Digital Commons Network^™

Modeling Dynamics Of Ecological Systems With Geospatial Networks And Agents, Taylor Anderson, Suzana Dragicevic

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Landscape connectivity networks are composed of sets of nodes representing georeferenced habitat patches that link together based on the maximum dispersal distance of a species of interest. Graph theory is used to measure the structure and connectivity of resulting networks to inform dispersal patterns, identify key habitat patches, and assess how changes in structure disrupts dispersal patterns. Despite their potential, landscape connectivity networks are mostly static representations, formed using maximum dispersal distance only, and thus do not account for network structure as a function of variation in habitat patch attributes and complex spatio-temporal dispersal dynamics. The main objective of this …

Integrating Public/Local And Scientific Knowledge In Model Development For Food-Energy-Water Systems, Grace B. Villamor, David L. Griffith, Andrew Kliskey, Lilian Alessa

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Conceptual and mental models are useful platforms for communicating and understanding how systems work. However, models or frameworks that are not aligned with the perceptions and understanding of the local stakeholders can propagate model output errors and uncertainties. This paper focuses on two sources of epistemic uncertainty in building food-energy-water systems (FEWS) models: (1) context and framing; and (2) model structure uncertainty. To address these uncertainties, we co-construct the FEWS conceptual model with key stakeholders using the Actor-Resources-Dynamics-Interaction (ARDI) method. The method was adopted to specifically integrate public (and local) knowledge of stakeholders in the Magic Valley region of Southern …

Simulating Dynamic Drought Adaptation Behaviour Of Agricultural Stakeholders Using Agent-Based Models, Marthe Wens, Mike Johnson

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Increasing climate variability and changing socio-economic conditions are expected to exacerbate agricultural drought risk in many parts of the world. Current risk assessments, however, do not elegantly incorporate emergent adaptation strategies and therefore fall short in their representation of vulnerability dynamics. Adopting a socio-hydrological framework allows modelers to simultaneously consider the temporal and spatial extents of meteorological and hydrological factors and dynamic human behavior. In our research, we use spatially-explicit agent-based models to investigate how humans respond to perceived drought risk and ultimately impact the hydrological system, in hopes of deriving a clearer understanding of future agricultural drought risk. Agent-based …

Space-Time Uncertainty Propagation Of Input Precipitation Across A Coupled Rainfall-Runoff Urban Drainage Model, Arturo Torres-Matallana, Ulrich Leopold

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Rainfall is one important source of uncertainty in the simulation of combined sewer overflows and the emissions of pollutants to the receiving water body. Studies often ignore the spatial dimension treating input rainfall as a non-spatially distributed time series. Neglecting spatial and space-time distribution of rainfall entering urban drainage systems may result in inaccurate quantification of rainfall and, hence, in substantial uncertainties associated to water quantity and quality predictions. We developed a space-time interpolation model for rainfall, based on space-time Kriging, using point rainfall measurements as the primary variable. We then interpolated rainfall over space and time and built a …

How Can We Develop Better Visualization Tool For Aquatic Modelers? Lessons From Developing An Aquatic Model Viewer, Jiacong Huang, Junfeng Gao

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Spatial visualization tool is critically useful to plot and compare the spatio-temporal simulation results from various aquatic models, however, is so far not well developed for free use. In this study, a free visualization tool named Aquatic Model Viewer (AMViewer) was developed using Python programing language for plotting and analyzing the spatio-temporal data from aquatic models. AMViewer included several useful functionalities: (a) comparing the differences of simulation results (e.g., water level) from different scenarios, (b) evaluating the model fits of scenarios with available measured data, (c) extracting time series values of cells from the spatio-temporal simulation results, and (d) viewing …

Comparison Of The Glue And Dream Methods For Estimating Variety Parameters For A Maize Crop Modelcomparison Of The Glue And Dream Methods For Estimating Cultivar Parameters For A Maize Crop Model, Meiling Sheng, Junzhi Liu, A-Xing Zhu, Liming Zhu

