Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Constraint-Aware Metaheuristic Optimization For Experimental Design, Benjamin N. Fuller

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Designing experiments becomes much more challenging when many variables and strict constraints are involved, as is common in modern science and engineering. This thesis introduces a new computational and mathematical framework that efficiently searches for optimal experiments in complex, high-dimensional spaces where traditional methods fail. By combining geometric techniques with flexible optimization algorithms like particle swarm optimization, our methods handle difficult constraints while scaling to real-world problems. Built in the high-performance Julia programming language and released as open-source software, this work bridges advanced theory with practical tools, offering researchers a powerful and accessible way to design better experiments under realistic …

Leveraging The Iron Oxide Archive Of Mineralization, Deformation, And Exhumation Across Geologic Time, Jordan L. Jensen

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

The iron oxide mineral hematite commonly forms from groundwater near Earth’s surface and can preserve a history of fluid flow, fault slip, and landscape evolution. This record can be decoded using (U-Th)/He thermochronology, a dating method based on the temperature-sensitive ingrowth of helium from uranium and thorium decay. Because later heating and natural variation in hematite crystals can produce ambiguous (U-Th)/He results, I integrate dating with tools that reveal differences in hematite chemistry and textures. I apply these techniques to two distinct settings: ancient granitic rocks in Colorado and an active fault zone in the southern San Andreas fault (SSAF) …

Adversarial Heterogeneous Agent Learning For Robotic Systems: A Framework For Coordinated Competitive Behaviors, Christopher T. Allred

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Autonomous robot teams must move reliably, explain their actions, and work together—even in changing or adversarial settings. We present a structured, three-stage pathway that builds coordinated team behavior from strong single-robot skills. First, we develop robust legged-robot locomotion and interpretability using only internal actuator signals. From these proprioceptive cues, robots learn to classify terrain and predict short-term power use, enabling energy-aware movement without external sensors. We further analyze learned behaviors with motif discovery to reveal recurring sensor–action patterns, which clarify how agility emerges and guide reward design. Second, we compose these skills into heterogeneous teamwork using centralized training with decentralized …

Drought-Tolerant Plants Of Great Salt Lake: Determining Dormancy Break, Germination, And Seeding Timing Requirements To Improve Restoration Under Hydrologically Extreme Conditions, Montana Horchler

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Wetlands are declining worldwide, and those in arid regions are especially vulnerable to climate change, drought, water diversions, and other human pressures. As a result, land managers increasingly rely on active revegetation to re-establish native plant communities and their associated ecosystem functions. Restoration that utilizes seeds as the propagule source is often the most cost-effective way to revegetate large areas, but in highly variable environments such as exist at Great Salt Lake, Utah, drought and flooding regularly limit plant establishment. Restoration practitioners require science-informed strategies to reach their goal of establishing diverse native plant communities with high native species cover. …

Continuous Symmetry Discovery And Enforcement Using Vector Fields With Application To Time Series And Image Data, Benjamin D. Shaw

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Machine learning powers many technologies we use every day, from image classification in computer vision to analyzing time series data such as sensor readings or financial trends. One way to make these systems smarter and more reliable is by using symmetry, meaning patterns that remain unchanged under certain transformations, such as rotations for images or uniform changes in signal amplitude for time series. Discovering these patterns can improve understanding of data and help build models that perform well in new situations. 

Current methods for finding symmetry often rely on large neural networks and are limited to simple transformations like stretching …

Counterfactual Explanations For Time Series Through Local Pattern Mining And Generative Models, Omar Bahri

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Machine learning systems increasingly make decisions that affect people’s lives, from medical diagnoses to loan approvals. When these systems analyze time series data—sequences of measurements collected over time, such as heart rhythms or sensor readings—users need to understand why a particular prediction was made. Counterfactual explanations address this need by answering “what-if” questions: what would need to change in the input for the system to make a different prediction? 

