasting water storage requirements and present an application of this methodology to risk assessment in India. The application focused on forecasting crop water stress for potatoes grown during the monsoon season in the Satara district of Maharashtra. Pre-season large-scale climate predictors used to forecast water stress were selected based on an exhaustive search method that evaluates for highest ranked probability skill score and lowest root-mean-squared error in a leave-one-out cross-validation mode. Adaptive forecasts were made in the years …

Modeling Of Suspended Sediment Concentration Using Conventional And Machine Learning Approaches, In Thames River, Canada, Issam Mohamed

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Water resource management, planning, hydraulic design, environmental conservation, reservoir management and operation all require reliable information and data about Suspended Sediment Concentration (SSC). To predict such data, direct sampling and Sediment Rating Curves (SRC) are commonly utilized. Since direct sampling can be risky during extreme weather events and SRC cannot provide satisfactorily dependable results, engineers are trying to propose new precise fore-casting approaches. Various soft computing techniques have been applied to model different hydrological and environmental problems and have showed promising results in this regard. Although many studies have been performed to simulate the phenomena of SSC at numerous rivers …

Miss Lonesome: Old Boats Past Their Prime, Garth Woodruff

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Modeling Napl Dissolution From Pendular Rings In Idealized Porous Media, Junqi Huang, John A. Christ, Mark N. Goltz, Avery H. Demond

Faculty Publications

The dissolution rate of nonaqueous phase liquid (NAPL) often governs the remediation time frame at subsurface hazardous waste sites. Most formulations for estimating this rate are empirical and assume that the NAPL is the nonwetting fluid. However, field evidence suggests that some waste sites might be organic wet. Thus, formulations that assume the NAPL is nonwetting may be inappropriate for estimating the rates of NAPL dissolution. An exact solution to the Young‐Laplace equation, assuming NAPL resides as pendular rings around the contact points of porous media idealized as spherical particles in a hexagonal close packing arrangement, is presented in this …

Dis And Distributed Watershed Models I, Jurgen Garbrecht, Fred L. Ogden, Paul A. Debarry, David R. Maidment

Fred L. Ogden

The increasing proliferation of spatial data, geographic information systems (GIS), and models for hydrologic applications provide many new investigation opportunities but also present a number of challenges for the uninitiated water resources practitioner. This two-part paper is intended for the practicing engineer who wants to expand into the arena of spatial data and distributed watershed modeling. It provides an integrated overview of the multiple facets of data-GIS-modeling issues and a source of background information for selection and application of GIS in watershed modeling. This first paper addresses selected spatial data issues, data structures and projections, data sources, and information on …

Methane Production By A Packed-Bed Anaerobic Digester Fed Dairy Barn Flush Water, Sean Richard Thomson

Master's Theses

Packed-bed digesters are an alternative to covered lagoon digesters for methane production and anaerobic treatment of dilute wastewaters such as dairy barn flush water. The physical media of packed-beds retain biofilms, often allowing increased treatment rates. Previous studies have evaluated several types of media for digestion of dilute wastewaters, but cost and media fouling have setback commercial development. A major operational cost has been effluent recirculation pumping.

In the present effort, a novel approach to anaerobic digestion of flush dairy water was developed at pilot-scale: broken walnut shells were used as a low-cost packed-bed medium and effluent recirculation was replaced …

Application Of Stormwater Management Techniques For Mitigation And Education At The Stockbridge School Agricultural Learning Center, Samantha R. Anderson

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Masters Projects

The Stockbridge School Agricultural Learning Center (SSALC) will be a 40-acre hands-on agricultural learning laboratory for students, staff, visitors, and neighbors. Still in its planning phases, the Center will be located on what is currently a hay field just north of UMass Amherst campus. A conceptual master plan was created in 2013 that is being used for fundraising as well as planning for agricultural demonstration plots and architectural hubs. Improperly managed agricultural landscapes are known as one of the biggest threats to water quality in the United States. As a model of forward thinking agricultural practices, properly managed stormwater on …

Hydrogeological And Thermal Sustainability Of Geothermal Borehole Heat Exchangers, S. Emad Dehkordi

