Hydrology Commons^™

High Resolution Spatial Variability In Spring Snowmelt For An Arctic Shrub-Tundra Watershed, Branden J. Walker, Philip Marsh Dr

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Arctic tundra environments are characterized by spatially heterogeneous end-of-winter snow cover because of high winds that erode, transport and deposit snow over the winter. This spatially variable end-of-winter snow cover subsequently influences the spatial and temporal variability of snowmelt and results in a patchy snowcover over the melt period. Documenting changes in both snow cover area (SCA) and snow water equivalent (SWE) during the spring melt is essential for understanding hydrological systems, but the lack of high-resolution SCA and SWE datasets that accurately capture micro-scale changes are not commonly available, and do not exist for the Canadian Arctic. This study ...

Assessing Water Policy Implications Of The Changing Agriculture In New Mexico, Trevor A. Birt

Shared Knowledge Conference

Agriculture is the dominant water sector in New Mexico, responsible for more than 80% of water withdrawals in 2015 (USGS 2018). Water policy needs to be extremely adaptive and informed to meet the needs of not only farmers, but cities, industry and riparian uses. Since 1840, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has conducted census surveys assessing all levels of agriculture. These data are physically published at the county, state, and national level on a 5-year cycle, detailing various material counts such as acreage, yields, and water usage, as well as socioeconomic estimates of farm costs, revenues, and hired ...

Natural Trace Element Salinization Of The Jemez River, New Mexico By Geothermal Springs And Major Tributaries, Jon K. Golla, Laura J. Crossey, Abdul-Mehdi S. Ali, Karl E. Karlstrom

Shared Knowledge Conference

The Jemez River (JR), a tributary of the Rio Grande, is in north-central New Mexico within the Jemez Mountains, which houses the active, high-temperature (≤ 300 oC), liquid-dominated Valles Caldera geothermal system (VC). This work focuses on the northern portion of the JR, spanning a reach from the East Fork JR to the town of San Ysidro. Previous decadal work during low-flow or baseflow conditions (~10-20 cfs) has identified and characterized significant major-solute contributions from two outflow expressions of the VC, Soda Dam Springs and Jemez Hot Springs, and two major tributaries, Rio San Antonio and Rio Guadalupe. There is generally ...

Imaging The Subsurface: The Effect Of Logjams On Groundwater-Surface Water Exchange, Teodora Mitroi, Megan Doughty, Jackie Randall, Kamini Singha

Georgia Undergraduate Research Conference (GURC)

Conventional methods of quantifying subsurface interactions in streams are often insufficient in characterizing hydrological processes and demand better techniques to measure complex dynamics. Point-measurements are incomplete and do not provide direct data on hyporheic exchange, a mixing of surface and subsurface water under and around a stream capable of influencing ecosystem processes. Fortunately, geophysical techniques can improve analysis of the hyporheic zone. For the first time in a field setting, we apply electrical resistivity imaging (ERI) to a mountainous stream below a channel-spanning logjam to estimate the extent of hyporheic exchange. Previous studies suggest logjams increase hydraulic resistance and drive ...

Groundwater Contamination At Coal Ash Deposit Sites In Kentucky, Brandon Rose

Scholars Week

No abstract provided.

Pedology At Four Representative Sites Of Southern Highland Zone Of Tanzania, Johnson Godlove Mtama, Balthazar Michael Msanya, Charles Lee Burras

Agronomy Publications

To study the soils of Southern Highland Zone of Tanzania, four representative pedons of some landscapes were characterized. Their names and identifiers are Seatondale, Mbimba, Inyala, and Uyole, respectively TzSea 01, TzMb 02, TzIny 03, and TzUy04. The pedons were formed from the weathering of among other materials, colluvial igneous rocks, alluvium, eluvial soils, laterite, lacustrine sands and silts, andesite, pumice, aeolian deposits, and metamorphic rocks including coarse grained and strongly foliated biotite gneisses. Twenty soil samples were taken for laboratory characterization. In addition to classical horizon by horizon descriptions and laboratory analyses, 12 core samples were taken for soil-water ...

County-Wide Assessment Of Irrigation Expansion On Air Temperature, Humidity And Evapotranspiration Rates In Nebraska, 1979-2015, Jozsef Szilagyi

Conservation and Survey Division

Total irrigated land area has been expanding in Nebraska over the last 40 years, propelling the state into a leading position within the US in terms of irrigated acreages. Typically, those counties which display the largest degree of irrigation development had a significant portion of their land area already irrigated in 1978. Large-scale irrigation in Nebraska affects its atmospheric environment. During the typical irrigation season of May to August, counties with the largest rate of irrigation expansion have cooled by about 0.2 – 0.3 °F per decade in the summer months of June, July and August, while counties with ...

