Civil and Environmental Engineering Commons^™

Modeling The Hydrology Of The Great Salt Lake: What Makes The Great Salt Lake Go Up And Down, David G. Tarboton

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Improved Registration For 3d Image Creation Using Multiple Texel Images And Incorporating Low-Cost Gps/Ins Measurements, Scott E. Budge, Xuan Xie

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

The creation of 3D imagery is an important topic in remote sensing. Several methods have been developed to create 3D images from fused ladar and digital images, known as texel images. These methods have the advantage of using both the 3D ladar information and the 2D digital imagery directly, since texel images are fused during data acquisition. A weakness of these methods is that they are dependent on correlating feature points in the digital images. This can be dicult when image perspectives are signicantly dierent, leading to low correlation values between matching feature points. This paper presents a method to …

Range Resolution Improvement Of Eyesafe Ladar Testbed (Elt) Measurements Using Sparse Signal Deconvolution, Scott E. Budge, Jacob H. Gunther

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

The Eyesafe Ladar Test-bed (ELT) is a experimental ladar system with the capability of digitizing return laser pulse waveforms at 2 GHz. These waveforms can then be exploited o-line in the laboratory to develop signal processing techniques for noise reduction, range resolution improvement, and range discrimination between two surfaces of similar range interrogated by a single laser pulse. This paper presents the results of experiments with new deconvolution algorithms with the hoped for gains of improving the range discrimination of the ladar system. The sparsity of ladar returns is exploited to solve the deconvolution problem in two steps. The rst …

Arsenic(V) Reduction In Relation To Iron(Iii) Transformation And Molecular Analysis Of Arsenate Reductase (Arra) Gene Within Sediments Of A Northern Utah, Basin-Fill Aquifer, Babur S. Mirza, Subathra Muruganandam, Xianyu Meng, Darwin L. Sorensen, Ryan Dupont, Joan E. Mclean

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Basin-fill aquifers of the Southwestern United States are associated with elevated concentrations of arsenic (As) in groundwater. Many private domestic wells in the Cache Valley Basin, UT, have As concentrations in excess of the U.S. EPA drinking water limit. Thirteen sediment cores were collected from the center of the valley at the depth of the shallow groundwater and were sectioned into layers based on redoxmorphic features. Three of the layers, two from redox transition zones and one from a depletion zone, were used to establish microcosms. Microcosms were treated with groundwater (GW) or groundwater plus glucose (GW+G) to investigate the …

Virgin River Multi-Objective Optimization: Maximizing Endangered Fish Habitat And Minimizing Costs, L. Basdekas, L. A. Bastidas, T. B. Hardy, Arthur J. Caplan, Mac Mckee

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

This paper discusses a comparative analysis of hypothetical operational scenarios by the use of dynamic temperature and fish habitat modelling in a multi-objective framework in the Virgin River Basin, Utah. Results were compared on the basis of quantified fish habitat, operational costs, and hydropower revenue. The modelling framework, the Virgin River Operation Optimization Model, is considered as a basin-level planning model. The optimization objectives were to minimize net river system operational cost of the Washington County Water Conservation District and maximize endangered fish habitat. Considerations included infrastructure alternatives to increase flow and cold water discharges as well as demand reductions. …

Low Cost Adsorbents For Sustainable Dye Containing-Wastewater Treatment, Siew Teng Ong, Pei Sin Keng, Siew Ling Lee, Yung Tse Hung

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Dyes are coloured substances that can be applied to various substrates such as textile materials, leather, paper and hair. The usage of dyes has continuously increased in many industries but the removal of this pollutant remains as a problematic issue as they are generally stable to light and oxidizing agents and are resistant to aerobic digestion. This literature review paper provides and lists several low cost adsorbents to serve as an alternative method for dye removal. Adsorption using low cost materials can be viewed as a sustainable treatment process because most of these materials are of naturally occurring, locally available …

Numerical Evaluation Of The Extended Endplate Moment Connection Subjected To Cyclic Loading, Mehdi Ghassemieh, Mehdi Jalalpour, Ali Akbar Gholampour