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Assessment of the current approach taken by guidelines and design methods of vertical closed loop heat exchangers shows that often groundwater flow is either disregarded or is not methodically incorporated. The state of scientific research in this arena reveals that overlooking the groundwater flow in the design procedure may not always be a correct assumption. The significance of advective heat transport compared to conduction is defined by the groundwater flux or Darcy velocity which heavily depends on the hydraulic conductivity of the ground, followed by the hydraulic gradient which has a relatively limited range. A sensitivity analysis on ground and …

Water Demand And Allocation In The Mara River Basin, Kenya/Tanzania In The Face Of Land Use Dynamics And Climate Variability, Shimelis B. Dessu

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Mara River Basin (MRB) is endowed with pristine biodiversity, socio-cultural heritage and natural resources. The purpose of my study is to develop and apply an integrated water resource allocation framework for the MRB based on the hydrological processes, water demand and economic factors. The basin was partitioned into twelve sub-basins and the rainfall runoff processes was modeled using the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) after satisfactory Nash-Sutcliff efficiency of 0.68 for calibration and 0.43 for validation at Mara Mines station. The impact and uncertainty of climate change on the hydrology of the MRB was assessed using SWAT and …

Preparing Nebraska Future Water Leaders: Nwla Academy Class Iii (2013), Connie I. Reimers-Hild

Nebraska Water Leaders Academy: Publications and Materials

Group communications, Phyllis Schoenholz, UNL

Communication and transformational leadership. Dr. Mark Burbach and Dr. Connie Reimers-Hild, UNL

Nebraska's instream flow laws and applications, Ann Bleed, board member, Lower Platte Natural Resources District

River Basin Compacts; Nebraska's obligations, Michael Jess, water resources engineer; consultant.

Conservation along the Central Platte, Mark Peyton, senior biologist, Central Nebraska Public Power and Irrigation District

Central Platte River water issues in regard to habitat for endangered species, Jason Farnsworth, natural resources specialist, Headwaters Corporation & Jerry Kenny, executive director of the Platte River Recovery Implementation Program

Rowe Sanctuary; discussion and viewing …

Using Gis To Delineate Headwater Stream Origins In The Appalachian Coal-Belt Region Of Kentucky, Jonathan A. Villines

Theses and Dissertations--Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering

Human activity such as surface mining can have substantial impacts on the natural environment. Performing a Cumulative Hydrologic Impact Assessment (CHIA) of such impacts on surface water systems requires knowing the location and extent of these impacted streams. The Jurisdictional Determination (JD) of a stream’s protected status under the Clean Water Act (CWA) involves locating and classifying streams according to their flow regime: ephemeral, intermittent, or perennial. Due to their often remote locations and small size, taking a field inventory of headwater streams for surface mining permit applications or permit reviews is challenging. A means of estimating headwater stream location …

The Nebraska Water Leaders Academy: Blending Water Policy And Science With Leadership Theory, Mark E. Burbach, Connie I. Reimers-Hild

Nebraska Water Leaders Academy: Publications and Materials

Water Challenges are Growing
Population Continues to Grow
New and Innovative Leadership is Needed
Nebraska Water Leaders Academy (NWLA) was born!

NWLA Objectives
•Develop scientific, social and political knowledge about water and related natural resources
• Examine the economical and beneficial uses of Nebraska’s water resources
• Develop and enhance leadership and critical thinking skills
• Develop interpersonal skills to become actively involved with water policy issues at the local, regional, state, and national levels
• Develop life-long water resources management skills
• Challenge traditional paradigms while encouraging critical thinking and creative solutions.

First-Order Catchment Mass Balance During The Wet Season In The Panama Canal Watershed, Fred Ogden

Fred L. Ogden

Tropical hydrology is poorly understood for a number of reasons. Intense biological activity in the tropics introduces complexities to the hydrologic process. Bioturbation, rapid rates of decay, and intensive insect activity all tend to promote rapid flow paths in the upper soil. Aggressive weathering leads to clays depleted of light cations and deep soil profiles. Processes in the seasonal tropics are further complicated by seasonal transitions, and very large changes in catchment storage between seasons. Beginning in 2005, we installed a suite of hydrologic sensors in a 16.7 ha first-order catchment in the Panama Canal Watershed to observe hydrologic variables …

Uncertainty Estimation Of Extreme Precipitations Under Climate Change: A Non-Parametric Approach, Tarana A. Solaiman

