Environmental Engineering Commons^™

Reimagining Sustainable Sulfur Concrete: A Systematic Review Of Sulfur, Waste Integration, And Durability, Vasilia Al Khaldi, Abdel Hamid I. Mourad, Maisa Elgamal

All Works

Sulfur concrete (SC) - a thermoplastic, waterless composite in which molten sulfur-based binder replaces Portland cement - is attracting growing research attention as a sustainable construction alternative capable of superior performance in chemically aggressive environments. This systematic literature review synthesises evidence from 127 sources (2000–2025), examining three interlinked dimensions: (i) the role of waste and industrial by-product materials as aggregate and filler substitutes; (ii) the influence of aggregate type, morphology, and grading on mechanical and microstructural performance; and (iii) durability under acid, saline, and freeze-thaw exposures. A transparent, PRISMA-aligned screening and classification protocol - here used as a structured review …

From Disaster To Resilience: Developing Smart Settlements In The Himalayas, Keshav Bhattarai, Ambika P. Adhikari

Himalayan Research Papers Archive

Nepal’s catastrophic 26 August 2026 Bhote Koshi–Trishuli flood should be understood not only as a humanitarian tragedy but also as a potentially major turning point in updating national settlement and reconstruction policy. Engineers and scientists have described the floods as a glacier–bedrock collapse that triggered an ice-rock avalanche and debris flow. As per the live updates on September 7, 2026, the total death toll was 1,355, and 4,996 people were missing (The Hindu, 2026). Indian and Nepali rescuers worked urgently to locate and rescue people buried under hydropower tunnels, buildings, mud, and landslide debris.

UN News reported on September 3, …

From Himalayan Catastrophe To National Resilience: Lessons From The 2026 Bhote Koshi And Trishuli River Floods In Nepal, Keshav Bhattarai, Ambika P. Adhikari

Himalayan Research Papers Archive

On the morning of 26 August 2026, the mountains above Nepal’s northern frontier delivered a disaster of almost unimaginable speed and scale. A massive mass of ice, rock, and sediment detached in the high Himalayan terrain near the Nepal–Tibet border, descended roughly 1,200 metres, interacted with the Lhende Khola system, and generated a debris-rich flood that surged through the Bhote Koshi and Trishuli river corridors, destroying settlements, markets, roads, bridges, hydropower facilities, and an international border crossing and transforming them into fields of mud, boulders, and wreckage within minutes (ICIMOD, 2026b; Reuters, 2026a). Satellite analysis indicates that a substantial section …

Sustainable Critical Minerals: Mining, Production, And Legacy, Joel G. Burken, Heileen Hsu-Kim, Mariam Al-Lami, Hunter W. Schroer, Scott Banta, Om Parkash Dhankher, Kwame Awuah-Offei, Lana Alagha

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

No abstract provided.

Ensemble Learning Framework For Predicting Close Proximity Tire–Pavement Noise On Expressways, Woo Young Cho, Jin Hwan Kim, Guk Gon Song, Kyungnam Kim, Youngguk Seo

Faculty Articles

Traffic noise is a critical public health concern affecting millions of highway users and adjacent residents worldwide. In response, many transportation agencies have adopted functional surface materials to reduce noise at the source on pavement, but assessing their effectiveness remains expensive and logistically challenging. Close Proximity (CPX) testing quantifies tire-pavement noise but requires specialized equipment costing $50,000-$126,000 and is limited to existing pavement, preventing proactive noise assessment during pavement design. This study develops machine learning models to predict CPX noise levels from readily available pavement characteristics, eliminating the need for costly tests during design and planning phases. To train and …

Can Generative Ai Make Farming Decisions? Current Status And Future Pathways: A Case Study In Row Crop Production With Chatgpt, Nipuna Chamara, Yufeng Ge, Joe Luck, Yu Pan, Saleh Taghvaeian, Cory Walters, Christopher Proctor, Daran Rudnick, Daren Redfearn

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Faculty Publications

The agricultural decision-making process is experience-based, knowledge-dependent, time-sensitive, complex, and driven by historical data. Planting, fertilization, irrigation, and chemigation are key categories in farm decision-making, and currently there is no one-shot decision-support tool that covers all these activities. Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) models are more advanced than traditional machine learning and deep learning models. These models have been trained on vast amounts of data from the internet, allowing them to accept unstructured data in various forms and generate human-like text, solutions to problems, and scenario predictions. Given this capability, we became interested in exploring the potential of generative AI in …

