Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Threats From Climate Change Are Increasing For Natural World Heritage Sites, Martin Falk, Eva Hagsten

GSTC Academic Symposium - In conjunction with the GSTC Global Conference Sweden April 23, 2024

The aim of the paper is to analyse the occurrence and intensity of threats to Natural World Heritage Sites from climate change as assessed by IUCN experts. The data comes from the Conservation Outlook Assessment database, which covers 250 sites for three time periods (2014, 2017 and 2020). The threat of climate change is broadly defined and includes temperature extremes, rapidly disappearing glaciers, coral bleaching, droughts, desertification, rising temperatures and rising sea levels. Simultaneous probit and ordered models with individual site effects are used to analyse the occurrence and intensity of both a perceived actual and a potential threat.

The …

Türkiye's Sustainable Tourism Transformation: An Overview, Mustafa Sogut

GSTC Academic Symposium - In conjunction with the GSTC Global Conference Sweden April 23, 2024

Türkiye has initiated a paradigm shift in its tourism industry, marked by a collaboration with the Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC), renowned for setting robust sustainability standards. The agreement, initiated in 2022, prioritizes sustainability commitment, commencing with formulating national program criteria and certification bodies training. The initial phase is targeted for completion by the end of 2023, with subsequent stages progressively implemented by 2025, ultimately aiming to meet all international standards by 2030.

This strategic move aims to position Turkey prominently in sustainable tourism, aligning with the goals of The Paris Agreement. Turkey has proactively steered its tourism industry towards …

Accuracy Of Nitrate Hysteresis And Flushing For Agricultural Watersheds In The Midwest, Noah Rudko, Sara K. W. Mcmillian, Jane Frankenberger, François Birgand

Graduate Industrial Research Symposium

Storm event-based metrics, such as hysteresis (HI) and flushing (FI), are used to differentiate nitrate pathways and sources, which is essential for watershed management. Estimations of these event-based metrics typically use high frequency (15-minute – hourly) measurements, but daily data are also used due to their greater availability. To date, there has been no study assessing how using lower frequency samples affect the accuracy of HI and FI, which could skew interpretation of potential nutrient pathways and sources. We used continuous measurements of nitrate collected at 9 watersheds throughout the Midwest spanning 448 storms. HI and FI were estimated from …

Comparative Life Cycle Assessment Of Copper Production, Xiaohan Wu

Graduate Industrial Research Symposium

Copper demand will surge significantly in the context of global renewable energy technology implementation, but its production is an energy-intensive process. It is crucial to choose the best production method to reduce environmental damage in terms of the enormous copper supply. This research develops a multi-criteria life cycle assessment model for the three main copper production routes- pyrometallurgy, hydrometallurgy, and bioleaching. We complied material and energy flow data to assess each route's life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, cost, and resource efficiency. Results indicate bioleaching emits the least GHG emissions (4.09 kg-CO2 eq/kg copper) among the three routes. Hydrometallurgy is …

Complex Impacts Of Wars On Global Sustainable Development In A Metacoupled World, Qutu Jiang, Zhenci Xu, Yuanzheng Cui, Jianguo Liu

I-GUIDE Forum

Wars and armed conflicts have had profound impacts on local and global sustainable development in an interconnected world. However, evidence on the impacts of wars is fragmented and little attention has been paid to the impacts on the 17 UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a unifying framework for achieving global sustainable development. This perspective synthesizes the scattered information to provide a holistic analysis and highlight the applications of remote sensing in assessing the impacts of wars on global sustainable development in a metacoupling world. Wars have complex impacts on all 17 SDGs, which cascade beyond conflict zones and spillover to …

Graph Transformer Network For Flood Forecasting With Heterogeneous Covariates, Jimeng Shi, Vitalii Stebliankin, Zhaonan Wang, Shaowen Wang, Giri Narasimhan

