Engineering Commons^™

Modelling Of Future Flood Risk Across Canada Under Climate Change, Ayushi Gaur

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Climate change has induced changes in key climate variables and hydrological cycle in Canada. In this study, future runoff projections made by 21 GCMs following four Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) are used as inputs into a macro-scaled hydrodynamic model: CaMa-Flood to simulate 25 km resolution daily streamflow across Canada for historical (1961-2005) and future (2061-2100) time-periods. Future changes in flood-hazard as a consequence of changes in flooding frequencies of historical 100-year and 250-year return period flood events, and changes in the month of occurrence of extreme flows are analyzed. Changes in flood risk at Canada’s 100 most populous cities and …

Stream Temperature Monitoring And Modeling To Inform Restoration: A Study Of Thermal Variability In The Western Us, Jessica R. Wood

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Water temperature is an important variable for aquatic ecosystems. Salmonid population numbers and distribution are heavily influenced by stream temperature, and there is growing concern about the health of salmonid populations with anticipated climate change. Managers are looking to efficiently evaluate options to maintain stream temperatures needed by salmonids. This study evaluated and compared stream temperature restoration alternatives in two streams with warm temperatures using stream temperature monitoring and modeling.

The first study identified pockets of cold water that are important to native fish species in Nevada’s Walker River. Comparison of monitoring results with existing basin-scale model outputs identified two …

Development, Energy, And Climate Change Policy: Enabling Sustainable Development Through Access To Energy, Robert J. Brecha

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Human rights, human development, and climate change clearly overlap in many ways. Development, as quantified by the Human Development Index (HDI), for example, has historically been strongly correlated with energy consumption. This fact is recognized in Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 7, to “ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all.” Currently the world is in the midst of a large wave of human migration, much of it involuntary and due to stymied development opportunities as well as political upheaval. Climate change will become, or already is, an exacerbating factor in migration dynamics.

A pertinent question is how …

Decision Analytical Methods For Robust Water Infrastructure Planning Under Deep Uncertainty, Mehmet Umit Taner

Doctoral Dissertations

Deep uncertainties resulting from climate change, demographic pressures, and rapidly evolving socioeconomic conditions are challenging the way that water planners design and operate large-scale infrastructure systems. Conventionally, water infrastructures have been developed using stationary methods, assuming that the underlying uncertainties can be derived from historical data or experience. However, these methods are less useful under deeply uncertain climate and socioeconomic conditions, in which the future can be substantially different from the past and cannot be expressed by well-defined probability distributions. The recognition of deep uncertainties in long-term water resources planning has led to the development of “decision-analytical” frameworks that do …

Climate, Not Conflict, Explains Extreme Middle East Dust Storm, Anthony J. Parolari, Dan Li, Elie Bou-Zeid, Gabriel Katul, Shmuel Assouline

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

The recent dust storm in the Middle East (September 2015) was publicized in the media as a sign of an impending ‘Dust Bowl.’ Its severity, demonstrated by extreme aerosol optical depth in the atmosphere in the 99th percentile compared to historical data, was attributed to the ongoing regional conflict. However, surface meteorological and remote sensing data, as well as regional climate model simulations, support an alternative hypothesis: the historically unprecedented aridity played a more prominent role, as evidenced by unusual climatic and meteorological conditions prior to and during the storm. Remotely sensed normalized difference vegetation index demonstrates that vegetation cover …

Increasing Atmospheric Humidity And Co2 Concentration Alleviate Forest Mortality Risk, Yanlan Liu, Anthony J. Parolari, Mukesh Kumar, Chang-Wei Huang, Gabriel Katul, Amilcare Porporato

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

Climate-induced forest mortality is being increasingly observed throughout the globe. Alarmingly, it is expected to exacerbate under climate change due to shifting precipitation patterns and rising air temperature. However, the impact of concomitant changes in atmospheric humidity and CO₂ concentration through their influence on stomatal kinetics remains a subject of debate and inquiry. By using a dynamic soil–plant–atmosphere model, mortality risks associated with hydraulic failure and stomatal closure for 13 temperate and tropical forest biomes across the globe are analyzed. The mortality risk is evaluated in response to both individual and combined changes in precipitation amounts and their seasonal …

How Governmental Greenhouse Gas Science Has Been Weathered Through Time And Why It Matters, Christopher Apple

