Hydrology Commons^™

Evaluating A Measure-Calculate Method For Determining Sediment Oxygen Demand In Lakes, Adrian Beirise

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A steady-state mass diffusion model used with simple measurable and calculable inputs for determining sediment oxygen demand (SOD) is compared to an intact core incubation (ICI) SOD method using samples from three lakes. The mass diffusion model coupled with inputs is known as the measure-calculate method (M-C) and is a potential alternative to existing methods for measuring SOD which are more complex, time-consuming, and costly. The M-C method requires inputs for volumetric sediment oxygen uptake (Ṅsed), sediment density and porosity, and water properties. Ṅsed was determined by suspending sediment in oxygen-saturated water with a DO probe and determining the steady …

Do Limestone Quarries Act As “Engineered Sinkholes”? Analysis Of Exfiltration Of Groundwater From Limestone Quarries In The Boone Formation, Ozark Physiographic Province, Arkansas, Usa, Noel Turner

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Limestone quarries are a source of construction materials that are utilized in our everyday lives. Karst landscapes cover up to 15 percent of the Earth’s surface, and limestone quarries are found in these environmentally sensitive regions where groundwater and surface-water interactions are dynamic and complex. Several studies have provided conceptual models of groundwater flow to and out of quarries. The goal of this research was to describe the geochemistry of water exfiltration from limestone quarries in karst regions via joints, fractures, faulting, or karst features and to determine if limestone quarries are “engineered sinkholes”; that is to say: did quarries, …

Influences Of Channel Dredging On Avulsion Potential At The Atchafalaya River, Gordon William Mccain

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In 1950, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) reported a rapid increase of water discharge from the Mississippi River to its distributary channel; the Atchafalaya River. If not prevented by man-made structures, the complete capture of the Mississippi River by the Atchafalaya River was predicted. The USACE report cites multiple causes for the observed increase in discharge partitioning, yet fails to assess the largescale channel dredging operations conducted throughout the Atchafalaya River Basin during the 1930's and 1940's as a potential cause for the increased discharge. To assess the role man-made interventions, specifically channel dredging, played in the increase …

Linear Trend Analysis: Implications For A Structural Fracture System And Applications Of Subsurface Fluid Migration, Northwest Arkansas And Eastern Oklahoma, Loren Labusch

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Lineaments are mappable, simple or composite linear or curvilinear features of the Earth’s surface longer than one mile, which differ from the patterns of adjacent features and are presumed to reflect subsurface phenomenon such as faults and fractures. The usage of the term refers to the description Lattman published in 1958 and was the foundation for work by MacDonald in 1977, which is the basis for this project. Remote sensing techniques have provided a valuable means to analyze lineaments on a large scale in a relatively short time in comparison to field mapping methods. The products of such fracture studies …

Hydrology-Biology Response Relationships In The Ozark Highlands, Dustin Thomas Lynch

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

I examined flow-ecology relationships among stream communities in the Ozark Highlands, USA. I sampled fish, crayfish, and benthic macroinvertebrates during two consecutive summers, including a drought year (2012) and a flood year (2013). Biological response variables related to community structure were assessed via two different statistical methods: an Information Theoretic approach relating response variables to a priori selected predictor variables incorporating hydrology, habitat, geomorphology, and water quality, and canonical ordination using forward selection to relate these same response variables to a large assortment of hydrologic metrics. In addition to assessing metrics related to predicted natural flow, flow alteration at gaged …

Modified Polysulfone Nanofiltration Membrane Synthesis For Hydraulic Fracturing Water Recycle, Blake Alexander Johnson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The use of hydraulic fracturing has resulted in significant increases in the yield of oil and natural gas, as water pumped into wells at high pressure cracks the formations and releases the hydrocarbons that are locked in the rocks. This process has created large volumes of brackish water that is very difficult to process and is often disposed of into injection wells. Suspended solids and some dissolved solids are more readily removed, but the multivalent ions found in certain salts can precipitate in a well and complicate the reuse of flowback in future hydraulic fracturing operations.