I-GUIDE Forum

Floods can be very destructive causing heavy damage to life, property, and livelihoods. Global climate change and the consequent sea-level rise have increased the occurrence of extreme weather events, resulting in elevated and frequent flood risk. Therefore, accurate and timely flood forecasting in coastal river systems is critical to facilitate good flood management. However, the computational tools currently used are either slow or inaccurate. In this paper, we propose a Flood prediction tool using Graph Transformer Network (FloodGTN) for river systems. More specifically, FloodGTN learns the spatio-temporal dependencies of water levels at different monitoring stations using Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) …

Solving Geospatial Problems Under Extreme Time Constraints: A Call For Inclusive Geocomputational Education, Coline C. Dony

I-GUIDE Forum

To prepare our next generation to face geospatial problems that have extreme time constraints (e.g., disasters, climate change) we need to create educational pathways that help students develop their geocomputational thinking skills. First, educators are central in helping us create those pathways, therefore, we need to clearly convey to them why and in which contexts this thinking is necessary. For that purpose, a new definition for geocomputational thinking is suggested that makes it clear that this thinking is needed for geospatial problems that have extreme time constraints. Secondly, we can not further burden educators with more demands, rather we should …

Curriculum Design Of Artificial Intelligence And Sustainability In Secondary School, Jinyi Cai, Mei-Po Kwan, Chunyu Hou, Dong Liu, Yeung Yam

I-GUIDE Forum

Artificial Intelligence is revolutionizing numerous sectors with its transformative power, while at the same time, there is an increasing sense of urgency to address sustainability challenges. Despite the significance of both areas, secondary school curriculums still lack comprehensive integration of AI and sustainability education. This paper presents a curriculum designed to bridge this gap. The curriculum integrates progressive objectives, computational thinking competencies and system thinking components across five modules—awareness, knowledge, interaction, empowerment and ethics—to cater to varying learner levels. System thinking components help students understand sustainability in a holistic manner. Computational thinking competencies aim to cultivate computational thinkers to guide …

Reducing Uncertainty In Sea-Level Rise Prediction: A Spatial-Variability-Aware Approach, Subhankar Ghosh, Shuai An, Arun Sharma, Jayant Gupta, Shashi Shekhar, Aneesh Subramanian

I-GUIDE Forum

Given multi-model ensemble climate projections, the goal is to accurately and reliably predict future sea-level rise while lowering the uncertainty. This problem is important because sea-level rise affects millions of people in coastal communities and beyond due to climate change's impacts on polar ice sheets and the ocean. This problem is challenging due to spatial variability and unknowns such as possible tipping points (e.g., collapse of Greenland or West Antarctic ice-shelf), climate feedback loops (e.g., clouds, permafrost thawing), future policy decisions, and human actions. Most existing climate modeling approaches use the same set of weights globally, during either regression or …

A Spatiotemporal Synthesis Of High-Resolution Salinity Data With Aquaculture Applications, Dong Liang, Jeremy M. Testa, Cassie Gurbisz, Lora A. Harris

I-GUIDE Forum

Technological advancement and the desire to better monitor shallow habitats in the Chesapeake Bay, Maryland, United States led to the initiation of several high-resolution monitoring programs such as ConMon (short for “Continuous Monitoring”) measuring oxygen, salinity, and chlorophyll-a at a 15-minute frequency. These monitoring efforts have yielded an enormous volume of data and insight into the condition of the tidal water of the Bay. But this information is underutilized in documenting the fine-scale variability of water quality, which is critical in identifying the link between water quality and ecological responses, partly due to the challenges in integrating monitoring data collected …

Cross-Scale Urban Land Cover Mapping: Empowering Classification Through Transfer Learning And Deep Learning Integration, Zhe Wang, Chao Fan, Xian Min, Shoukun Sun, Xiaogang Ma, Xiang Que

I-GUIDE Forum

Urban land cover mapping is essential for effective urban planning and resource management. Thanks to its ability to extract intricate features from urban datasets, deep learning has emerged as a powerful technique for urban classification. The U-net architecture has achieved state-of-the-art land cover classification performance, highlighting its potential for mapping urban trees at different spatial scales. However, deep learning approaches often require large, labeled datasets, which are challenging to acquire for specific urban contexts. Transfer learning addresses this limitation by leveraging pre-trained deep learning models on extensive datasets and adapting them to smaller urban datasets with limited labeled samples. Transfer …