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

In this paper, the seismic behaviour of extended endplate moment connection is analysed using finite element method (FEM). First, an existing test setup is modelled and analysed using ANSYS computer program. The model is validated by comparing the results from the finite element with the experimental ones. Afterwards, by changing the dimensions of members of the connection, their effect on the overall seismic performance of connection is investigated. The results show that by enlarging the column depth and stiffening the connection, the seismic performance is improved and the thickness of endplate should be chosen in a way that its moment …

Response Of Free-Living Nitrogen-Fixing Microorganisms To Land Use Change In The Amazon Rainforest, Babur S. Mirza, C. Potisap, K. Nusslein, B. Bohannan, J. L.M. Rodrigues

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

The Amazon rainforest, the largest equatorial forest in the world, is being cleared for pasture and agricultural use at alarming rates. Tropical deforestation is known to cause alterations in microbial communities at taxonomic and phylogenetic levels, but it is unclear whether microbial functional groups are altered. We asked whether free-living nitrogen-fixing microorganisms (diazotrophs) respond to deforestation in the Amazon rainforest, using analysis of the marker gene nifH. Clone libraries were generated from soil samples collected from a primary forest, a 5-year-old pasture originally converted from primary forest, and a secondary forest established after pasture abandonment. Although diazotroph richness did not …

The Impact Of Slit And Detention Dams On Debris Flow Control Using Gstars 3.0, Leila Hassan-Esfahani, Mohammad Ebrahim Banihabib

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Sedimentation, Modeling, GSTARS3.0, Debris flow, Slit dam, Detention dam

Spatio-Temporal Prediction Of Root Zone Soil Moisture Using Multivariate Relevance Vector Machines, B. Zaman, Mac Mckee

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

oot zone soil moisture at one and two meter depths are forecasted four days into the future. In this article, we propose a new multivariate output prediction approach to root zone soil moisture assessment using learning machine models. These models are known for their robustness, efficiency, and sparseness; they provide a statistically sound approach to solving the inverse problem and thus to building statistical models. The multivariate relevance vector machine (MVRVM) is used to build a model that forecasts soil moisture states based upon current soil moisture and soil temperature conditions. The methodology combines the data at different depths from …

Water Resources Systems Analysis: A Bright Past And Challenging But Promising Future, David E. Rosenberg, Kaveh Madani

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

The field of water resources systems analysis is now experiencing one of its most exciting eras where scientists, decision makers, and funding agencies want to apply systems approaches to solve varied, complex, uncertain, and interdisciplinary resource management problems. Solving these problems presents great opportunities for us to engage in complex, real-world decision-making and make positive changes. However, to capitalize on these opportunities, we as a field must also overcome several large challenges related to problem identification, integration, blind use of systems tools, a focus on optimality, and harnessing big data. To overcome, we must look back to find what we …

The Spatial Distribution Of Cancer Incidence In Fars Province: A Gis-Based Analysis Of Cancer Registry Data, Ali Goli, Mahbobeh Oroei, Mehdi Jalalpour, Hossein Faramarzi, Mehrdad Askarian

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Background: Cancer is a major health problem in the developing countries. Variations of its incidence rate among geographical areas are due to various contributing factors. This study was performed to assess the spatial patterns of cancer incidence in the Fars Province, based on cancer registry data and to determine geographical clusters.