Nanofiltration, a membrane separation …

Metal Mobilization In Groundwater, Bauxite, Ar, Steven Alexander Hamlin

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Wilcox Aquifer of Bauxite, AR contains bauxite ore deposits that may contribute heavy metals to groundwater. Twenty-four wells were sampled for aluminum, iron, manganese, zinc, lead, barium, nitrate, sulfate, sodium, alkalinity, calcium, magnesium, chloride, pH, total organic carbon, and total dissolved solids. A Wilcoxon Rank-Sum compared the similarity of the three geographic areas covered in the study. All parameters for wells in Bauxite and Sardis failed to reject the null hypothesis, signifying that wells all occupy the Saline Formation. 2/3rds of the parameters from BFI261 and the Bauxite region did not agree, suggesting the two areas do not occupy …

Stable Isotopes As A Tool To Characterize Carbon Cycling And Develop Hydrologic Budgets In Mantled Karst Settings, Katherine Knierim

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Isotopes of water (δ2H/δ18O), carbon dioxide (δ13C-CO2), and dissolved inorganic carbon (δ13C-DIC) were used to explore water quality, trace carbon cycling, and quantify recharge sources through mantled karst and into Blowing Spring Cave (BSC). Of the possible sources of contamination in the BSC recharge area, septic-tank effluent was hypothesized to degrade water quality at the spring outlet of BSC because of the dominance of septic tanks for waste treatment, unsuitable topography and soil for septic-tank absorption fields, increased nitrate and chloride concentrations concomitant with increased urbanization, and increased Escherichia coli with discharge. Carbon cycling between the soil and BSC was …

Effects Of Landscape Disturbances On Autotrophic Processes Within Arkansas Ozark Streams, Bradley J. Austin

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Land-use change is one of the most widespread human impacts and can influence abiotic and biotic processes within surrounding streams. For example, streams in agricultural and urban watersheds receive greater light and nutrient inputs that can promote increased algal growth and primary production. Natural gas (NG) infrastructure development, a recent land use change in many regions, may also stimulate forested stream primary production, by reducing forest cover and increasing sediments and nutrient transport. I sampled streams across a NG activity gradient for algal biomass and gross primary production (GPP) to assess potential effects of this emerging land-use type. Algal biomass …

Subsurface Fluid Flow Through The Mississippian Section Of North-Central Oklahoma, Carolyn Brown

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study consisted of using drill stem tests, seismic amplitude data, and well logs to create the parameters needed to construct a groundwater flow model for a portion of Osage County. At the start, a potentiometric map of Osage County, Oklahoma was generated to use as a basis for the initial hydraulic heads and the constant heads in the model. Next, three seismic amplitude images were produced in a seismic interpretation program, OpenDtect, to base the hydraulic conductivity values on. In addition, utilizing Gamma Ray on 12 separate wells east-west across the county, a structural cross-section was created within Petra. …

Controls On Dissolution Rate Variation At A Pair Of Underflow-Overflow Springs At The Savoy Experimental Watershed, Kiefer Allen Vaughn

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Physical dissolution experiments and numerical modeling have been used in the past to study limestone dissolution rates. Numerical models have typically used constant dissolution rates, whereas rates in nature vary in time. Limestone tablets allow natural estimation of rates over month time scales, but these rates cannot necessarily be extrapolated to geologic timescales and also do not aid our understanding of short term variability. This study characterizes natural variability in these rates and examines potential causes of that variability from first principles. This may enable more accurate projections of dissolution rates within models. This study combines measurement of physical and …

Development Of A Hydrologic Model For An Urban Headwater Stream: The Influence Of Pervious Surface Properties On Runoff Dynamics, Dawn A. Farver

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A hydrologic model was developed for the Mullins Creek (MC) catchment located on the University of Arkansas campus in Fayetteville, Arkansas. The MC catchment is a small, dynamic urban stream system with a range of land use/land cover (LULC), an extensive and well-developed stormwater drainage network, and extensive urbanization (over 90% developed, and almost 50% impervious surface area (ISA)). Selected datasets provided information on the stormwater drainage network, the physical attributes of the catchment and receiving waterway (i.e. drainage area, slope, etc.), infiltration potential of soil map units, LULC, and percent ISA. These datasets were analyzed to provide input parameters …

Applications Of A New Geodata Crawler For Landscape Ecology: From Mapping Natural Stream Hydrology To Monitoring Endangered Beetles, Douglas Ryan Leasure

