Other Civil and Environmental Engineering Commons^™

Impact And Application Of Real-Time Control On Stormwater Systems, Aaron A. Akin

Doctoral Dissertations

Stormwater control measures (SCMs) such as dry extended detention basins and wet ponds are common practices implemented by engineers and designers to mitigate the impact of stormwater runoff. These practices are designed based on historical rainfall data to attenuate runoff to pre-development conditions and, once they are installed, are unable to adapt to changing rainfall patterns or watershed restoration objectives. To solve these climate resiliency issues, several studies were conducted which investigated the impact of retrofitting such systems with a controllable outlet to increase or change detention times during rainfall events along with the novel instrumentation and methodologies necessary for …

The Performance Impacts Of Real-Time Control On Bioretention, Padmini P. Persaud

Doctoral Dissertations

Bioretention is a green infrastructure practice used to restore natural hydrologic regimes and improve stormwater quality. Extreme weather combined with demands for treatment of a growing number of priority pollutants has put a strain on these systems, making meeting performance goals difficult. The addition of smart stormwater technology has the potential to help address these issues as more control is provided to modify internal conditions and optimize sometimes conflicting outcomes. The use of real-time control is tested in this research to determine how bioretention performance is impacted by this technology. Column studies incorporating forecasts and historic rainfall were used to …

Effects Of Historical Land-Use Change On Surface Runoff And Flooding In The Amite River Basin, Louisiana, Usa Using Coupled 1d/2d Hec-Ras–Hec-Hms Hydrological Modeling, Alexandre G. H. Cowles

LSU Master's Theses

The Amite River Basin is a largely rural watershed spanning parts of four counties in southern Mississippi and seven parishes in southeast Louisiana, with basinwide imperviousness increasing from 0.82% in 1938 to 3.85% in 2016. The Basin has been the subject of significant research interest since catastrophic flooding in 2016 caused 13 deaths and widespread damages. Rapid development in recent decades has led to an expansion of impervious surfaces in Baton Rouge and surrounding areas, encroaching on floodplains and wetlands. At the basin scale, differences in flooding due to impervious cover changes were found to be somewhat limited, particularly along …

A Comparison Of The Army Corps Of Engineers Hydrologic Modeling System And Autodesk Storm And Sanitary Analysis For Hydraulic And Hydrologic Analysis And Design, Foster Josef Heifetz Campbell

Master's Theses

Hydrological and hydraulic effects of urban development is one of the key issues of study for improved water management. The addition of impervious surfaces to once pervious land and re-routing open channels and flow paths can cause flooding or declining water levels within a watershed. Many studies of these issues have found that there can be multiple factors causing hydrological and hydraulic impacts, and it can be hard to analyze and develop effective solutions without appropriate drainage software packages. However, there are multiple software packages available for use, and determining the correct one to use for a specific challenge can …

Comparison Of Three Regionalization Techniques For Predicting Streamflow In Ungaged Watersheds In Nebraska, Usa Using Swat Model, Michael W. Van Liew, Aaron R. Mittelstet

Biological Systems Engineering: Papers and Publications

This study compared three approaches, regional averaging, nearest neighbor, and donor techniques, to regionalize parameters in the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) on eleven watersheds located in the Dissected Plains, Plains, and Rolling Hills Landforms in the eastern portion of the State of Nebraska, USA. Within the Rolling Hills Landform, three watersheds were randomly selected as calibration watersheds while two were randomly selected as validation watersheds. Two watersheds were randomly selected as calibration watersheds while one was randomly selected as a validation watershed within each of the Dissected Plains and Plains Landforms. The seven calibration watersheds were used to …

Wetlands And Coastal Systems: Protecting And Restoring Valuable Ecosystems, C. T. Agouridis, K. R. Douglas-Mankin, A. C. Linhoss, A. R. Mittelstet

Biological Systems Engineering: Papers and Publications

Wetlands and coastal systems are unique, highly productive, and often threatened landscapes that provide a host of services to both humans and the environment. This article introduces a five-article Wetlands and Coastal Systems Special Collection that evolved from a featured session at the 2015 ASABE Annual International Meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana. The Collection provides perspectives on tools and techniques for enhancing the protection and restoration of wetlands and coastal systems with emphasis on vegetation, hydrology, water quality, and planning. Topics span the Florida Everglades (two articles) and Virginia floodplain (one article) wetland systems and include remote sensing (one article) …

Using An Object And Pattern Oriented Approach To Hydrological Modelling Teaching And Research, R.W. Vervoort, J.H.A. Guillaume, T.F.A Bishop, D. Kundu, F.F. Van Ogtrop