The Periglacial Landscape Of Mars: Insight Into The 'Decameter-Scale Rimmed Depressions' In Utopia Planitia, Arya Bina

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Currently, Mars appears to be in a ‘frozen’ and ‘dry’ state, with the clear majority of the planet’s surface maintaining year-round sub-zero temperatures. However, the discovery of features consistent with landforms found in periglacial environments on Earth, suggests a climate history for Mars that may have involved freeze and thaw cycles. Such landforms include hummocky, polygonised, scalloped, and pitted terrains, as well as ice-rich deposits and gullies, along the mid- to high-latitude bands, typically with no lower than 20o N/S. The detection of near-surface and surface ice via the Phoenix lander, excavation of ice via recent impact cratering ...

Understanding The 2011 Upper Missouri River Basin Floods In The Context Of A Changing Climate, Andrew Badger, Ben Livneh, Martin P. Hoerling, Jon K. Eischeid

University Libraries Open Access Fund Supported Publications

Study Region: Upper Missouri River Basin.

Study Focus: The semi-arid Upper Missouri River Basin (UMRB) has experienced notable vola- tility in high and low streamflow extremes in recent decades, punctuated by the record 2011 flood. This study provides a new perspective into the relative importance of precipitation and antecedent moisture conditions in driving extreme streamflow. Ensemble streamflow simulations demonstrate that precipitation is largely the dominant driver for high streamflows. Applying the observed atmospheric forcing in 2011 with initial conditions of antecedent hydrologic conditions from 64 historic years consistently produces large streamflow events exceeding the 85th per- centile of historical peak ...

Development And Application Of The Heat Pulse Method For Soil Physical Measurements, Hailong He, Miles F. Dyck, Robert Horton, Tusheng Ren, Keith L. Bristow, Jialong Lv, Bingcheng Si

Agronomy Publications

Accurate and continuous measurements of soil thermal and hydraulic propertiesare required for environmental, Earth and planetary science, and engineering applications, but they are not practicallyobtained by steady-state methods. The heat pulse (HP) method is a transient method for determinationof soil thermal properties and a wide range of other physical properties in laboratory and field conditions. The HP method is based on the line-heat source solution of the radial heat flow equation. This literature review begins with a discussion of the evolution of the HP method and related applications, followed by the principal theories, data interpretation methods and their differences. Important ...

Estimating The Permanent Loss Of Groundwater Storage In The Southern San Joaquin Valley, California, Ryan G. Smith, Rosemary Knight, J. Chen, J. A. Reeves, H. A. Zebker, T. Farr, Z. Liu

Ryan G. Smith

In the San Joaquin Valley, California, recent droughts starting in 2007 have increased the pumping of groundwater, leading to widespread subsidence. In the southern portion of the San Joaquin Valley, vertical subsidence as high as 85 cm has been observed between June 2007 and December 2010 using Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR). This study seeks to map regions where inelastic (not recoverable) deformation occurred during the study period, resulting in permanent compaction and loss of groundwater storage. We estimated the amount of permanent compaction by incorporating multiple data sets: the total deformation derived from InSAR, estimated skeletal-specific storage and hydraulic ...

Overpumping Leads To California Groundwater Arsenic Threat, Ryan G. Smith, Rosemary Knight, Scott Fendorf

Ryan G. Smith

Water resources are being challenged to meet domestic, agricultural, and industrial needs. To complement finite surface water supplies that are being stressed by changes in precipitation and increased demand, groundwater is increasingly being used. Sustaining groundwater use requires considering both water quantity and quality. A unique challenge for groundwater use, as compared with surface water, is the presence of naturally occurring contaminants within aquifer sediments, which can enter the water supply. Here we find that recent groundwater pumping, observed through land subsidence, results in an increase in aquifer arsenic concentrations in the San Joaquin Valley of California. By comparison, historic ...

Reducing High Flows And Sediment Loading Through Increased Water Storage In An Agricultural Watershed Of The Upper Midwest, Usa, Nate Mitchell, Karthik Kumarasamy, Se Jong Cho, Patrick Belmont, Brent Dalzell, Karen Gran

Watershed Sciences Faculty Publications

Climate change, land clearing, and artificial drainage have increased the Minnesota River Basin’s (MRB) stream flows, enhancing erosion of channel banks and bluffs. Accelerated erosion has increased sediment loads and sedimentation rates downstream. High flows could be reduced through increased water storage (e.g., wetlands or detention basins), but quantifying the effectiveness of such a strategy remains a challenge. We used the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) to simulate changes in river discharge from various water retention site (WRS) implementation scenarios in the Le Sueur watershed, a tributary basin to the MRB. We also show how high flow ...

Estimating Watershed Residence Times In Artificially-Drained Landscapes And Relation To Nutrient Concentrations, Emma Beck, Lisa Welp, Alexandra L. Meyer

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Nutrient runoff from agricultural lands feeds harmful algae blooms that create a variety of problems in freshwater ecosystems. In order to reduce the effects of this nutrient runoff, Best Management Practices (BMPs) are being put in place in agricultural lands. Most of these BMPs focus on slowing down the flow of water through the watershed to give nutrient concentrations time to deplete before the water flows to the stream or river. However, the effectiveness of these BMPs are highly unknown and the process of monitoring nutrient runoff is often complex and costly. The data in this study consists of 7 ...