This dissertation develops methods for generating counterfactual explanations specifically designed for time series data. Time series often contain distinctive local patterns—short subsequences that distinguish one class from another. For example, a …

Utilizing Pine Needles To Compare Spatial Profiles Of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (Pahs) In Two Urban Areas, Autumn Jensen

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are an important class of semivolatile air pollutants known for their adverse health impacts. This research used conifer needles as passive air samplers to create spatial maps of two Utah cities (Rose Park and Spanish Fork) to compare overall PAH exposure and identify any differences in their congener profiles or PAH “fingerprints”. Conifer needles were chosen due to their prevalence as a passive air sampler in previous research and their ubiquity in urban and suburban environments. Second year needles were collected and the concentrations are considered to be an annually averaged view of the PAH concentrations …

From The Hopf Fibration To Instantons: Geometry In Gauge Theory, Emily D. Wessman

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

This paper explores the relationship between topology, differential geometry, and gauge theory through the study of Yang-Mills theory and its solutions, known as instantons. Beginning with the Hopf fibration, we show how principal fiber bundles encode topological information and appear in physical contexts such as electromagnetism. In particular, we consider how the fibration of S³ over CP¹ ≅ S² represents the Dirac magnetic monopole, and how the Chern number associated with the bundle is exactly the winding number for the monopole.

We then develop the framework of gauge theory, focusing on connections on principal SU(2) bundles …

Effects Of Beaver Dams On Components Of Riverscape Health And Biodiversity In The Great Basin, Cashe C. Rasmussen

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Networks of rivers and their floodplains (i.e., low-lying areas adjacent to rivers and streams that could plausibly flood) have been degraded, reducing the availability of freshwater and habitat for people and wildlife. Therefore, land managers are pursuing cost-effective restoration strategies, including partnering with beavers (Castor canadensis), to promote the health of these ecosystems and associated benefits. However, our understanding of beaver-mediated restoration benefits remains incomplete. Here, we compared locations along streams with and without beaver dams to measure the benefits of beavers in the Great Basin of the Western United States. We measured the effects of beaver dams …

Sequential Products Of Anaerobic Denitrification In Calcareous And Noncalcareous Soils By Use Of The Gas Chromatograph, Grant S. Cooper

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

The sequential products of anaerobic denitrification were determined on seven Western soils (four alkaline, two acid, and one neutral) by soil and gas analysis. The soils with 1% alfalfa and added KNO3 were incubated at moistures slightly greater than field capacity and with an atmosphere of He. The soils and gases were periodically analyzed and balance sheets prepared. The sequence of NO3-->NO2-->N2O-->N2 operated in all soils. The rates of nitrogen interchanges and maximal amounts of nitrate, N2O2 and N2 were determined. From this data it was postulated that the rate-limiting process for denitrification in acid soils is …

Beyond Morphology: Testing Molecular Assessment Of Macroinvertebrate Communities In Alpine Streams Of The Teton Range, Usa, Joshua Vollmer

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Alpine streams and the macroinvertebrate communities that reside within them are threatened by the rapidly changing climate. Long-term monitoring of these communities is required to understand how they are changing and to predict their future trajectories. Historically, stream monitoring and assessment has been performed by collecting and identifying individuals using their morphological traits. However, in alpine aquatic ecosystems, distinct macroinvertebrate species often lack the morphological differences that allow them to be distinguished. DNA metabarcoding, an alternative method for identification which uses genetics instead of morphological differences, is not impacted by this issue, and therefore, may be better suited for alpine …

Student Programming Behavior With And Without Phone Notification Suppression, Gavin T. Eddington

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Many students work on programming assignments while receiving notifications from their phones, such as text messages or social media alerts. These notifications can interrupt focus and make it harder to stay engaged with a task. This study examines whether silencing phone notifications helps students stay more focused while programming. 

We collected data from students in an introductory computer science course while they worked on programming assignments. Students completed some assignments with notifications silenced and others without. We measured their activity using software that records typing behavior and identifies when students take long pauses, which can indicate interruptions or loss of …

Comparing Strategies For Wetland Revegetation In An Uncertain Water Future, Hailey M. Machnikowski

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Wetlands worldwide are expected to experience more frequent and intense droughts and floods due to climate change. These shifting water conditions introduce challenges to restoring wetland plants, especially using direct seeding. Seeding is cost and labor-efficient compared to planting, but seeds and seedlings are highly vulnerable to water stress, so restoration efforts often fail when conditions are too wet or dry. Understanding how to improve seed-based revegetation under these conditions is increasingly important. Therefore, we sought to understand the response, measured by percent canopy cover or dry biomass weights, of native plants to different durations of drought in greenhouse experiments, …

Advancing Context-Aware Detection Of Socially Harmful Discourse Using Transformer-Based Models, Santosh Chapagain

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Social media platforms are a central part of modern communication, shaping how people share ideas, build communities, and discuss social issues. While these spaces can support connection and self expression, they also enable the spread of harmful language such as hate speech. At the same time, social media is an important place where members of marginalized communities, including sexual and gender minorities, express stress, discrimination, and emotional challenges in ways that are often indirect and context dependent.