STAR Program Research Presentations

Global consumption of materials and energy is accelerating. The rate of plant and animal species extinction is accelerating. On a finite Earth with a growing population, current consumption cannot continue sustainably. Greenhouse gases (GHGs) tell us an important part of this story. The Global Greenhouse Gas Reference Network, managed by scientists at NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory, is the largest greenhouse gas analysis network in the world. It has been shaped by scientific questions, stagnant funding despite rises in research costs, and the task of understanding how the Earth system will respond to a changing climate. The Network began by …

Investigating Physical Processes Associated With Chesapeake Bay And Changjiang Estuary, Arash Niroomandi

Civil & Environmental Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Coastal and estuaries are landforms that not only have great impacts on large marine ecosystem, but also play a significant role in moderating or aggravating natural hazards and erosion risks that are expected to increase with climate change. This dissertation explores some of the concerns associated with coasts and coastal systems. In the second chapter, a thirty seven year wave hindcast (1979-2015) in Chesapeake Bay using NCEP's Climate Forecast System Reanalysis (CFSR) wind is presented. The long-term significant wave heights are generated by the third-generation nearshore wave model SWAN, which is validated using the wave height measurements at buoy stations …

The Interacting Hydrologic Responses To Changing Climate, Watershed Physical Characteristics, River Regulation, And Land Development In The Northeastern United States, Rouzbeh Berton

Dissertations - ALL

In this dissertation, the scale-dependency of hydrologic responses due to changing climate and regime shifts of large-scale circulation patterns and their teleconnection patterns were evaluated using long-term precipitation and discharge records in sub-basins with no development, and extensive development and riverine impoundments of the Merrimack River watershed. The Merrimack (New Hampshire-Massachusetts) is a 13,000 km2 forested (67%) watershed located in the northeastern United States. The overarching goal of this dissertation was to assess hydrologic responses to the potential effects of changing climate in sub-basins experiencing a range of development in order to help guide sustainable water management in the Merrimack …

2014, February 26 – Proposal To Abolish Or Limit Water Data Confidentiality To 1-5 Years: Improving Water Resource Management And Increasing Net Water Benefits In The State Of California

Related Research and Documents

A February 26, 2014, submission by Dr. Peter Reinelt to the California State Water Resources Control Board his Proposal to Abolish or Limit Water Data Confidentiality. This proposal provided a conceptual economic framework for a comprehensive review of the economics of water data confidentiality with the goal, in furtherance of both public and private interest, of improving water resource management and increasing net water benefits in the State of California.

Influence Of Internal Variability On Population Exposure To Hydroclimatic Changes, Justin S. Mankin, Daniel Viviroli, Mesfin Mekonnen, Arjen Y. Hoekstra, Radley M. Horton, Jason E. Smerdon, Noah S. Diffenbaugh

Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute: Faculty Publications

Future freshwater supply, human water demand, and people’s exposure to water stress are subject to multiple sources of uncertainty, including unknown future pathways of fossil fuel and water consumption, and ‘irreducible’ uncertainty arising from internal climate system variability. Such internal variability can conceal forced hydroclimatic changes on multi-decadal timescales and near-continental spatial-scales. Using three projections of population growth, a large ensemble from a single Earth system model, and assuming stationary per capita water consumption, we quantify the likelihoods of future population exposure to increased hydroclimatic deficits, which we define as the average duration and magnitude by which evapotranspiration exceeds precipitation …

Methods For Incorporating Ecological Impacts With Climate Uncertainty To Support Robust Flood Management Decision-Making, Caitlin M. Spence

Doctoral Dissertations

Modern and historic flood risk management involves accommodating multiple sources of sources of uncertainty and potential impacts across a broad range of interrelated sectors. Sources of uncertainty that affect planning include internal climate variability, anthropogenic changes such as land use and system performance expectations, and more recently changes in climatology that affect the resources supporting the system. Flood management systems potentially impact human settlements within and beyond the systems’ scope of planning, local weather patterns, and associated ecological systems. Federal guidelines across nations have called for greater consideration of uncertainty and impacts of water resources planning projects, but methods for …

Uncertainty Modeling In The Assessment Of Climate Change Impacts On Water Resources Management, Sohom Mandal

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Climate change has significant impacts on water resource systems. The objective of this study is to assess climate change impacts on water resource management. The methodology includes (a) the assessment of uncertainty introduced by choice of precipitation downscaling methods; (b) uncertainty assessment and quantification of the impact of climate change on projected streamflow; and (c) uncertainty in and impact of climate change on the management of reservoirs used for hydropower production. The assessment is conducted for two future time periods (2036 to 2065 and 2066 to 2095). The study area, Campbell River basin, British Columbia, Canada, consists of three reservoirs …