Methods: In this cross sectional study, the new cases of cancer were recorded from 2001 to 2009. Crude incidence rate was estimated based on age groups and sex in the counties of the Fars Province. Age standardized incidence rates (ASR) per 100,000 was calculated in each year. …

Hydroshare: Advancing Collaboration Through Hydrologic Data And Model Sharing, David G. Tarboton

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Ozone Photochemistry In A Natural Gas Basin During Winter: Simulations Of Results From The 2012 Utah Basin Winter Ozone Study, P. M. Edwards, K. J. Akin, J. Degouw, W P. Dubé, J. Gillman, D. Helmig, J S. Holloway, B. Lener, R. Mclaren, D. D. Parrish, J. Peischl, J. M. Roberts, T. B. Ryerson, Randy S. Martin, C. Warneke, E. J. Williams, C. J. Young, S. S. Brown

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

The Uintah Basin in northeastern Utah, a region of intense oil and gas extraction, experienced ozone (O3) concentrations above levels harmful to human health for multiple days during the winters of 2009–2010 and 2010–2011. These wintertime O3 pollution episodes occur during cold, stable periods when the ground is snow-covered, and have been linked to emissions from the oil and gas extraction process. The Uintah Basin Winter Ozone Study (UBWOS) was a field intensive in early 2012, whose goal was to address current uncertainties in the chemical and physical processes that drive wintertime O3 production in regions of oil and gas …

Response Of Stream Ecosystems To Climate Change (Iii): Characterizing And Predicting Ecologically Relevant Flow Regimes, David G. Tarboton, Sulochan Dhungel, Yi He, J.J. V. Laan, Ryan A. Hill, Jiming Jin

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Reliability-Based Topology Optimization Of Trusses With Stochastic Stiffness, Mehdi Jalalpour, James K. Guest, Takeru Igusa

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

A new method is proposed for reliability-based topology optimization of truss structures with random geometric imperfections and material variability. Such imperfections and variability, which may result from manufacturing processes, are assumed to be small in relation to the truss dimensions and mean material properties and normally distributed. Extensive numerical evidence suggests that the trusses, when optimized in terms of a displacement-based demand metric, are characterized by randomness in the stiffness that follow the Gumbel distribution. Based on this observation, it was possible to derive analytical expressions for the structural reliability, enabling the formulation of a computationally efficient single-loop reliability-based topology …

Another Look At The Collapse Of Skyline Plaza At Bailey’S Crossroads, Virginia, Jeffrey Schellhammer, Norbert Delatte, Paul A. Bosela

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

On March 2, 1973, the Skyline Plaza apartment building in Bailey’s Crossroads, Virginia collapsed while under construction. The Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) requested an investigation from the National Bureau of Standards [(NBS); now the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)]. The NBS team concluded that the most likely cause of the collapse was a punching shear failure of the 23rd floor slab. The two factors that contributed to this were premature removal of shores below the 23rd floor slab, and the low strength of the 23rd floor concrete in the area supporting the weight of the 24th …

1976 Montreal Olympics: Case Study Of Project Management Failure, Ashish Patel, Paul A. Bosela, Norbert Delatte

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

A successful engineering project must include its timely and economic completion. A project management failure can lead to delays and cost overruns. One example of a project that greatly exceeded its projected budget is the construction of the multiple facilities for the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal. These included the Olympic Stadium, a velodrome for bicycle events, and the Olympic Village to house the athletes. This case study reviews the circumstances of the cost increases and the design decisions and other circumstances that led to them. The difficulties were brought on by an unrealistic schedule to complete the facilities before …

Volatilization Of Trichloroethylene From Trees And Soil: Measurement And Scaling Approaches, William J. Doucette, H. Klein, J. Chard, Ryan Dupont, W. Plaehn, Bruce Bugbee

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Trichloroethylene (TCE) volatilization from leaves, trunk, and soil was measured to assess the significance of these pathways from phytoremediation sites at Travis and Fairchild Air Force Bases. Measurements were scaled temporally and spatially to estimate the annual volatilization of TCE at the Travis (0.82 ± 0.51 kg/yr) and Fairchild sites (0.014 ± 0.008 kg/yr). Volatilization was primarily through the leaf (0.34 ± 0.16 kg/yr at Travis and 0.01 ± 0.06 kg/yr at Fairchild) and soil (0.48 ± 0.36 kg/yr at Travis, 0.003 ± 0.002 kg/yr at Fairchild) pathways. The larger volatilization estimate at Travis was expected because of the site's …