This research examines whether modern artificial intelligence systems can better identify harmful language and expressions of minority stress in online posts. The study …

Rainbow Dominating Sets Of Graphs, Samuel L. Powell

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

The content of this thesis may be compared to a stack of plates with a common design that are broken, one at a time. If the plates are broken into large enough pieces you would be able to choose one fragment from each broken plate to discover the entire design that the plates share. For example, if you were still missing the center of the design after taking a piece from some plates, you could look for the piece of the next broken plate with the region in question.

We study the question of how many broken plates might guarantee …

Scalable Roof Polygon Extraction And Geometric Characterization From Remotely-Sensed Data For Snow Load Assessment, Jashon Newlun

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Heavy snow accumulation on rooftops is a serious structural risk in cold climates, and understanding how much snow builds up on different types of roofs is essential for safe building design. Currently, most data on roof snow loads comes from small, labor-intensive field surveys that cover only a handful of buildings at a time. This results in far too few measurements of buildings to draw confident conclusions about how snow behaves across communities. This thesis develops and demonstrates a new automated approach for measuring roof snow accumulation and extracting key building characteristics across thousands of buildings at once using airborne …

Climate Change-Related Effects On Carbon Emissions And Net Ammonification Across Lowland To Upland Soils From A High-Latitude Coastal Ecosystem, Jenna M. Ross, Karen H. Beard, Katharine C. Kelsey, Matteo Petit Bon, A. Joshua Leffler

Wildland Resources Faculty Publications

Warming, sea-level rise, and changing herbivory patterns are affecting ecosystem processes in northern coastal soils, including carbon and nitrogen cycling, although their combined effects are poorly understood. We studied the impact of these changes in a full-factorial microcosm experiment using four distinct soil types from the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta of western Alaska. Soil was collected from three coastal wetlands, which differ in flooding frequency and use by migratory geese, and one rarely-flooded upland tundra used by geese in late summer. Microcosms containing these soils were incubated for 16 weeks at 10°C or 18°C, with or without three short-term floods, and with …

Fairhiveframes-1k: A Public Fair Dataset Of 1265 Annotated Hive Frame Images With Preliminary Yolov8 And Yolov11 Baselines, Vladimir Kulyukin, Reagan Hill, Aleksey Kulyukin

Computer Science Faculty and Staff Publications

In precision apiculture, the portable digital camera is a cost-effective sensor for capturing hive images or videos used to quantify different colony variables. Openly accessible, well-annotated, interoperable cell-level image datasets are still the exception rather than the norm. This shortage constitutes a major barrier to AI-driven approaches aimed at automating image-based comb analysis. In this article, we present FAIRHiveFrames-1K, a publicly available dataset of 1265 annotated hive frame images (1920 × 1080 PNG) designed to facilitate research in AI-intensive image-based comb analysis automation. The dataset, derived from a 2013–2022 U.S. Department of Agriculture–Agricultural Research Service multi-sensor research reservoir, includes 124,669 …

Shine: Multimodal Machine Learning Approaches For Solar Energetic Particles Events Event Prediction And Posthoc Analysis, Soukaina Filali Boubrahimi

Funded Research Records

No abstract provided.