Waste Wood Biochar As A Potential Agricultural Soil Amendment, Gavin Rahl

Honors Theses

Biochar, as a technology, has and continues to be evaluated for a wide variety of purposes including drinking water treatment of heavy metals and air filtration for harmful contaminants. When evaluating the logging industry, a problem has emerged around residual wood waste (slash piles) in the field that biochar production may be able to address. Additionally, agriculture has begun to look for alternatives to nitrate heavy fertilizers that can cause eutrophication in waterways that biochar has the potential to address. In this study, the effect of biochar addition was assessed in agricultural fields with tight margin alfalfa/grass hay crops to …

Modification And Characterization Of Bacterial Cellulose Membranes For The Potential Removal Of Various Contaminants From Water, Madison Skeel

Honors Theses

Bacterial cellulose (BC) has emerged as a promising bio-based material for membrane filtration due to its high purity, interconnected nanofibrillar structure, and tunable physical properties. However, unmodified BC membranes function primarily as passive filtration materials, with performance largely governed by pore size and lacking the ability to effectively interact with dissolved contaminants. This study investigates the modification of BC membranes through a combination of mechanical pressing, chitosan functionalization, and citric acid crosslinking to enhance both structural control and functional performance. BC membranes were synthesized using a kombucha-based system and subsequently purified, mechanically compressed, and chemically modified. Results demonstrated that the …

Inconsistencies Emerge Between Regional And Local-Scale Water Security Metrics At Military Installations, Abigail Birnbaum, Michael L. Berg, Caitlin Grady, Daniel J. Weeks, Christopher M. Chini

Faculty Publications

Recent United States federal policy for military installations has emphasized the importance of developing a standardized approach for water security assessment to monitor changes in water resources and the ability for an installation to meet both its civilian and mission needs. For military installations in the United States, these assessments must consider demands both inside and outside the installation’s fence line, as regional resources are required to meet mission readiness. Focusing on physical water scarcity, this study compares four water security metrics with unique formulations and spatial resolutions, including an installation-scale metric and multiple regional metrics defined for either baseline …

Phytomining Potential Of Native Rocky Mountain Plants, Halle Cogley

Honors Theses

Standard mining practices of the past have left valuable, critical minerals remaining within mine waste and tailings piles. Phytoremediation, or the use of plants to uptake and store heavy metals, has grown in popularity for these sites. A new technology, phytomining, is being developed that not only offers the benefits of phytoremediation but also allows a new pathway to extract and generate revenue from these untouched critical minerals. Certain plants have been identified as hyperaccumulators with the ability to bioaccumulate a high level of certain minerals in their plant tissue. This study explored different species of native plants within the …

Phytoextraction Potential Of Willows (Salix Spp.) For Common Heavy Metal Contaminants., Johannes Chandler

Honors Theses

Phytoextraction is a method for removal and recovery of heavy metals from contaminated substrates using plants. There is a growing need to test, identify, and further understand species effective for phytoextraction to feasibly remove and recover heavy metals. In this study, the phytoextraction capacity of Willow (Salix) species was tested for metal contaminated soils and waters from legacy mining in Butte, Montana. The willows were grown in a hydroponic system in two 8-week long growth trials, employing a 2x2 factorial design of contaminated soil, clay beads, contaminated mine water and uncontaminated water as the media. Heavy metal concentrations (Mn, Zn, …

Model Stormwater Standards 2026, Unh Stormwater Center

UNH Stormwater Center

The purpose of post-construction stormwater management standards is to provide reasonable guidance for the regulation of stormwater runoff to protect local natural resources from degradation and prevent adverse impacts to adjacent and downstream land, property, facilities, and infrastructure. These standards regulate discharges from stormwater and runoff from land development projects and other construction activities to control and minimize increases in stormwater runoff rates and volumes, soil erosion, stream channel erosion, and nonpoint source pollution associated with stormwater runoff.