Danger Below: Socal’S Dams Face Same Risks As Oroville, Char Miller, Frank Connor Lyles '17

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Contemporary And Future Characteristics Of Precipitation Indices In The Kentucky River Basin, Somsubhra Chattopadhyay, Dwayne R. Edwards, Yao Yu

Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering Faculty Publications

Climatic variability can lead to large-scale alterations in the hydrologic cycle, some of which can be characterized in terms of indices involving precipitation depth, duration and frequency. This study evaluated the spatiotemporal behavior of precipitation indices over the Kentucky River watershed for both the baseline period of 1986–2015 and late-century time frame of 2070–2099. Historical precipitation data were collected from 16 weather stations in the watershed, while future rainfall time-series were obtained from an ensemble of 10 Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) global circulation models under two future emission pathways: Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) 4.5 and 8.5. Annual …

Combined And Synergistic Effects Of Climate Change And Urbanization On Water Quality In The Wolf Bay Watershed, Southern Alabama, Ruoyu Wang

Ruoyu Wang

Data-Driven Spatial Modeling For Quantifying Networkwide Resilience In The Aftermath Of Hurricanes Irene And Sandy, Yuan Zhu, Kun Xie, Kaan Ozbay, Fan Zuo, Hong Yang

Computational Modeling & Simulation Engineering Faculty Publications

In recent years, the New York City metropolitan area was hit by two major hurricanes, Irene and Sandy. These extreme weather events disrupted and devastated the transportation infrastructure, including road and subway networks. As an extension of the authors' recent research on this topic, this study explored the spatial patterns of infrastructure resilience in New York City with the use of taxi and subway ridership data. Neighborhood tabulation areas were used as the units of analysis. The recovery curve of each neighborhood tabulation area was modeled with the logistic function to quantify the resilience of road and subway systems. Moran's …

Detection Of Trends In The 7-Day Sustained Low-Flow Time Series Of Irish Rivers, Ahmed Nasr, Michael Bruen

Articles

A combination of statistical hypothesis testing methods (Mann-Whitney, Mann-Kendall and Spearman’s rho) and visual exploratory analysis were used to investigate trends in Irish 7-day sustained low-flow (7SLF) series possibly driven by changes in summer rainfall patterns. River flow data from 33 gauging stations covering most major Irish rivers were analysed, after excluding catchments where low flows are influenced by significant human interventions. A statistically significant increasing trend in the 7SLF series was identified by all three tests at eight gauging stations; in contrast, a statistically significant decreasing trend was identified by all three tests at four stations. The stations with …

Public Energy, Shelley Welton

All Faculty Scholarship

Many scholars and policy makers celebrate cities as loci for addressing climate change. In addition to being significant sources of carbon pollution, cities prove to be dynamic sites of experimentation and ambition on climate policy. However, as U.S. cities set climate change goals far above those of their federal and state counterparts, they are butting up against the limits of their existing legal authority, most notably with regard to control over energy supplies. In response, many U.S. cities are exercising their legal rights to reclaim public ownership or control over private electric utilities as a method of achieving their climate …

Effects Of Sea Level Rise On Hydrology: Case Study In A Typical Mid-Atlantic Coastal Watershed, Xixi Wang, Rui Li, Homa Jalaeian Taghadomi, Shohreh Pedram, Xiao Zhao

Civil & Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Sea level rise (SLR) can negatively affect the hydrology of coastal watersheds. However, the relevant information is incomplete and insufficient in existing literature. The objective of this study is to present a modeling approach to predict long-term effects of SLR on changes of flood peak, flood stage, and groundwater table with an assumption that the historical climate would reoccur in the future. The study was conducted for a typical coastal watershed in southeast USA. The results indicate that sea level had been rising at a rate of 4.21 mm yr⁻¹ from 1948 to 1982 but at a faster rate …

Water–Soil–Vegetation Dynamic Interactions In Changing Climate, Xixi Wang, Xuefeng Chu, Tingxi Liu, Xiangju Cheng, Rich Whittecar

Civil & Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Previous studies of land degradation, topsoil erosion, and hydrologic alteration typically focus on these subjects individually, missing important interrelationships among these important aspects of the Earth's system. However, an understanding of water–soil–vegetation dynamic interactions is needed to develop practical and effective solutions to sustain the globe's eco-environment and grassland agriculture, which depends on grasses, legumes, and other fodder or soil-building crops. This special issue is intended to be a platform for a discussion of the relevant scientific findings based on experimental and/or modeling studies. Its 12 peer-reviewed articles present data, novel analysis/modeling approaches, and convincing results of water–soil–vegetation interactions under …