Sprinkler Package Runoff Risk Tool For Center Pivot Irrigation Systems, Will Bowers

Spring Runoff Conference

Center pivots in Utah 

• 403,524 acres = 67% of sprinkler irrigated fields in the open in Utah 
• Considered one of the most effective sprinkler systems available with technological advancements over the years

Evaluating Alternative Water Conservation Scenarios For Alfalfa In The Great Salt Lake Basin Using Integrated Climate Model Projections, Saddy Pineda-Castellanos, Masoumeh Hashemi

Spring Runoff Conference

Elevation of Great Salt Lake North and South Arms (1903-2026)

An Estimation Of Crop Evapotranspiration Using Soil Water Balance In Vineyards, Tarique Aziz, Burdette Barker, Michael Caron, Michael Pace

Spring Runoff Conference

Breakout Session presentation given at the 2026 Spring Runoff Conference

Immersive Modeling To Generate Holistic Strategies To Get More Water To Great Salt Lake, Hadia Akbar

Spring Runoff Conference

How to get more water to GSL?

Must Address

• Complex water rights
• Competing water needs
• Historical legacies
• Variable and arid hydrology
• Infrastructure limitations and opportunities
• Lack of trust

What Makes Smart Irrigation Work? Lessons From Producers In The Upper Colorado River Basin, Tejinder Singh, Matt Yost, Elisa Flint, Burdette Barker, Jessica Ulrich-Schad, Silas Ekadu

Spring Runoff Conference

Colorado River Basin Water Crisis

• Water allocations in the Colorado River Basin were set during wetter periods and now exceed current river flows, creating a gap between water supply (12.5 maf yr^-1) and demand (15 maf yr^-1).
• River flow has declined 19% since 2000.

Making Water Visible: Neutral, Verification-First Infrastructure For Basin-Scale Water Accountability, Eric Mcculley

Spring Runoff Conference

Every Tool Tells You What the Lake Level WAS.

None Tell You What It WILL BE.

• Current monitoring is retrospective — USGS gauges and DWR reports show only historical data
• Decision lag: By the time you see the problem, it’s too late to adjust
• 2024–2025 season: GSL dropped to record lows before upstream conservation kicked in
• Agricultural users, municipalities, and GSL all compete for limited supply with imperfect information

Leasing Water For Great Salt Lake: Water Savings And Producer Impacts, Conner Harwood

Spring Runoff Conference

Great Salt Lake Water Leasing

• Utah is working to increase inflows to GSL through voluntary water leasing from agriculture
• But key information is missing:
• How much water can leases save at the field level?
• At what price should farmers be compensated?
• This project:

1. Estimates field-level consumptive water use
2. Estimates the value of water in agricultural production
3. Evaluates water savings and producer impacts across leasing strategies

Meteorological Monitoring With Real-Time Data Processing Using Uas, Htoo Poe Sar, Cal Coopmans, Sierra Young

Spring Runoff Conference

Background and Motivation 

• Agricultural water management requires information about crop water use and water consumption 
• Remote sensing methods are used to model and estimate environmental processes – but they require weather data 

Utah Prototype For Visualizing Vulnerabilities Downstream Of Dams, Courtney Flint, Michael Englert, Nicolas Holden

Spring Runoff Conference

The climate question 

• Overtopping = 1/3^rd of all dam failures (ASDSO) 
• Drought concerns and supply uncertainty motivate keeping reservoirs full 
• Overtopping likelier if extreme storm when reservoir full 
• Over much of the country the probability of the annual daily maximum rainfall > 100-year event and the preceding 30-day rainfall >10-year event are going up (Hwang & Lall 2024) 

The Reform Of Prior Appropriation And The Fate Of Great Salt Lake, Christopher L. Lant, Rocky Seeley, Beth Parker, Andrew Follett

Spring Runoff Conference

Legal Issues Raised by the Decline of Great Salt Lake

• Violations of Clean Air Act from dust threaten federal intervention
• Petition to list Wilson’s Phalarope as an endangered species

Nutrient Inputs, Crop Removal, And Residual Soil Nitrogen Under Automated Surge Irrigation In Northen Utah, Ngoni Mufute

Spring Runoff Conference

Introduction

• Increasing pressure on already water scarce resources due to

• Climate Change and or variability

• Increasing demand and competition for water. E.g. due to -urban expansion

• Environmental concerns (Especially concerning the Great Salt Lake (GSL)-

• the shrinking of water levels in the GSL,

• increasing pollution levels in the GSL and

• the impact of these issues on industry,

• dust from the drying lakebed,

• increasing threat to both aquatic life and land animals