Remote Sensing Using I-Band And S-Band Signals Of Opportunity, Kadir Efecik, Benjamin R. Nold, James L. Garrison

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Measurement of soil moisture, especially the root zone soil moisture, is important in agriculture, meteorology, and hydrology. Root zone soil moisture is concerned with the first meter down the soil. Active and passive remote sensing methods used today utilizing L-band(1-2GHz) are physically limited to a sensing depth of about 5 cm or less. To remotely sense the soil moisture in the deeper parts of the soil, the frequency should be lowered. Lower frequencies cannot be used in active spaceborne instruments because of their need for larger antennas, radio frequency interference (RFI), and frequency spectrum allocations. Ground-based passive remote sensing ...

Spatial Response Of Near-Surface Soil Water Contents To Newly Imposed Soil Management, Aaron L. M. Daigh, Upasana Ghosh, Jodi Dejong-Hughes, Robert Horton

Agronomy Publications

Near-surface soil water content (SWC) and its spatial patterns are important for landscape hydrological responses to precipitation as well as our ability to remotely sense and model such responses. Our objective was to measure and evaluate near-surface SWC semivariograms of agricultural fields with newly imposed (i.e., <2 yr) side-by-side soil and residue management practices (i.e., reduced tillage systems and cover crops) in the midwestern United States. Range parameters were consistently smaller when cover crops were planted (20–25 m less) and tillage area and/or intensity was reduced (12–27 m less) compared with no cover crop and chisel plowing, respectively, except in a clayey Vertisol. Nugget and sill parameters did not have consistent trends across soil management practices or sites. These data, although brief and preliminary in scope, provide clear proof of concept that spatial pattern shifts can be clearly detected in newly imposed soil-management systems even though differences in SWC means are not always evident.

A Comparison Of Vnir And Mir Spectroscopy For Predicting Various Soil Properties, Joshua R. Gates

Dissertations & Theses in Natural Resources

Soil plays an important role in our daily lives, namely producing food, cleaning water and storing carbon. The ability to rapidly and cost-effectively quantify the various components of soils can help us understand and better manage this important resource. This study aims to compare the ability of visible near-infrared (VNIR) spectroscopy and mid-infrared (MIR) spectroscopy to quickly and accurately predict various important soil properties (electrical conductivity, soil pH, cation exchange capacity, exchangeable cations, phosphorus, carbon, beta-glucosidase enzyme activity and nitrogen). Prediction models were developed using partial least squares regression (PLSR) techniques. Three different calibration sampling methods were tested along with ...

Boundary Spanners And Trust Development Between Stakeholders In Integrated Water Resource Management: A Mixed Methods Study, Jodi L. Delozier

Dissertations & Theses in Natural Resources

Natural resource issues are inherently complex, even more so are those that involve the management of water. Because watersheds tend to cross multiple jurisdictional and geographical boundaries, a diverse set of stakeholders are needed to develop appropriate and sustainable management policy. This research sheds light on the importance of boundary spanners assisting in the development of trust between stakeholders in integrated water resource management (IWRM). Previous literature has explored the advantages to boundary spanning leadership in business practice, emergency management, university and community management as well as fish and wildlife management, but has failed to address the area of integrated ...

Investigations Of The Potential For Irrigated Agriculture On The Bonaparte Plains: Bore Completion Report, D L. Bennett

Resource management technical reports

Drilling programs were undertaken in 2013 and 2016 by the former Department of Agriculture and Food, Western Australia and in 2017 by DPIRD, at 10 sites in the Bonaparte Plains area, north of Kununurra in the East Kimberley region of Western Australia (WA).

These drilling programs were a component of resource availability and risk investigations conducted to determine the potential for developing irrigated agriculture on 30 000 hectares (ha) of Cockatoo Sands — free-draining loamy soils that have the potential to support crops in the wet and dry seasons. There was limited hydrogeological information available at a suitable scale for the ...

Flow Regime Influences On Stream And Riparian Soil Carbon Dynamics In The Ozark Highlands And Boston Mountains Of Arkansas, Allyn Dodd

Theses and Dissertations

The natural flow regime exerts primacy over lotic ecosystem patterns and processes. However, little work has examined the influence of flow regime on instream and riparian carbon (C) dynamics in minimally-impacted, temperate forested systems. To date, most research efforts have focused on characterizing C movement and transformations across biomes and land use categories; however, flow regime represents an overlooked, finer level of detail that may drive differences in ecosystem function. My dissertation objective was to measure C fixation and movement within and across multiple environmental spheres (e.g. within stream channels, between stream surfaces and the atmosphere, and from riparian ...