Evaluating The Impact Of Residential Landscape Audits Using 5-Second Water Use Data, Mahmud Aveek, Camilo J. Bastidas Pacheco, David E. Rosenberg, Jeffery S. Horsburgh, Kelly Kopp, Belize A. Lane

Civil and Environmental Engineering Student Research

We used 5-s water use data to evaluate the effectiveness of residential landscape water audits in summer 2022. Fifty-nine households in two northern Utah cities were monitored for 2–5 weeks before and 3–10 weeks after an audit. We found that the distribution of weekly irrigation volumes postaudit was statistically less than the distribution preaudit (significant at the 1.9E10-5 level). Collectively, the participants reduced their landscape irrigation water use by approximately 379,000 L per week (100,300 gal per week; 0.3 acre-feet per week). We also analyzed changes in irrigation event volume, duration, frequency, and the number of days between events at …

Ecovoltaic Solar Energy Development Creates Novel Microclimate, Temperature, And Soil Moisture Patterns Under Solar Panels In A Warm Desert, Juan Pinos, Seth M. Munson, Claire C. Karban, Matthew D. Petrie

Life Sciences Faculty Research

Background As solar energy development expands in desert regions, new installation practices and solar technologies seek to balance ecosystem conservation and energy generation (ecovoltaics). The Gemini Solar Project, a large ecovoltaic facility located in the northeastern Mojave Desert, employed low impact installation methods to reduce disturbance of the desert ecosystem within arrays of bifacial panels mounted on solar tracking systems. We evaluated microclimate and environmental conditions across five locations: four within-facility microsites (underneath solar panels, east and west panel driplines, and interspaces between panel rows) and one in the undisturbed desert outside the facility. Results Under panel microsites experienced lower …

What Is Passive And Active Release Retrofitting Rainwater Harvesting Systems?, Sarah E. Waickowski, Amy E. Scaroni, Beatriss H. Calhoun

Forestry and Natural Resources

Rainwater harvesting is the collection and temporary storage of rainwater for non-potable applications and stormwater management. Rainwater harvesting systems can be retrofitted with passive or active release to improve how well the systems manage stormwater runoff. This publication contains information that may be useful to municipalities, stormwater professionals, rainwater harvesting system owners and/or managers, homeowner associations, and stormwater educators, among others, on what is passive and active release, including their benefits and where to find more information.

Evaluation Of Existing Wwtp Using Gps-X Modelling And Simulation Software, Mohamed Hussein Hegazy, Mohamed Ibrahim Sobhy, Mohamed Nouh Meshref, Marwan Ahmed Elghonimy

Civil Engineering

Research on ways to make WasteWater Treatment Plants (WWTPs) work better is still limited. In this study, GPS-X simulation was used to predict how a WWTP behaves under different operating conditions and to suggest ideas for future improvement. GPS-X version 8.5 was applied for dynamic modelling and simulation to check the performance of the Arab Abo Saed Wastewater Treatment Plant in Helwan, Egypt. Two operating cases were studied: one with the highest water flow and the lowest pollutant levels, and another with the lowest water flow and the highest pollutant levels. Real data from two years (2022–2023) was used for …

Dataset For Equity And Justice In Water Pricing And The Effects On Water Distribution System, Brian Barkdoll

Michigan Tech Research Data

“Equity and Justice in Water Pricing and the Effects on Water Distribution System Management” Equity and justice regarding access to potable drinking water are paramount. Municipal Water Distribution Systems supply potable water to users and are essential to public health. They comprise a complicated set of source(s), pump(s), tank(s), and pipes. The price of water to users can affect the amount of usage. To find the optimal price of water to maximize utility revenue and allow changes to the system components for capital and maintenance expenditures, network modeling using the network solver fixed was performed for 15 real MDWSs.  A …

Hold Paramount The Health, Safety, And Welfare Of The Public And The Planet, Daniel B. Oerther

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

No abstract provided.