Community Approaches To Hydrologic Data And Model Sharing Using Cloud Resources, David G. Tarboton, R. Idaszak, Jeffery S. Horsburgh, Daniel Ames, J. Goodall, L. Band, V. Merwade, A. Couch, J. Arrigo, R. P. Hooper, D. W. Valentine

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Cloud Computing

The CUAHSI HIS

• A Services-Oriented Architecture Based System for Sharing Hydrologic Data

HydroShare

• A Web-Based Collaborative Environment for the Sharing of Hydrologic Data and Models

A Decision Tree Model To Estimate The Value Of Information Provided By A Groundwater Quality Monitoring Network, Abdelhaleem I. Khader, David E. Rosenberg, Mac Mckee

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Groundwater contaminated with nitrate poses a serious health risk to infants when this contaminated water is used for culinary purposes. To avoid this health risk, people need to know whether their culinary water is contaminated or not. Therefore, there is a need to design an effective groundwater monitoring network, acquire information on groundwater conditions, and use acquired information to inform management options. These actions require time, money, and effort. This paper presents a method to estimate the value of information (VOI) provided by a groundwater quality monitoring network located in an aquifer whose water poses a spatially heterogeneous and uncertain …

Influenza Forecasting With Google Flu Trends, Andrea Freyer Dugas, Mehdi Jalalpour, Yulia Gel, Scott Levin, Fred Torcaso, Takeru Igusa, Richard E. Rothman

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Background: We developed a practical influenza forecast model based on real-time, geographically focused, and easy to access data, designed to provide individual medical centers with advanced warning of the expected number of influenza cases, thus allowing for sufficient time to implement interventions. Secondly, we evaluated the effects of incorporating a real-time influenza surveillance system, Google Flu Trends, and meteorological and temporal information on forecast accuracy.

Methods: Forecast models designed to predict one week in advance were developed from weekly counts of confirmed influenza cases over seven seasons (2004–2011) divided into seven training and out-of-sample verification sets. Forecasting procedures …

Testing Above- And Below-Canopy Representations Of Turbulent Fluxes In An Energy Balance Snowmelt Model, Vinod Mahat, David G. Tarboton, Noah P. Molotch

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Turbulent fluxes of sensible and latent heat are important processes in the surface energy balance that drives snowmelt. Modeling these fluxes in a forested environment is complicated because of the canopy effects on the wind field. This paper presents and tests a turbulent flux model developed to represent these processes in an energy balance snowmelt model. The goal is to model these processes using the readily available inputs of canopy height and leaf area index in a way that minimizes the number of parameters, state variables, and assumptions about hard to quantify processes. Selected periods from 9 years of eddy-covariance …

Ozone Photochemistry In An Oil And Natural Gas Extraction Region During Winter: Simulations Of A Snow-Free Season In The Uintah Basin, Utah, P. M. Edwards, C. J. Young, K. Aikin, J. Degouw, W. P. Dubé, F. Geiger, J. Gillman, D. Helmig, J. S. Holloway, J. Kercher, B. Lerner, Randy S. Martin, R. Mclaren, D. D. Parrish, J. Peischl, J. M. Roberts, T. B. Ryerson, J. Thornton, C. Warneke, E. J. Williams, S. S. Brown

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

The Uintah Basin in northeastern Utah, a region of intense oil and gas extraction, experienced ozone (O3) concentrations above levels harmful to human health for multiple days during the winters of 2009–2010 and 2010–2011. These wintertime O3 pollution episodes occur during cold, stable periods when the ground is snow-covered, and have been linked to emissions from the oil and gas extraction process. The Uintah Basin Winter Ozone Study (UBWOS) was a field intensive in early 2012, whose goal was to address current uncertainties in the chemical and physical processes that drive wintertime O3 production in regions of oil and gas …

Combining Data From Multiple Sources Using The Cuahsi Hydrologic Information System (Invited), David G. Tarboton, Daniel Ames, Jeffery S. Horsburgh, J. L. Goodall

