Environmental Engineering Commons^™

Evaluating The Two-Stage Ditch As A New Best Management Practice, Andi Hodaj

Open Access Dissertations

A two-stage ditch involves modifications of a traditional drainage ditch to resemble more the features of a natural stream. The idea is to create or simulate extended benches on both sides of the ditch that would develop naturally over a period of time in a stream because of geomorphological processes. Previous research in Indiana and Ohio has shown that two-stage ditches offer the potential to reduce sediment load and extend the interaction time between water and vegetation on the benches allowing larger uptake of nutrients from the vegetation on the extended benches, and increasing the denitrification rates in the bench …

The Economics Of Agricultural Water Productivity In The Blue Nile, Imeshi Weerasinghe, James Booker, Wim Bastiaanssen, Lisa-Marie Rebelo, Ann Van Griensven

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Agricultural Water Productivity (AWP) is often simplified as the ‘crop per drop’, described as the output in terms of yield or biomass per unit of water input. This purely physical measure of Water Productivity (WP) using only a single factor input (water) does not consider: (1) the level of other inputs used in conjunction with water, (2) the opportunity cost of water as an input, (3) the value of the output and (4) the costs of production for different crops. This study presents a justification and methodology for incorporating these factors into WP indicators. The application of these extensions to …

Using Scenario Analysis To Investigate Uncertainty In Water Resource Management, Baihua Fu, Joseph Guillaume, Mike Asher, Tony Jakeman

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Water resource management is a challenging task due to the complexity and uncertainty of the environmental systems and challenges of addressing multiple stakeholder perspectives. A crucial issue is therefore in specifically understanding if and how we can make decisions under such deep uncertainty.

We examined this issue in a case study which estimates groundwater sustainability, farm profit and ecological outcomes of many drivers (e.g. climate change, water policy, farm practices). An integrated model was developed for this purpose. It encompasses a surface and groundwater model, water allocation rules, a farm decision and crop model and an ecology model. Scenarios were …

Explicit Cost Accounting For Adaptation, Mitigation And Ecosystem Service Provision In Agriculture, Franz Sinabell, Karin Heinschink, Christoph Tribl

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Farmers, policy makers and scientists are well aware of this problem: obtaining sound cost information for climate change adaptation and mitigation measures in agriculture or ecosystem service provision by agriculture is burdensome. In most cases, data sets are developed for a specific region with a given set of management variants for a baseline period. Adapting such information to another region or adjusting costs to expected future price scenarios requires additional efforts and frequently done an ad-hoc and case by case. A new tool is presented that can be used to identify and analyze the entangled effects of future climate and …

An Agent-Based Model Of Jordan Highland Farmer Decision Making, Phil Selby, Josue Medellin-Azuara, Christian Klassert, Jim Yoon, Julien Harou

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

We build a hydro-economic behavioural model of groundwater irrigated agriculture to help understand and analyse the impact of institutional and biophysical changes on land and water use in the Jordan Highlands. The model sits within a Multi-Agent-Simulation (MAS) framework representing the physical and institutional components of the wider national water resources system, which are being modelled by an interdisciplinary team, including a tanker water market and a groundwater model which interact with the farmer model. The MAS is designed to evaluate climate change scenarios and policy interventions to test whether reform of institutional rules that govern water usage in Jordan …

The Influence Of Sediment Characteristics On The Fate Of Steroidogenic Compounds In Aquatic Systems And The Effects On Progesterone Bioavailability In A Target Organism, Jodi L. Sangster

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

There is growing concern about the biologic effects stemming from steroids in impacted waterways. In aquatic systems, interaction between steroids and sediment influence both contaminant fate as well as subsequent bioavailability to aquatic organisms. The focus of this dissertation research was to gain a better understanding of steroid behavior in aquatic systems based on the physiochemical properties of sediment and to use this knowledge to better understand the biological effects stemming from sediment-associated progesterone exposure. Two natural aquatic sediments, a sand and a silty loam, were selected to represent marked differences in sediments properties. Initially, sorption of 17β-estradiol, estrone, progesterone, …

Using Zeolite For Soil Moisture Retention And Salinity Control, Mark Torres

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

There is a great need in the desert southwest United States for exploring ways to save water in agriculture as it accounts for up to 90 percent of water consumption in many western states (USDA 2016). As surface water reaches critical lows the dependence on ground water has increased leading to the need for deeper wells with higher salt concentrations. The studies conducted for this research included using zeolites from the St Cloud Mining Company in Winston, New Mexico to determine the feasibility of using these zeolites to help and retain moisture in zeolite treated soils. The Volumetric Water Content …