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Process-based crop models are popular scientific tools to study the impacts of environment, variety and management decisions on crop growth. Some cultivar parameters in crop models cannot be measured directly and need to be estimated. In this research, two Bayesian methods, namely the generalized likelihood uncertainty estimation (GLUE) and Differential Evolution Adaptive Metropolis (DREAM) algorithm, were used to estimate the parameters of the maize module of the Agricultural Productions Systems sIMulator (APSIM-Maize) for the first time. Six cultivar parameters of APSIM-Maize were estimated using GLUE and DREAM, respectively. Both the GLUE and DREAM methods were able to give accurate simulations …

Efficient Uncertainty Quantification In River Intervention Modelling Through Regression Of Correlated Output, Koen D. Berends, Menno W. Straatsma, Jord J. Warmink, Suzanne J.M.H. Hulscher

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

In river management, hydrodynamic models are used to predict the hydraulic effects of planned human intervention. Such interventions can range from small-scale vegetation management to large-scale flood risk reduction measures. Previous studies have shown significant uncertainty in the output of these models. However, despite the increasing call to be explicit about uncertainties of model output, high computational requirements prohibit systematic quantification of uncertainty in intervention effect studies.

We introduce a novel method that significantly reduces the computational requirements of uncertainty quantification for such studies. The main assumption of this method is that the model that describes the pre-intervention system and …

How Useful Are “Validated” Artificial Neural Network Models For Increasing Environmental System Understanding?, Holger R. Maier, Greer B. Humphrey, Wenyan Wu, Nick J. Mount, Graeme C. Dandy, Robert J. Abrahart, Christian W. Dawson

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Artificial neural network models have been used extensively for predictive purposes but can also be used to gain insights into the relationships that drive complex environmental systems that are poorly understood. However, while the validation of most types of environmental models includes residual analysis (replicative validation) and an assessment of how plausible the input-output relationship represented by the calibrated model is (structural validation), in addition to assessing predictive performance on an independent validation set (predictive validity), this is generally not done for ANN models. In order to enable these additional aspects of validation to be incorporated in the development of …

Integrated Modelling Approach To Assess Woody Biomass Supply, Demand And Environmental Impacts Of Forest Management In The Eu, Sarah Mubareka, Giorgio Vacchiano, Roberto Pilli, Maarten Hilferink, Giulia Fiorese, Ragnar Jonsson, Pablo Ruiz Castello, Wouter Nijs, Valerio Avitabile, Jasper Van Vliet, Andrea Camia

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Forests are at the intersection of European policies on climate, energy and environmental protection and will contribute significantly to the shift of the European economy towards a greater and more sustainable use of renewable resources. Knowledge of the current and future provision and use of woody biomass is necessary to support multiple policies, provide insight into how forest ecosystems and their services will respond to increasing material and energy demand, climate change, and land use competition. The main data source for forest biomass data in the European Union are National Forest Inventories (NFIs). These are carried out based on country-specific …

A Survey Of Precipitation Data For Environmental Modeling, Jan Sitterson, Chris Knightes, Rajbir Parmar, Kurt Wolfe, Brian Avant, Deron Smith

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

There is always a challenge of obtaining the “best” data to inform environmental models. Here we present different types of available precipitation datasets while detailing temporal and spatial resolution, potential errors in the dataset, and optimal performance scenarios. Our goal is to inform modelers of the various types, resolutions, and sources of precipitation data available for environmental modeling. Precipitation is the main driver in the hydrological cycle and modelers use this information to understand water quality and water availability. Environmental models use observed precipitation information for modeling past or current conditions, while simulated data are used to predict future conditions …

An Overview Of Rainfall-Runoff Model Types, Jan Sitterson, Chris Knightes, Rajbir Parmar, Kurt Wolfe, Brian Avant, Muluken Muche

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

This paper aims to inform the audience of the strengths and weaknesses of various rainfall-runoff models. Runoff plays an important role in the hydrological cycle by returning excess precipitation to the oceans and controlling how much water flows into water systems. Water resource managers use runoff data from models to help understand, control, and monitor the quality and quantity of water resources. Access to runoff data can be time consuming and restrictive. The goal of the USEPA’s Hydrologic Micro Service (HMS) project is to develop a collection of interoperable water quantity and quality modeling components that leverage existing internet-based data …