Waste Treatment Facility Location For Hotel Chains, Dolores R. Santos-Peñate, Rafael R. Suárez-Vega, Carmen Florido De La Nuez

ITSA 2022 Gran Canaria - 9th Biennial Conference: Corporate Entrepreneurship and Global Tourism Strategies After Covid 19

Tourism generates huge amounts of waste. About half of the waste generated by hotels is food and garden bio-waste. This bio-waste can be used to make compost and pellets. In turn, pellets can be used as an absorbent material in composters and as an energy source. We consider the problem of locating composting and pellet-making facilities so that the bio-waste generated by a chain of hotels can be managed at or close to the generation points. An optimization model is applied to locate the facilities and allocate the waste and products, and several scenarios are analysed. The study shows that, …

Lpa Guide To Environmental Hurdles, Sarah Everhart, Briana Hope

Purdue Road School

Compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) is a federal requirement when utilizing federal funding for transportation projects. Attendees will learn about environmental hurdles, common schedule challenges, that can be encountered in a project and how to best mange them. Specifically, Section 106 (cultural resources), T&E species, 4(f), Public Involvement, and Environmental Justice.

Design, Collaborate, Thrive: The Broad Ripple Avenue Project, Jessica Hawley, Emily Nelson, Ericka Miller

Purdue Road School

Broad Ripple Avenue (College Avenue to Winthrop Avenue) needed large-scale stormwater improvements. With the help of the Lochmueller Group and the Broad Ripple Village Association, Indianapolis DPW perceptively took this opportunity to also improve pedestrian facilities and regional multi-modal connectivity by combining multiple regional projects into one construction contract. This consolidation allowed for a cohesive public message through proactive public involvement. Presenters will share how consensus was built between invested parties through a successful public and private partnership.

Promoting Ecosystem Services By Implementing Agroforestry, Martin L. Emerson

Ideas: Exhibit Catalog for the Honors College Visiting Scholars Series

A recent proposal to enhance the sustainability of agriculture is agroforestry, the practice of integrating trees into farmland. This technique can be analyzed through the ecosystem services model, which describes the interrelatedness of natural land, managed land, producers, and consumers. Agroforestry could shelter crops from the adverse weather conditions as well as provide habitat for wildlife. On the other hand, implementing agroforestry would also entail the drawback of a substantial upfront cost. Environmental scientists propose that efforts to reinforce ecosystem services could play a significant role in mitigating the effects of global environmental change on agriculture.

Streamlining Project Development Through Planning & Environmental Linkages, Karen Hadley, Brett Lackey

Purdue Road School

As transportation agencies continue to explore ways to be more efficient in the project development process, they are embracing integrated methodologies like planning and environmental linkages. This tool is practical, yet highly effective and inclusive, and teams across the country are experiencing its value. This presentation will highlight a variety of use cases, discuss lessons learned and best practices, and specifically address how planning and environmental linkages can be applied in Indiana and the Midwest.

A Decade Later – Us 31 Mitigation, Summer R. Elmore

Purdue Road School

Significant transportation projects are designed and built, but that’s not the end of the story. Wetland and stream mitigation efforts, including monitoring and maintenance, may continue for a decade. This presentation will showcase INDOT mitigation sites—from their creation a decade ago to the awesome results—for projects like US-31. We’ll share timelines, photos, quality data, and challenges identified and addressed over the years.

Engaging The Greater Lafayette Community In A Journey Through The Earth Sciences: Purdue’S Eaps Earth Science Passport Day Event, Dara Laczniak, Bradley Garczynski

Engagement & Service-Learning Summit

No abstract provided.