Efficiency Evaluation Of Different Methods For Nitrogen Removal In Municipal Wastewater Treatment Plants: An Integrative Review, Cristiane G. Ferrarezzi, Juliana Canto Duarte

The School of Sustainability Engineering and Environmental Engineering (SEE) Graduate Student Publications

Domestic wastewaters present high nitrogen levels due to the urea and ammonia, which are excreted into urine. Municipal wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) normally face some challenges in keeping their treated wastewater at a low total nitrogen concentration, since the majority of their wastewater is domestic. Low nitrogen levels in the treated wastewater are important to avoid increasing eutrophication of the receptor body, which receives the treated wastewater. This work presents an integrative review considering studies related to denitrification in domestic WWTPs published from January 1st, 2018, to April 30th, 2023. This review aims to identify the most effective methods for …

When Words Flow Like Water: How The Enbridge Line 3 Pipeline Environmental Impact Statement Failed To Prevent Hydrogeologic Harm In Minnesota, Carly Gutzmann

Journal of Earth and Life Science

For the aquifers of Minnesota, the environmental impact statement (EIS) was a promise of protection that never left the page. An environmental impact statement is meant to be an aid in the decision making process in order to ensure that projects consider potential environmental harms that may occur. However, they are often used instead as another regulatory box to check, rather than as active considerations when planning. As such, a project plan can be flawed from the start—if project developers only consider environmental impacts after they have already put considerable time, effort, and funding into their project as-is, they may …

Design And Fabrication Of A Scaled Automated Dairy Farm Model: A Report, Md Towfiqur Rahman

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Faculty Publications

Summary

This study investigates how ventilation systems work in dairy barns and builds a scaled model to support education and research. The project is designed to help students from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln (UNL), K-12 learners, and researchers in animal science, veterinary medicine, and engineering gain visual experience with dairy facility components and processes. Different ventilation methods were studied, leading to the design of a 1/64-scale tunnel-ventilated dairy barn meant for 60 Holstein Friesian cows. Barn dimensions were set based on real Holstein cow measurements to ensure proper cow comfort, while airflow requirements were calculated and scaled down. Miniature fans …

Triangulating Primary Sources, Professional Judgement, And Llm-Generated Summaries: Educating Nurses In An Ai-First World, Sarah Oerther, Daniel B. Oerther

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

No abstract provided.

Low-Energy Co2 Sequestration Via Palm Waste Biochar Activated With Carbide Lime For Mineral Carbonation Of Industrial Wastes, Maisa El Gamal, Ameera F. Mohammad, Basim Abu-Jdayil, Imen Ben Salem, Suhaib Hameedi

All Works

A sustainable method for enhancing CO₂ capture and sequestration was developed by accelerating the carbonation of alkaline industrial wastes using carbide lime-activated biochar (BC(CLW)), an alkaline by-product of acetylene production. The biochar was produced from palm tree waste through slow pyrolysis at 400 °C, followed by activation with carbide lime slurry to enhance its alkalinity, surface basic sites, and reactivity toward CO₂. Three industrial residues, namely ladle furnace slag (LF), baghouse dust (BH), and cyclone silo dust (CD), were blended with 0, 5, 7, and 10 wt. % BC(CLW) and carbonated under ambient conditions. Characterization by thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), Fourier-transform …

A Transdisciplinary Approach To Advancing Water Security And Public Health: The “Nurse + Engineer” Model For Achieving Sustainability In Wash Systems Using Community-Based Participatory Research, Daniel B. Oerther, Sarah Oerther

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Human health is linked to the health of the environment, a concept referred to as planetary health. As environmental challenges become increasingly complex, single-disciplinary approaches are insufficient to achieve sustainable solutions. This article presents a transdisciplinary framework, termed the "Nurse + Engineer" model, as a novel methodology for addressing complex problems at the nexus of environmental engineering and public health. The model integrates the technical design and systems-level thinking of environmental engineering with the community-based, patient-centered care of nursing. This work details the key lessons learned from the retrospective application of this framework to a series of multi-year, community-based participatory …

Environmental Engineers Develop Solutions To Problems Of Planetary Health: The Legacy Of Professor P. Aarne Vesilind, Daniel B. Oerther

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The principal ethical obligation of the engineering profession, to "hold paramount the health, safety, and welfare of the public," has been challenged for decades. Professor P. Aarne Vesilind identified two primary deficiencies: an anthropocentric bias that values nature only instrumentally and the use of non-mandatory, aspirational language for environmental protection, which resulted in the exclusion of enforceable environmental canons. This paper argues that two recent developments provide a comprehensive response to Vesilind's recommendations for engineering ethics. First, the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics has redefined environmental engineering as "developing solutions to problems of planetary health." Second, Oerther proposed a …