Contingency, Evolution, And The Nature Of History, William Carrigan

Open Educational Resources

This module explores the nature of history. Popular perceptions of history rely upon two flawed ideas. First, employing a naive interpretation of the theory of evolution, many believe that history is a slow march of progress toward more complex species and, after the development of humans, more complex human societies. Second, another prevalent attitude is that the history of life contains patterns that repeat and can be predicted if studied. Instead, this module emphasizes the role of luck and contingency in the history of life both before and after the arrival of homo sapiens. Beginning with an exploration of why …

Drone Photography Vs. Light Detection And Ranging (Lidar) Data - Which Source Is Best Utilized In 3-Dimensional Modeling Applications?, Austin Valentine

Student Scholarship & Creative Works

Drone Photography vs. Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) Data — Which Source is Best Utilized in 3-Dimensional Modeling Applications? is an evaluation essay comparing the analysis and modeling of both drone photography and LiDAR data. This paper gives a brief introduction into my choice of utilization between these two techniques, both of which were applied to 3-dimensional modeling of the Kincaid Mounds Archaeological site in southern Illinois. Thus, illustrating some of the advantages and disadvantages associated with both methods.

Issue 306: June 28-July 19, 2018, The Local Voice

The Local Voice

No abstract provided.

Spatial Assessment Of Water Quality With Urbanization In 2007-2015, Shanghai, China, Huixuan Li, Cuizhen Wang, Xiao Huang, Andrew Hug

Faculty Publications

Shanghai, as one of the megacities and economic centers of China, is facing critical water quality challenges. This study analyzed the impact of urbanization on the water quality in Shanghai, from 2007 to 2015, using remote sensing (RS) and geographic information system (GIS) techniques. Five measurements of water quality were employed: total discharged wastewater volume, general water quality levels, dissolved oxygen (DO), permanganate, and ammonia nitrogen. The impacts of urban land-use changes on water quality were examined. An urban index was extracted from satellite image classification and was used to quantify the anthropogenic activities. In the watershed level, unit watersheds …

Wmu Board Of Trustees Formal Session June 27, 2018, Wmu Board Of Trustees

WMU Board of Trustees Meetings

• Acceptance of the Agenda
• Approval of the Minutes (April 18, 2018 Meeting)
• Remarks by the Chair
• Remarks by the President
• Comments by the Faculty Senate President
• Comments by the Western Student Association President
• Comments by the Graduate Student Association President
• Showcasing New Student Orientation
• Public Comments Regarding Action Items
• Tuition and Fees for Main Campus
• Tuition and Fees for Extended University Programs
• University Budget for 2018-2019
• Creation of the Richmond Institute for Design and Innovation
• Academic Tenure and Promotion
• Redemption of Debt and Transfer of Building and Related Property to WMU Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine
• Action as Class …

Greasing The Data Engine: Economic Impact And Legislative Success Of Information And Communication Technologies (Ict) At Local And National Levels, Aindrila Chakraborty

Doctoral Dissertations

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) form the backbone of today’s technological and economic growth. Advances in ICT enabled technologies can be beneficial to the economic development of different sectors of a society. However, to take full advantage of ICT, availability of high-speed broadband is critical. Infrastructure development to provide high speed connection has huge upfront cost, and therefore posit a significant challenge for local governments, who are the primary decision makers with respect to broadband expansion plans. Scant research is available to measure the impact of broadband speed on local economies. In a related vein, the explosion in broadband speed …

Rescaling Drought Mitigation In Rural Sri Lanka, Emily Burchfield, Nicholas E. Williams, Amanda Carrico

Environment and Society Faculty Publications

Smallholder farmers with limited governmental and institutional support often devise innovative strategies to mitigate the impacts of water stress on agricultural production. These drought mitigation strategies can be more culturally and ecologically suitable than top-down, “technocratic,” strategies. Top-down drought mitigation approaches, however, often link farmers with significant infrastructures, financial resources, and specialized knowledge. Successful rescaling of localized mitigation practices can integrate the benefits of localized mitigation with resources available at larger scales. This paper describes the rescaling of a Sri Lankan drought mitigation practice known as bethma. We focus on the process of rescaling, specifically what is lost and …