Short-Term Organic Carbon Release And Chlorine Disinfectant Decay For Cross-Linked Polyethylene (Pex) Plumbing Pipes, Miriam Tariq, Christian J. Ley, Maryam Salehi, Andrew J. Whelton

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

The use of cross-linked polyethylene (PEX) plumbing pipes has grown in popularity for residential applications. However, PEX pipes can leach organic materials into water that can enable biofilm growth, cause off-tastes and -odors, and may react with disinfectants to form disinfection by-products (DBP). Varied manufacturing processes that are applied to create PEX pipes add to the complexity of understanding organic materials released. In this study, organic carbon release from three PEX pipe brands was monitored for up to five days using a series of stagnation periods. Seven stagnation periods of 1, 2, 4, 8, 24, 72, and 120 hours were …

Estimating Watershed Residence Times In Artificially-Drained Landscapes And Relation To Nutrient Concentrations, Emma Beck, Lisa Welp, Alexandra L. Meyer

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Nutrient runoff from agricultural lands feeds harmful algae blooms that create a variety of problems in freshwater ecosystems. In order to reduce the effects of this nutrient runoff, Best Management Practices (BMPs) are being put in place in agricultural lands. Most of these BMPs focus on slowing down the flow of water through the watershed to give nutrient concentrations time to deplete before the water flows to the stream or river. However, the effectiveness of these BMPs are highly unknown and the process of monitoring nutrient runoff is often complex and costly. The data in this study consists of 7 …

Extreme Precipitation Events, Impacts, Trends And Projections For Indiana, Sam Lashley

Purdue Road School

The National Weather Service is working with core partners to build a Weather Ready Nation for present and future generations by taking advanced action against the devastating impacts of extreme weather events, including extreme precipitation and flooding. One way in which this can be accomplished is by studying trends in historical weather data and applying what we learn to future mitigation efforts. The goal is to gain a better understanding of the magnitude and impacts that future extreme precipitation events may have on local infrastructure.

This presentation will review extreme rainfall and flooding events that have occurred across Indiana along …

Roadside Integrated Vegetation Management Bmps: Right Tool For The Right Job, Cheryl Daniels, Davey Resource Group, Inc.

Purdue Road School

Based on a 3-year ODOT IVM research project, lessons learned and techniques for innovative and adaptive IVM for diverse midwestern landscapes will be presented that can increase Indiana DOTs’ efficiency and cost-effectiveness and simultaneously improve worker safety, foster safe highway use, improve roadside aesthetics, and promote environmental stewardship.

Utilizing Gis To Locate Endangered Gravel Hill Prairies Of The Wabash River Valley, Ryan W.R. Schroeder

Engagement & Service-Learning Summit

The Gravel Hill Prairies (GHP’s) of the Wabash River Valley are an endangered ecosystem in the state of Indiana and provide optimal growing conditions for a number of state endangered plants. Currently only four remnants are known to exist near Lafayette, IN, found by a previous study conducted in 1980 by Post, Bacone, and Aldrich (Proceedings of the Indiana Academy of Science, 1984, vol. 94: 457-464). These unique ecosystems have been found to occur almost exclusively on soils classified as Rodman Gravelly Loams and Strawn-Rodman complexes which occur predominantly along the outwash terraces of the Wabash River and its tributaries. …

Improving The Accuracy For The Long-Term Hydrologic Impact Assessment (L-Thia) Model, Anqi Zhang, Lawrence Theller, Bernard A. Engel

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Urbanization increases runoff by changing land use types from less impervious to impervious covers. Improving the accuracy of a runoff assessment model, the Long-Term Hydrologic Impact Assessment (L-THIA) Model, can help us to better evaluate the potential uses of Low Impact Development (LID) practices aimed at reducing runoff, as well as to identify appropriate runoff and water quality mitigation methods. Several versions of the model have been built over time, and inconsistencies have been introduced between the models. To improve the accuracy and consistency of the model, the equations and parameters (primarily curve numbers in the case of this model) …

Purdue Airsense: An Open-Source Air Quality Monitoring System, Ruihang Du, Stephane Junior Nuoafo Wanko, Shadi Tariq Azouz, Brandon Emil Boor, Greg Michalski