Element-Based Predictive Modeling Of Hydrothermal Liquefaction Bioproducts Derived From Corn Stover, Isamu Umeda, Meicen Liu, Yi Zheng, Jiefu Wang, Zhiwu Wang, Sandeep Kumar

Civil & Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

The hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) process offers an energetic advantage over pyrolysis because it does not require prior drying of the biomass feedstock. However, there are significant challenges in simultaneously estimating both the yields and characteristics of products from the HTL of biomass with theoretical support. This study developed a unique element-based kinetic model to predict the yields, higher heating values, and fuel characteristics of solid residue and heavy bio-oil, based on the temperature, residence time, solid loading, and elemental composition (C, H, N, and O) of corn stover. Furthermore, the model predicted the weights of dissolved carbon and nitrogen in …

Nonstationary Spatial Correlation Of Earthquake Ground Motions In California, Pengfei Wang, Busra Bocekli, Junhui Yang, Scott J. Brandenberg, Jonathan P. Stewart

Civil & Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Assessing seismic risk to spatially distributed infrastructure systems requires realistic representations of spatially correlated ground motions. Existing models for the spatial correlations of ground motions rely on strong second-order stationarity assumptions, under which the correlation structure is assumed to be invariant across space, potentially masking regional variations. Because repeatable site and path effects can vary spatially, the resulting correlation structure is likely to be nonstationary. We propose a nonstationary spatial correlation method that captures geographically varying correlation decay behavior. We compute site-to-site Pearson correlations of within-event residuals using earthquakes recorded at both sites in each site pair and model the …

Metagenomic Polymorphic Toxin Effector And Immunity Profiling Predicts Microbiome Development And Disease-Related Dysbiosis, Hunter W. Schroer, Francesco Beghini, Juan Antonio Raygoza Garay, Nicholas A. Christakis, Dustin E. Bosch

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Bacteria use antagonistic interbacterial weapons, such as polymorphic toxin secretion systems (TSS), to compete for niches in the human gut microbiome. We hypothesized that TSS influence gut microbiome development and disease-related dysbiosis. We developed a bioinformatic marker gene approach (PolyProf) to quantify TSS including ~200 effector and immunity genes and applied it to ~15,000 publicly available human metagenomes. PolyProf alpha and beta diversity readily distinguished 12 different human disease states and enabled the construction of highly accurate linear regression classifier machine learning models. Elastic net machine learning models integrating bacterial taxonomy with PolyProf had strong predictive value for 12 disease …

Deep Learning Framework For Sow Posture Classification From Depth Images: Comparison With Data Transformation Techniques, Models, And Cross-Validation, Md Towfiqur Rahman, Tami M. Brown-Brandl, Gary A. Rohrer, Sudhendu R. Sharma, Suzanne M. Leonard, Yeyin Shi

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Faculty Publications

Piglet preweaning mortality (PWM) in the United States averages ≈14–15%, with sow overlaying causing about one third proportion of these losses. This research aimed to develop and evaluate deep learning models to classify six sow postures using depth images to monitor behaviors linked to overlaying risk. Top-down depth images were captured with Kinect V2^® cameras at 10 frames min^-1 for five consecutive days (2 days before to 2 days after farrowing), yielding 26,506 training images from 18 sows, 17,901 testing images from 12 sows, and 4,697 additional images from three sows in diagonal stalls for external validation. Three …

Performance Assessment And Design Improvements For An Urban Coastal Detention Basin Under Intensifying Rainfall Extremes, Imiya Mudiyanselage Chathuranika, Agyare Asante, Faeghe Borhani, Xixi Wang, Mujde Erten-Unal, Dalya Ismael

Civil & Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Coastal urban areas are increasingly exposed to flooding driven by more frequent and intense rainfall events, rising sea levels, and expanding impervious surfaces. Norfolk, Virginia, a low-lying coastal city with aging stormwater infrastructure, faces heightened vulnerability to these hydrologic pressures. This study evaluates the hydraulic performance of an existing urban detention basin within the Edgewater–Larchmont catchment under 10-, 50-, and 100-year, 2-h design storms using the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Storm Water Management Model (SWMM). Simulations were conducted for both pre- and post-development conditions to assess changes in peak discharge, storage capacity, and water level dynamics. Results show that urbanization, …