Chamaecrista Fasciculata In Tallgrass And Sand Prairies: The Potential For Differential Responses, Robert W. Philips

Theses and Dissertations

Successful establishment of a diversity of native species has become an important goal for restoration site managers to achieve, however as seed sources for a species may occur in habitats with different abiotic and biotic characteristics. Consequently, seeds from different sources may vary in their success in a restoration. Chamaecrista fasciculata, a native prairie species, occurs in two divergent prairie types - tallgrass and sand prairies. Tallgrass prairies have a moist soil with dense vegetation; in contrast, sand prairies have a well-drained sandy soil with sparse vegetation. I propose differential selection acting on populations in these prairie types would affect …

A Fast, Integrated Model To Explore Multiple Futures And Pathways For The Bangladesh Delta, Bhuiya Md Tamim Al Hossain, Marjolijn Haasnoot, Hans Middelkoop

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Bangladesh is one of the largest active deltas in the world, heavily dependent on the rivers and water resources for agriculture and other economic activities. Currently, the country is under threat from growing numbers of natural hazards and uncertainties due to climate change, sea level rise, population growth and socio-economic development. Bangladesh has recently formulated the Bangladesh Delta Plan 2100 focusing on the long term adaptive planning. To ensure sustainable development under the deep uncertainties, long term adaptive planning is required. Adaptive planning requires that the strategies/ policies are robust and flexible with changing future conditions. To explore different future …

Socio-Ecological Modeling For Guiding Water Management: Application Of The Envision Framework For The Rio Grande/Bravo Basin, Sophie Plassin, Jennifer Koch, Kellie B. Vaché, Stephanie Paladino, Kyndra Hanson, Jack R. Friedman

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Surface water resources in semi-arid watersheds are extremely vulnerable to changing climate conditions and demographic growth. The vulnerability is highest in basins with high stresses on water resources such as the transboundary Rio Grande/Bravo basin (RGB), shared by the United States and Mexico. Designing sustainable management responses for such systems calls for a better understanding of complex human-environment interactions and the exploration of alternative futures. We present a spatio-temporal simulation model that has been developed for the whole RGB basin to capture and explore the interplay between water and land resources management strategies and vegetation dynamics. We used the ENVISION …

Exploring Distributional Influences On And Effects Of Dynamic Adaptive Policy Pathways For Repeated Coastal Hazards, Nicholas Magliocca, Margaret Walls

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The economic costs of coastal hazards have been increasing for decades, and future projections are only exacerbated by continued coastal economic growth and frequency and/or severity of coastal hazards. Policy interventions in the United States to discourage coastal development, preserve or reclaim coastal habitat, and/or decrease regional vulnerability to subsequent hazards have been largely ineffective. The urgent need for more effective adaptation policy has shifted the question from “what is the best policy” to “what is the best combination and sequence of policies” – a shift captured by the increasingly popular concept of adaptive policy pathways. However, accounting for the …

Discoverwater: An Interactive Visualization Web App For Multiple Spatio-Temporal Datasets With Application To Water Resources, Misty Porter, Mary Hill, Xingong Li

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Our previous work resulted in a visualization platform capable of clearly depicting correlations and suggesting interdependencies between time-varying, spatially-distributed quantities; it is called DiscoverWater. DiscoverWater displays time-series data in a time-evolving map and graphs. While somewhat limited in the prototype, the idea is to enable user selection of points on the map and that results in associated time-series data being plotted in user-activated synchronized graphs. In the prototype, the data plotted include monthly average streamflow, irrigation pumping, county-wide irrigation pumping, and PDSI. Simulated results can also be plotted. DiscoverWater displays how water resources change on the landscape and in the …

Survey And Map Distribution Of English Ivy (Hedera Helix L.) At Patrick's Point State Park, California, John W. Cortenbach, Buddhika D. Madurapperuma

IdeaFest: Interdisciplinary Journal of Creative Works and Research from Cal Poly Humboldt

No abstract provided.

An Integrated Modeling Approach Coupling Stakeholders’ Values And Policy Trade-Offs In Oklahoma, Usa, Gehendra Kharel Dr., Ronald Miller Dr., Chris Zou Dr., Jennifer Koch Dr., Tracy Boyer Dr., Heather Mccarthy Dr., Naci Dilekli Dr., Raymond Huhnke Dr.