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Ambient air pollutants have received increasing attention in recent years since studies have demonstrated their adverse health effects. To address the sparsity of concentration data for major ambient air pollutants, researchers have introduced several new low-cost measurement methods. Despite these efforts, only a few gas concentration data and aerosol size distribution data are publicly accessible through online platforms. In this study, we used Alphasense sensors to build an innovative low-cost portable sensor system that measures the concentration of ozone, CO, NOx, and coarse and fine particulate matter (PM). Alongside the portable sensor system, we assembled lab-grade analytical instruments in a …

Acoustic Signatures Of Habitat Types In The Miombo Woodlands Of Western Tanzania, Sheryl Vanessa Amorocho, Dante Francomano, Kristen M. Bellisario, Ben Gottesman, Bryan C. Pijanowski

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

The Miombo Woodlands of Tanzania comprise several habitat types that are home to a great number of flora and fauna. Understanding their responses to increasing human disturbance is important for conservation, especially in places where people depend so directly on their local ecosystem services to survive. Soundscapes are a powerful approach to study complex biomes undergoing change. The sounds emitted by soniferous fauna characterize the acoustic profile of the landscapes they inhabit such that habitats with the highest acoustic abundance are considered as the most diverse and possibly more ecologically resilient. However, acoustic variability within similar habitat types may pose …

Persistence Of Trace Organic Contaminants From A Commercial Biosolids-Based Fertilizer In Aerobic Soils, Travis A. Banet, Jihyun R. Kim, Michael L. Mashtare

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Municipal biosolids are recycled as agricultural fertilizers. Recent studies have raised concerns due to the presence of emerging contaminants in municipal biosolids. Previous research suggests that these contaminants have the potential to reside in biosolids-based fertilizers that are commercially distributed. Use of these products in urban/suburban areas may provide a pathway for these contaminants to enter ecosystems and impact human and environmental health. Soils from Purdue University’s community garden and MiracleGro Potting Mix were chosen to represent commonly used urban/suburban growth media. Triclosan, triclocarban, and methyl parabens were selected as compounds of interest for this study. A heat treated commercial …

Experimental Testing And Validation Of P-Band Bi-Static Remote Sensing Of Soil Moisture In 137-138mhz Range, Xiangyu Qu, Yao-Cheng Lin, James L. Garrison

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Remote sensing using readily available communication signal transmitted by ORBCOMM satellites at very high frequency (VHF) range (137-138MHz) is a promising method for detecting the root zone soil moisture content. The radio wave reflectivity of soil is strongly correlated to soil moisture content. Therefore, if we were able to measure the reflectivity, we might be able to estimate the soil moisture content. In this preliminary study, we analyze direct signal data from the satellites to investigate and verify communication channels in frequency range of interest and their characteristics (bandwidth, pattern, etc.). The analysis of direct signal data is also used …

Exploring Regional And Telecoupled Land Use Change Impacts From Environmental Shocks, Kevin Hill, Liz Wachs, Brady Hardiman, David Yu, Shweta Singh

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Natural disasters or environmental shocks have the potential to disrupt local agricultural systems as well as distant agricultural systems through cascading effects. In this work we selected two distinct environmental shocks and traced their cascading effects on land use change. Quantifying cascading effects is a salient issue because climate change forecasts indicate an increase in frequency and intensity of global environmental shocks. This study incorporated the concept of telecoupled systems involving interrelating ecological, economic and political/social components. A telecoupled framework involving cascading effects was implemented using three approaches. The first approach involved using bilateral agricultural trade matrix data to analyze …

Comparing Carbon Dioxide And Water Vapor Fluxes From Tilled And Non-Tilled Maize Canopy Fields, Heather Sussman, Richard Grant

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Agricultural activities account for approximately 25% of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions. Farm management practices, such as tillage and no-tillage, may contribute more to this percentage than others. The two most abundant greenhouse gases responsible for climate change are CO₂ and H₂O, therefore it is important to determine whether tillage or no-tillage emits less of these gases. Fluxes of CO₂ and H₂O from two maize canopy fields, one with tillage and one with no-tillage, were measured in Indiana during the 2016 growing season. This study utilized the eddy covariance method, which represents flux as a …