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Assessment of climate change impacts on hydrology at watershed scale incorporates (a) downscaling of global scale climatic variables into local scale hydrologic variables and (b) assessment of future hydrologic extremes. Atmosphere-Ocean Global Climate Models (AOGCM) are designed to simulate time series of future climate responses accounting for human induced green house gas emissions. The present study addresses the following limitations of climate change impact research: (i) limited availability of observed historical information; (ii) limited research on the detection of changes in hydrologic extremes; and (iii) coarse spatio-temporal resolution of AOGCMs for use at regional or local scale. Downscaled output from …

A Method For Computing Infiltration And Redistribution In A Discretized Moisture Content Domain, Fred L. Ogden

Fred L. Ogden

A new one-dimensional infiltration and redistribution method is proposed as an alternative to the Richards equation (RE) for coupled surface and subsurface models. The proposed method discretizes soil water content into hypothetical hydraulically interacting bins. The entry and propagation of displacement fronts in each bin are simulated by means of explicit infiltration and drainage approximations based on capillary and gravitational driving forces. Wetting front advances within bins create water deficits that are satisfied by capillary-driven interbin flow. The method inherently provides numerical stability by precluding the need to directly estimate nonlinear gradients through numerical schemes. Comparisons of the performance of …

Runoff Production In The Upper Rio Chagres Watershed, Panama, Fred Ogden

Fred L. Ogden

Runoff production in tropical watersheds is governed by a wide variety of potential sources and there have been few rigorous studies to date. The 414 km2 upper Río Chagres basin offers a unique opportunity to better understand the runoff production mechanisms in tropical watersheds through data analysis and modeling with rainfall and runoff data. Flow data and tipping bucket rain gage data are available at both the basin outlet (Chico gage) and for an 80.6 km2 internal basin location (Piedras gage). Modeling is performed using the Sacramento Soil Moisture Accounting Model (SAC-SMA), calibrated using data from 2000 and verified using …

Numerical Investigation Of Saturated Source Area Behavior At The Small Catchment Scale, Fred L. Ogden

Fred L. Ogden

The objective of this research is to explore the relationship between small catchment properties and the temporal growth and decay of saturated source areas (SSA). A simple physics-based hydrologic model, which we call the Sandbox model, is developed for this purpose. A thorough sensitivity analysis is undertaken to evaluate model response to variations in model parameters. Sandbox model output is compared to that from the semi-distributed conceptual model, TOPMODEL, a model with a wide spread acceptance. Plotting the temporal evolution of the extent of saturated source area versus catchment average soil water content dur- ing a number of wetting and …

Green And Ampt Infiltration With Redistribution, Fred L. Ogden

Fred L. Ogden

Distributed, physically based watershed and irrigation advance models require robust infiltration estimation capabilities. The empirical Green and Ampt (GA) equation of infiltration is a popular method for estimating infiltration. The GA parameters have physical basis and considerable prior research has focused on relating these parameters to soil textural classification. However, the original GA method is limited in that it is applicable only for a single ponding period. An explicit Green and Ampt redistribution (GAR) technique is developed herein to estimate interstorm redistribution of soil water and allow multiple ponding simulations using the GA methodology. Soil water redistribution during interponding periods …

Impact Of Erosion, Mass Wasting, And Sedimentation On Human Activities In The Río Grande Basin, Jujuy Province, Argentina, Waldo Chayle, William J. Wayne

Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences: Faculty Publications

Nearly all dry mountainous regions are affected by severe erosion, floods, and debris flows during times of intense precipitation. The lithology, geologic structure, and climate in Jujuy Province, Argentina combine to place at serious risk the people who live along the Río Grande, the major river that drains the east side of the Cordillera Oriental and the west side of the Sierras Subandinas. Nearly all precipitation falls during summer (January–March) with little during the remainder of the year; most of the basin is semiarid to arid, although the southern end has a humid subtropical climate. Relief is great, as much …

Strength Of Bentonite Water-Well Annulus Seals In Confined Aquifers, Fred Ogden

Fred L. Ogden

The advantages of bentonite clay for sealing applications are well known. Bentonites have extremely low permeability, do not affect formation water chemistry, and have the ability to swell and deform in response to subsurface changes. The major limitation on the applicability of bentonite for water well annulus sealing is strength. Strength tests conducted in a physical model of a water well identified the expected magnitude of shear strength for several commercially available bentonite well-sealing products. The dependence of bentonite strength in the annulus of a water well on both setting time and borehole geometry is discussed. Force balance calculations for …