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Oklahoma watersheds and urban areas are subject to increased water shortages, woody plant encroachment, and other socio-ecological issues. To investigate these issues in an integrated fashion, we are constructing an agent-based model using an integrated modeling platform, ‘ENVISION’. Three modeled areas represent the diversity within Oklahoma: Oklahoma City (urban), Kiamichi watershed (timber, reservoir), and Cimarron watershed (agriculture, grassland). Oklahoma City (OKC) stakeholders are concerned with the ‘greenness’ of the urban environment, and the water required to maintain it in the context of future urban growth and climate change, and the OKC model estimates urban greenness and the related water demand. …

An Agent-Based Approach To Evaluating Sustainable Drought Adaptation Policy, Mike Johnson, Marthe Wens

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Droughts are an increasingly prevalent and costly hazard that impact urban populations, agricultural production, and natural ecosystems. As climate becomes more variable, drought-prone regions are working to adapt through policy measures that address the diverse needs of urban centers, irrigation districts, farmers, governments, and NGOs. Developing policy pathways is a useful way to design such drought policies, however, their development requires an understanding of how human and biophysical systems interact and respond to a variety of climate and policy scenarios. In our research, we link a distributed hydrologic model with an agent based model to simulate the emergent, heterogeneous drought …

Neural Network For Tuning-Friendly Automatic Outlier Detection In Water Quality Time Series, Cyril Garneau, Peter A. Vanrolleghem

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

With the increasing presence of online sensors to monitor environmental systems, automatic outlier detection procedures are necessary to tackle the huge amount of data generated. Cleaned time series can afterwards be filtered, screened for fault detection, used for process control or decision support.

Outliers from time series exhibiting stable signals can easily be removed by tracking the local mean and standard deviation and accepting all data within, e.g., from the mean. However, environmental time series often exhibit large discontinuities or highly unstable behaviour, which requires more advanced outlier detection methods. Unfortunately, these advanced methods require complex parameterization that depends on …

Investigation Of Molluscan Survivorship Across The Cenomanian-Turonian Boundary Event Using Ecological Niche Modeling, Agathe E. Carrier

Earth and Planetary Sciences ETDs

In the beginning of the Late Cretaceous, the Western Interior Seaway experienced the effects of a global ocean anoxic event (OAE2, or the Bonarelli Event) across the Cenomanian-Turonian (C/T) boundary (~94 Ma). This event resulted in major environmental and biological disturbances creating significant biotic turnover, with recent research suggesting near mass extinction levels in some clades. In this study we utilize a paleobiological application of a modern ecological modeling technique (PaleoENM), to test whether changes in species’ survivorship and distribution patterns across this event relate to changes in their predicted suitable habitat area and abiotic niche dimensions.

Results suggest that …

The Uneven Influence Of Climate Trends And Agricultural Policies On Maize Production In The Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico, Sofia Mardero, Bridgit Schmook, Jorge Omar Lopez-Martinez, Lizette Cicero, Claudia Radel, Zachary Christman

Environment and Society Faculty Publications

Maize is an important staple crop in Mexico, and the recent intensification of climate variability, in combination with non-climatic forces, has hindered increases in production, especially for smallholder farmers. This article demonstrates the influence of these drivers on maize production trends in the three states of the Yucatan Peninsula using a mixed methods approach of climatic analysis and semi-structured interviews. Climate trend analysis and generalized additive models (GAMs) demonstrate relationships between production and climatic variability, using 1980–2010 precipitation and temperature data. Data from forty interviews with government officials and representatives of farmers' associations (gathered in 2015 and 2016) highlight the …

Measuring Parent Engagement, Sheldon Rothman, Clare Ozolins, Jo Doyle

Early Childhood Education

The Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER), working with the Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth (ARACY), undertook the task of creating a set of measures of parents’ engagement in their children’s learning. The aim was to develop a tool that individual schools could use to measure their efforts in parent engagement and monitor those efforts. A second aim was to use the data from the tool to examine the conceptual model of parent engagement previously published by ARACY and whether it fit with the data collected through the tool. The intended result was an evidence-informed definition of parent …