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Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Quantifying The Extent Of Wildfire Impacted Streams In The Western United States, Grady Ball Oct 2019

Quantifying The Extent Of Wildfire Impacted Streams In The Western United States, Grady Ball

Water Resources Professional Project Reports

Beginning in the mid-1980s, the number of fires and acres burned by wildfire in the United States has grown at an explosive rate. Several factors, anthropogenic and natural, have converged to create a new era of high frequency, high intensity fires, which is predicted to continue until at least mid-century. Investigations into wildfire impacts have largely focused on post-fire impacts on terrestrial systems, while effects on aquatic ecosystems have been underrepresented. The growing threat of fire to streams has accelerated the need for germane information regarding the spatial extent of fire impacts on watersheds and post-fire impacts to aquatic systems. …


Water Security And Wildfire In Municipal Source Watersheds Of The Western United States, Mattjew V. Segura Jul 2019

Water Security And Wildfire In Municipal Source Watersheds Of The Western United States, Mattjew V. Segura

Water Resources Professional Project Reports

The goal of this study is to investigate water resource security for large metropolitan areas in the western United States and to identify cities that are at potential risk of water resource degradation due to wildfire. In this study, source watersheds for western cities are identified and ranked based on the potential resistance and resilience of their water supply to wildfire impacts. Next, the wildfire hazard potential of each of these catchments is determined and erosion potential estimates are used to infer how water quality will be impacted if the watersheds burn. The findings identify large populous cities that receive …


Inventory Of Restoration Needs Of National Forest Lands Of The Contiguous United States: An Assessment Using Watershed And Terrestrial Ecosystem Classification Tools, Kevin Carns Jul 2019

Inventory Of Restoration Needs Of National Forest Lands Of The Contiguous United States: An Assessment Using Watershed And Terrestrial Ecosystem Classification Tools, Kevin Carns

Water Resources Professional Project Reports

Ecological restoration assists the recovery of degraded ecosystems by returning their structure, processes, and functions to within their natural range of variation, improving long term sustainability and resilience. The United States Forest Service has sought to increase the pace and scale of restoration treatments on lands that it manages in order to continue to provide important ecosystem services including timber production, fish and wildlife habitat, grazing, watershed protection, and recreation. The Agency developed two classification systems to identify restoration need on Forest Service managed lands, the Watershed Condition Classification (WCC) and the Terrestrial Condition Assessment (TCA). These two classification systems …


Irrigation Forbearance In The Middle Rio Grande: Using Remote Sensing To Improve Investments, Trevor Birt Apr 2019

Irrigation Forbearance In The Middle Rio Grande: Using Remote Sensing To Improve Investments, Trevor Birt

Water Resources Professional Project Reports

In extremely dry years when there is a high premium on surface water, irrigation forbearance agreements help water managers maintain riparian health, fish populations, and ensure water delivery to downstream users. In order for these programs to maximize their effectiveness and limit their impact on agricultural communities, water managers should seek the highest return on investment - or the highest amount of water per acre entered into forbearance. This may be accomplished by assessing the water requirements of fields and then grouping by conveyance lateral, to target the highest among them as good forbearance participants. Unfortunately, irrigation measurement in the …


Save Money, Save Water; Developing A Risk Model For Leak Detection And Pipe Replacement Using Spatial Analysis, Angelique Desiree Maldonado Apr 2019

Save Money, Save Water; Developing A Risk Model For Leak Detection And Pipe Replacement Using Spatial Analysis, Angelique Desiree Maldonado

Water Resources Professional Project Reports

It is imperative to properly and proactively maintain a distribution pipe system. The benefits to optimizing a pipe distribution system include ensuring a safe water quality, reducing water loss from leaks and line breaks, minimizing revenue losses and providing a reliable service. There are also economic concerns as pipe replacement is extremely expensive; in the state of New Mexico, an estimated $1.16 billion in drinking water infrastructure is needed over the next 20 years. (USEPA 2013). Because distribution pipe is so costly to replace, an approach that only looks at age or type or non-system specific data may overestimate the …


Preservation Protocols For Maintaining Species Stability Of Arsenic, Chromium, And Selenium In Water Samples, Contessa Lowery Jan 2019

Preservation Protocols For Maintaining Species Stability Of Arsenic, Chromium, And Selenium In Water Samples, Contessa Lowery

Water Resources Professional Project Reports

Water quality has become an increasing concern in recent years. The environmental challenges surrounding water quality include the presence of dissolved metals and their potential impact on human health and the environment. The challenge is exacerbated because many important metals have multiple oxidation states, which affect the health and environmental behavior of the metal. Many metals are known carcinogens and increased anthropogenic effects have inexorably made metals’ accumulation an imposing threat. Analytical instrumentation has advanced in many areas, making it now possible to measure very low concentrations of multiple elements in water. Current interest is determining the chemical speciation of …