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Full-Text Articles in Engineering

Wind Power: Frustrating Yet Inevitable, Garth Woodruff Nov 2016

Wind Power: Frustrating Yet Inevitable, Garth Woodruff

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.


Measuring Vapor Intrusion: From Source Science Politics To A Transdisciplinary Approach, Peter C. Little, Kelly G. Pennell Oct 2016

Measuring Vapor Intrusion: From Source Science Politics To A Transdisciplinary Approach, Peter C. Little, Kelly G. Pennell

Faculty Publications

Investigation of indoor air quality has been on the upswing in recent years. In this article, we focus on how the transport of subsurface vapors into indoor air spaces, a process known as ‘vapor intrusion’, (VI) is defined and addressed. For environmental engineers and physical scientists who specialize in this emerging indoor environmental exposure science, VI is notoriously difficult to characterize, leading the regulatory community to seek improved science-based understandings of VI pathways and exposures. Yet despite the recent growth in VI science and competition between environmental consulting companies, VI studies have largely overlooked the social and political field in …


A New Open Source Platform For Lowering The Barrier For Environmental Web App Development, Nathan R. Swain, Scott D. Christensen, Alan D. Snow, Herman Dolder, Gonzola Espinoza-Dávalos, Erfan Goharian, Norman L. Jones, E. James Nelson, Daniel P. Ames, Steven J. Burian Aug 2016

A New Open Source Platform For Lowering The Barrier For Environmental Web App Development, Nathan R. Swain, Scott D. Christensen, Alan D. Snow, Herman Dolder, Gonzola Espinoza-Dávalos, Erfan Goharian, Norman L. Jones, E. James Nelson, Daniel P. Ames, Steven J. Burian

Faculty Publications

The interactive nature of web applications or “web apps” makes them a well-suited medium for conveying complex scientific concepts to lay audiences and creating decision support tools that harness cutting edge modeling techniques and promote the work of environmental scientists and engineers. Despite this potential, the technical expertise required to develop web apps represents a formidable barrier—even for scientists and engineers who are skilled programmers. This paper describes four hurdles that contribute to this barrier and introduces an approach to overcoming these hurdles. We present an open source implementation of this approach, a development and hosting environment for environmental web …


Miss Lonesome: Old Boats Past Their Prime, Garth Woodruff Aug 2016

Miss Lonesome: Old Boats Past Their Prime, Garth Woodruff

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.


Nitrogen Rate And Landscape Impacts On Life Cycle Energy Use And Emissions From Switchgrass-Derived Ethanol, Eric G. Mbonimpa, Sandeep Kumar, Vance N. Owens, Rajesh Chintala, Heidi L. Sieverding, James J. Stone Jul 2016

Nitrogen Rate And Landscape Impacts On Life Cycle Energy Use And Emissions From Switchgrass-Derived Ethanol, Eric G. Mbonimpa, Sandeep Kumar, Vance N. Owens, Rajesh Chintala, Heidi L. Sieverding, James J. Stone

Faculty Publications

Switchgrass-derived ethanol has been proposed as an alternative to fossil fuels to improve sustainability of the US energy sector. In this study, life cycle analysis (LCA) was used to estimate the environmental benefits of this fuel. To better define the LCA environmental impacts associated with fertilization rates and farm-landscape topography, results from a controlled experiment were analyzed. Data from switchgrass plots planted in 2008, consistently managed with three nitrogen rates (0, 56, and 112 kg N ha−1), two landscape positions (shoulder and footslope), and harvested annually (starting in 2009, the year after planting) through 2014 were used as input into …


An Overview Of Current Applications, Challenges, And Future Trends In Distributed Process-Based Models In Hydrology, Simone Fatichi, Enrique R. Vivoni, Fred L. Ogden, Valeriy Y. Ivanov, Benjamin Mirus, David Gochis, Charles W. Downer, Matteo Camporese, Jason H. Davidson, Brian Ebel, Norm Jones, Jongho Kim, Giuseppe Mascaro, Richard Niswonger, Pedro Restrepo, Riccardo Rigon, Chaopeng Shen, Mauro Sulis, David Tarboton Mar 2016

An Overview Of Current Applications, Challenges, And Future Trends In Distributed Process-Based Models In Hydrology, Simone Fatichi, Enrique R. Vivoni, Fred L. Ogden, Valeriy Y. Ivanov, Benjamin Mirus, David Gochis, Charles W. Downer, Matteo Camporese, Jason H. Davidson, Brian Ebel, Norm Jones, Jongho Kim, Giuseppe Mascaro, Richard Niswonger, Pedro Restrepo, Riccardo Rigon, Chaopeng Shen, Mauro Sulis, David Tarboton

Faculty Publications

Process-based hydrological models have a long history dating back to the 1960s. Criticized by some as over-parameterized, overly complex, and difficult to use, a more nuanced view is that these tools are necessary in many situations and, in a certain class of problems, they are the most appropriate type of hydrological model. This is especially the case in situations where knowledge of flow paths or distributed state variables and/or preservation of physical constraints is important. Examples of this include: spatiotemporal variability of soil moisture, groundwater flow and runoff generation, sediment and contaminant transport, or when feedbacks among various Earth’s system …