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

An investigation of endangered American burying beetle (Nicrophorus americanus) ecology led to development of a Geodata Crawler with applications in eco-hydrology. Geodata Crawler includes a national GIS (geospatial information systems) database with layers that quantify climate, land cover, soils, human development, and other attributes of the biosphere. For user-locations in the continental United States, Geodata Crawler can rapidly tabulate site-specific statistics within automatically delineated sample areas: points, site radii, watersheds, and riparian zones, among others. Geodata Crawler supported a multi-scale analysis of N. americanus habitat at a military installation in western Arkansas to produce a Landsat-based monitoring tool. Royle's N-mixture …

Are Concentration-Discharge Relations Influenced By Water Sample Collection Methods?, William M. Welch

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Two primary methods of stream water sampling, the U.S. Geologic Survey (USGS) equal-width increment (EWI) and point samples (PS) from vertical centroid of flow (VCF) were compared at three river sites, the White River near Fayetteville, Richland Creek at Goshen, and War Eagle Creek near Hindsville. A little over three years of concentration data, which was paired with corresponding instantaneous discharge values (http://ar.water.usgs.gov/), was gathered separately at each site by the Arkansas Water Resource Center (AWRC) and the United States Geological Survey (USGS). The purpose of this study was to evaluate how concentration is related to discharge when water samples …

Investigation Of The Flow And Fate Of Nitrate In Epikarst At The Savoy Experimental Watershed, Northwest Arkansas, Jozef Laincz

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Many karst aquifers are at high risk of nitrate contamination due to a combination of vulnerable geology characterized by thin soils and conduit flow, and excess inputs of nutrients from animal feeding operations. One zone that is present in many karst regions and could play an important role in nitrate attenuation due to properties such as increased residence time and matrix-water contact is the upper, weathered portion of karst, the epikarst. However, the understanding of this role is lacking, and the objective of this dissertation was to elucidate it. The fate of nitrate in the epikarst was traced along a …

Comparisons Of Hydrogeologic Modeling Methods To Define Capture Zones For Public Water Supply Wells In Northern Arkansas, Paula Anderson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The usefulness, applicability, and practicality of more complex and resource consuming methods for groundwater modeling has been in question since computer based groundwater modeling was established (Anderson, 1992). In many situations, computer modeling of groundwater flow is a necessity and useful for extrapolating data where none exists or it is impossible or impractical to acquire. However, when delineating a recharge area around a public water well for protection purposes, it is unknown if more detailed computer modeling results are better than simpler hydrologic calculations and site study. In the case of public drinking water supply wells located in various aquifers …

Hydrogeology And Chemical Characterization Of Hydrocarbon In Domestic Water Wells, Rancho Villa Subdivision, Rogers, Arkansas, Janelle Renee Sherman

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This project is centered on the Rancho Villa community in Rogers, Arkansas where several residents have had hydrocarbon contamination in their domestic water wells. The goal of this project was to understand the hydrogeology in the study area, characterize the contaminant chemically, and determine the source of the contaminant. The hydrogeology of the area was determined from previous theses. Seventeen samples were taken from the wells in the Rancho Villa community; each sample was analyzed for geochemical parameters and by Gas Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry (GC/MS) for organic compounds analysis. Four of the 17 samples had a visible non-aqueous layer of hydrocarbon …

Assessment And Conceptualization Of Groundwater Flow In The Edwards Aquifer Through The Knippa Gap In Uvalde County, Texas, Jennifer Raye Adkins

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Edwards aquifer is one of the major regional karst aquifers in the United States, with an average withdrawal of 950 million liters per day (L/d). This investigation focuses on the connection between the Uvalde pool and the San Antonio pool of the Edwards aquifer, known as the Knippa Gap, west of the San Antonio metropolitan area in Uvalde County. This is a major zone of recharge to the Edwards aquifer and is approximately 6.4 km wide. The Knippa Gap is bounded by northeast trending faults of the Balcones Fault Zone (BFZ) on the north (specifically the Cooks and Trio …

A Watershed Scale Evaluation Of Selected Second Generation Biofeedstocks On Water Quality, Gurdeep Singh