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Introducing hydrological modelling in undergraduate teaching is challenging, and some of this is related to the decline in STEM knowledge in students. Enabling students to confidently work with a range of hydrological models remains difficult, particularly if the goal is to make students understand the modelling process and model structures. The limited literature points to a number of educational tools that have been developed, falling into three classes: magical box fully developed GUIs with little insight into model operation; highly theoretical command line linear reservoir and unit hydrograph tools; and model tools focusing on one single model structure. Given the …

Apex-Cute: An Auto-Calibration And Uncertainty Analysis Tool For The Apex Model, Xiuying Wang, Haw Yen

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The Agricultural Policy Environmental eXtender - auto-Calibration and UncerTainty Estimator (APEX-CUTE) was developed as an open-source tool which enhances the accessibility for APEX users to conduct potentially tedious calibration work on the APEX model. The role of uncertainty analysis should be taken as an independent supporting package to extend the capability in further analytical purposes. This version of APEX-CUTE incorporates relevant functions of uncertainty analysis flexibly. Users have options to include designated uncertainty sources such as input and/or measurement errors during the calibration process. APEX-CUTE is not only the comprehensive package in performing model calibration on APEX, but it can …

The Data Processing Inequality And Environmental Model Prediction, Steven V. Weijs

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Prediction in environmental systems, such as hydrological streamflow prediction, is a challenging task. Although on a small scale, many of the physical processes are well described, accurate predictions of macroscopical (e.g. catchment scale) behavior with a bottom-up mechanistic approach often remains elusive. On the other hand, conceptual or purely statistical models fitted to data often perform surprisingly well for prediction. The data processing inequality, from the field of information theory, says that processing data with statistical procedures can only decrease, and not increase the information content of the data. This seems to contradict the intuition that our knowledge of physical …

Assessing Climate Change Impacts On Water Balance, Runoff, And Water Quality At The Field Scale For Four Locations In The Heartland, Michael W. Van Liew, Song Feng, T. B. Pathak

Biological Systems Engineering: Papers and Publications

This study employed the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) to evaluate the impacts of projected future climate change scenarios on water balance, runoff, sediment, total nitrogen (N), and total phosphorus (P) at the field scale for four locations in the Heartland region: Sioux City (Iowa) and Columbus, Mullen, and Harrison (Nebraska). A conventional two-year corn-soybean rotation was assumed to be grown on each field. All fields were simulated identically in terms of topographic and cover/land management conditions. Model inputs for the fields differed in only

three ways: the forcing conditions for existing and future climatic scenarios (SRES A2, A1B, …

Using Gis To Delineate Headwater Stream Origins In The Appalachian Coal-Belt Region Of Kentucky, Jonathan A. Villines

Theses and Dissertations--Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering

Human activity such as surface mining can have substantial impacts on the natural environment. Performing a Cumulative Hydrologic Impact Assessment (CHIA) of such impacts on surface water systems requires knowing the location and extent of these impacted streams. The Jurisdictional Determination (JD) of a stream’s protected status under the Clean Water Act (CWA) involves locating and classifying streams according to their flow regime: ephemeral, intermittent, or perennial. Due to their often remote locations and small size, taking a field inventory of headwater streams for surface mining permit applications or permit reviews is challenging. A means of estimating headwater stream location …

Hydrologic Characterization Of A Rain Garden Mitigating Stormwater Runoff From A Commercial Area, John T. Mcmaine

Theses and Dissertations--Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering

Impervious surfaces such as roads, sidewalks, and roofs increase the volume of runoff generated in a watershed. Traditional stormwater management techniques emphasize conveyance of runoff away from impervious surfaces in order to reduce flooding. Rain gardens are becoming popular as a different means to manage stormwater in such a way that runoff is captured and infiltrated onsite rather than conveyed offsite. A stormwater management system consisting of a rainwater harvest system, rain garden, and infiltration chamber was built at the Coca-Cola Refreshments USA, Inc. distribution center in Lexington, Kentucky during the fall of 2011. Precipitation, inflow, and water level were …

Estimates Of Glacier Mass Loss And Contribution To Streamflow: Wind River Range (Wyoming, Usa), Jeffrey Allen Marks

Masters Theses

The Wind River Range is a continuous mountain range approximately 160 km in length in west-central Wyoming. The Wind River Range is host to roughly 680 snow and ice bodies with 63 of these considered glaciers including seven of the ten largest glaciers in the American Rocky Mountains. The presence of glaciers results in meltwater contributions to streamflow during the late summer (July, August, and September – JAS) when snowmelt is decreasing, temperatures are high, precipitation is low, and irrigation demand continues. Most studies indicate that the glaciers in the Wind River Range have been retreating since the 1850’s, the …