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

The Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc. (CUAHSI) has developed a Hydrologic Information System (HIS) to provide better access to data by enabling the publication, cataloging, discovery, retrieval, and analysis of hydrologic data using web services. The CUAHSI HIS is an Internet based system comprised of hydrologic databases and servers connected through web services as well as software for data publication, discovery and access. The HIS metadata catalog lists close to 100 web services registered to provide data through this system, ranging from large federal agency data sets to experimental watersheds managed by University investigators. The …

Advancing Cyberinfrastructure To Support High Resolution Water Resources Modeling (Invited), David G. Tarboton, F. L. Ogden, N. Jones, Jeffery S. Horsburgh

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Addressing the problem of how the availability and quality of water resources at large scales are sensitive to climate variability, watershed alterations and management activities requires computational resources that combine data from multiple sources and support integrated modeling. Related cyberinfrastructure challenges include: 1) how can we best structure data and computer models to address this scientific problem through the use of high-performance and data-intensive computing, and 2) how can we do this in a way that discipline scientists without extensive computational and algorithmic knowledge and experience can take advantage of advances in cyberinfrastructure? This presentation will describe a new system …

Ammonia Measurements And Emissions From A California Dairy Using Point And Remote Sensors, Kori D. Moore, E. Young, C. Gurell, Michael D. Wojcik, Randy S. Martin, G. E. Bingham, R. L. Pfeiffer, J. H. Prueger, J. L. Hatfield

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Ammonia (NH3) is an important trace gas species in the atmosphere that can have negative impacts on human, animal, and ecosystem health. Agriculture has been identified as the largest source of NH3, specifically livestock operations. NH3 emissions from a commercial dairy in California were investigated during June 2008. Cattle were held in open-lot pens, except for young calves in hutches with shelters. Solid manure was stored in the open-lot pens. Liquid manure from feed lanes was passed through a solids settling basin and stored in a holding pond. Passive sensors and open-path Fourier transform infrared spectrometers (OP-FTIR) were deployed around …

Flow Measurement Accuracies Of In-Service Residential Water Meters, Devin M. Stoker, Steven L. Barfuss, Michael C. Johnson

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Water utility managers generally agree that water meters, especially mechanical water meters, experience a degradation of accuracy over time. This degradation is a function of several factors, such as wear, water quality, water velocities, throughput volumes, and installation and handling. Both a thorough understanding of the factors that affect meter accuracy and the ability to pinpoint, if possible, the optimal lifespan of any particular type of water meter in a residential distribution system are desirable for improved system management. The purpose of this article was to investigate the relationship between meter accuracy degradation and factors such as age, wear, and …

Impact Of Sampling Frequency On Annual Load Estimation Of Total Phosphorus And Total Suspended Solids, Amber Spackman Jones, Jeffery S. Horsburgh, David King Stevens, Nancy O. Mesner, Ronald J. Ryel

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

The determination of sediment and nutrient loads is typically based on the collection and analysis of grab samples. The frequency and regularity of traditional sampling may not provide representation of constituent loading, particularly in systems with flashy hydrology. At two sites in the Little Bear River, Utah, continuous, high-frequency turbidity was used with surrogate relationships to generate estimates of total phosphorus and total suspended solids concentrations, which were paired with discharge to estimate annual loads. The high frequency records were randomly subsampled to represent hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly sampling frequencies and to examine the effects of timing, and resulting …

An Examination Of The Sensitivity Of The Great Salt Lake To Changes In Inputs, Ibrahim Nourein Mohammed, David G. Tarboton

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

The Great Salt Lake is a closed basin lake in which level and volume fluctuate due to differences between inflows and outflows. The only outflow is evaporation, which depends directly on lake area and salinity, both of which depend on lake volume. The lake’s level, volume, and area adjust to balance, on average, precipitation and streamflow inflows by evaporation. In this paper, we examine the sensitivity of lake volume changes to precipitation, streamflow, and evaporation and the interactions among these processes and lake area and salinity related to volume. A mass balance model is developed to generate representative realizations of …