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study compares a novel simulation approach to the conventional Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) modeler's approach for targeting biofuel crop production on marginal lands. In conventional SWAT modeling approach, non-spatial definition of hydrological response units (HRUs) results in the simulation of biofuel crops on both marginal and non-marginal land. This study provides an alternative approach in which a marginal-land raster was integrated into the land use and land cover (LULC) raster in such a way that the land uses were divided into marginal and non-marginal components. This modified LULC was used for model setup which resulted in marginal …

Assessing The Impacts Of Surface Water Removal For Use In Natural Gas Extraction On A Watershed Level, Carrie Ann Davis

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this study, the Soil and Water Assessment Test (SWAT) was used as a tool to predict whether diffuse water removal from the Cadron Creek watershed for use with natural gas development would have an impact on downstream flow within the watershed. Cadron Creek watershed expands across four counties within Arkansas and is located in the Fayetteville Shale Gas region. This region is experiencing significant growth in natural gas development. Successful development of shale gas depends on the identification of what water supplies are available for production without interfering with community and environmental needs. The SWAT model used to evaluate …

Exploring The Surface Liquid And Lake Regions Of Titan With Laboratory Experimentation And Cassini Spacecraft Data, Felix Casimir Wasiak

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The surface liquids and lake regions of Titan are studied utilizing three unique techniques, the results of which are reported in this dissertation. The development of a facility to simulate the surface conditions of Titan, and to conduct experiments on samples within that facility, brings an understanding of Titan's surface not possible through observation and modeling alone. The properties of this facility are presented, including conceptual methodology, design, implementation, performance, and experimental results. The facility, the main component of which is a simulation chamber, allows for Titan temperatures of 90 - 94 K and a 1.5 bar N2 atmosphere. The …

Groundwater Quality Assessment From Domestic Water Wells In The Fayetteville Shale Gas Play Area In Central Arkansas, Anna Marie Nottmeier

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study establishes a spatially distributed domestic water well groundwater quality data set, throughout the Fayetteville Shale Gas Play (FSGP) in central Arkansas. The data set facilitates characterization of the geology and groundwater quality across the study area, benefits residents who may have concerns about the potential impacts on their well water quality, and provides a groundwater quality basis to which complaints can be compared and resolved. The assessment included: research of the study area, site reconnaissance, water sampling and collection, interviews with owners of the property, analytical analysis, Quality Assurance and Quality Control, and groundwater data interpretation.

The study …

The Use Of Diatoms To Infer Environmental Change Of The Lower White River, Southeastern Arkansas, Ruchi Bhattacharya

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation describes the limnology of the lower White River oxbow lakes in southeast Arkansas, inundated by the major 2008 spring flood. The flood water and sediment deposited in oxbow lakes were analyzed for water chemistry, sediment geochemistry and diatom assemblages and used as an analogue for past floods. The 2008 spring flood inundated and homogenized the entire floodplain; also represented by the predominantly planktonic diatom assemblage suggesting riverine input. Indicator species for eutrophication were also recorded consistent with the high nutrient content in the lakes. However, the variance in the surface diatom assemblage was best explained by the lake …

Nutrient Dynamics In Stormwater Runoff From Green Roofs With Varying Substrate, John Michael Fohner

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

One major concern with urban development is the increasing amount of stormwater runoff from large expanses of impervious surfaces. These impervious surfaces reduce the ability of stormwater to infiltrate into the soil and eventually groundwater, which leads to greater amounts of surface runoff. Green technology serves as a viable solution to many of the environmental problems presented by modern development. Fifteen mock, extensive green roofs were built in the fall of 2008 at the Watershed Research and Education Center in Fayetteville, Arkansas. The goals of this project were to (1) measure the amount of stormwater runoff from varying treatments and …

Geochemical Controls On Mercury Methylation In Backwaters Of A Gulf Coastal Plain River System, Implications For Water Column Processes, Liam N. Schenk

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The abundance and distribution of mercury and methyl mercury were investigated at three sites in the lower Ouachita River in the summer of 2010 in an effort to provide the first characterization of the extent of mercury contamination in this river system, and to investigate the potential for mercury methylation in the water column of backwaters off of the main channel. Results showed that filtered methyl mercury was positively correlated to dissolved organic carbon (r2=0.76) for water samples taken from the bottom 1 ft of the water column at three sites, suggesting the importance of dissolved organic carbon in mercury …