Hydrology Commons^™

Field Investigation On Point Bar Dynamics And Planform Evolution In Meandering Rivers, Taylor Rowley

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Point bars are prominent features in meandering rivers, yet our understanding of the complex interactions among channel morphology, three-dimensional flow structure, and depositional processes associated with modern and active point bars remains incomplete. Thus, the goal of this research is to characterize the morphology, three-dimensional flow structure, and depositional packages associated with point bars along a series of bends with different curvature and channel planform through detailed field measurements and relate to previous literature and current conceptual models.

Chapter 3 investigates the morphology of point bars by comparing estimates of channel curvature to channel and point bar characteristics including width, …

Glacial Meltwater Modeling To Simulate Lake Water Budget (1996-2013) In Taylor Valley, Antarctica, Julian Michael Cross

Dissertations and Theses

The McMurdo Dry Valleys (MDV), the largest ice-free region (4,500 km²) in Antarctica, are a polar desert with an average annual temperature of -18ºC. In Taylor Valley, one of the MDV, closed-basin, perennially ice-covered lakes occupy the valley floor. Their water balance is controlled by inflow from glacial meltwater runoff and loss due to sublimation, making them sensitive indicators of climate. In this study, a physically-based model of glacier meltwater and lake ice sublimation is adapted to explain modern (1996 to 2013) lake-level variations. Meltwater model results were improved by the inclusion of MODIS remotely-sensed albedo measurements (E …

Arjen Y. Hoekstra 1967–2019, Davy Vanham, Mesfin Mekonnen, Ashok K. Chapagain

Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute: Faculty Publications

Arjen Hoekstra introduced the water footprint in 20021, building on the concept of virtual water Tony Allan to discuss the role of trade in alleviating water scarcity in the Middle East. He thereby opened a new dimension in the debate around fair and sustainable allocation of freshwater resources. He laid the foundations to show the role of indirect water (that is, water used elsewhere to produce goods we consume) in our daily life beyond our direct use for drinking, cooking or washing. The water footprint is an indicator of direct and indirect water use by a producer or consumer, showing …

Swine Slurry Characteristics As Affected By Selected Additives And Disinfectants, Jon Duerschner, Shannon L. Bartelt-Hunt, Kent Eskridge, John E. Gilley, Xu Li, Amy M. Schmidt, Daniel D. Snow

Nebraska Water Center: Faculty Publications

Current swine industry practice is to house animals in confinement facilities which capture and store feces and urine as slurry in pits below the production area. Additives and disinfectants may be introduced into the manure pits. This study was conducted to measure the effects of additives and disinfectants on temporal changes in swine slurry characteristics. Slurry from a commercial swine production facility in southeast Nebraska, USA was collected and transferred to 57 L reactors located within a greenhouse. Selected additives and disinfectants were added to the reactors and physical properties, chemical characteristics, and antibiotic concentrations were monitored for 40 days. …

Anthropogenic Hydrometeorological Changes At A Regional Scale: Observed Irrigation-Precipitation Feedback (1979-2015) In Nebraska, Usa, Jozsef Szilagyi, Trenton Franz

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Long-term tendencies in annual, seasonal, and monthly (March) precipitation, evapotranspiration, and air- and dew-point temperature values were correlated with county-level changes in irrigated area across Nebraska over the 1979–2015 period. A statistically significant linear relationship (slope of − 1.65 ± 0.33 mm/decade per % decadal change in irrigated area, with a correlation coefficient of − 0.47) was found between the trends in annual precipitation and irrigated land area. Precipitation dropped by 1 mm annually if the level in irrigation expansion reached about 8% per decade, while the rest of the state enjoyed about a half-millimeter overall increase in annual precipitation …

Effects Of Surface Heterogeneity Due To Drip Irrigation On Scintillometer Estimates Of Sensible, Latent Heat Fluxes And Evapotranspiration Over Vineyards, Hatim M. E. Geli, José González-Piqueras, Christopher M. U. Neale, Claudio Balbontín, Isidro Campos, Alfonso Calera

Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute: Faculty Publications

Accurate estimates of sensible (H) and latent (LE) heat fluxes and actual evapotranspiration (ET) are required for monitoring vegetation growth and improved agricultural water management. A large aperture scintillometer (LAS) was used to provide these estimates with the objective of quantifying the effects of surface heterogeneity due to soil moisture and vegetation growth variability. The study was conducted over drip-irrigated vineyards located in a semi-arid region in Albacete, Spain during summer 2007. Surface heterogeneity was characterized by integrating eddy covariance (EC) observations of H, LE and ET; land surface temperature (LST) and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) data from Landsat …

Assessment Of An Automated Calibration Of The Sebal Algorithm To Estimate Dry-Season Surface-Energy Partitioning In A Forest–Savanna Transition In Brazil, Leonardo Laipelt, Anderson Luis Ruhoff, Ayan Santos Fleischmann, Rafael Henrique Bloedow Kayser, Elisa De Mello Kich, Humberto Ribeiro Da Rocha, Christopher Michael Usher Neale

Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute: Faculty Publications

Evapotranspiration (ET) provides a strong connection between surface energy and hydrological cycles. Advancements in remote sensing techniques have increased our understanding of energy and terrestrial water balances as well as the interaction between surface and atmosphere over large areas. In this study, we computed surface energy fluxes using the Surface Energy Balance Algorithm for Land (SEBAL) algorithm and a simplified adaptation of the CIMEC (Calibration using Inverse Modeling at Extreme Conditions) process for automated endmember selection. Our main purpose was to assess and compare the accuracy of the automated calibration of the SEBAL algorithm using two different sources of meteorological …

Treenuts And Groundnuts In The Eat-Lancet Reference Diet: Concerns Regarding Sustainable Water Use, Davy Vanhama, Mesfin Mekonnen, Arjen Y. Hoekstra

Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute: Faculty Publications

The EAT-Lancet universal healthy reference diet recommends an increase in the consumption of healthy foods, among which treenuts and groundnuts. Both are, however, water-intensive products, with a large water footprint (WF) per unit of mass and protein and already today contribute to blue water stress in different parts of the world. The envisaged massive required increase in nut production to feed a global population with this reference diet, needs to occur in a water-sustainable way. In this paper, we identify and quantify where current nut production contributes to local blue water stress and discuss options for water-sustainable nut production. We …

Water Productivity Benchmarks: The Case Of Maize And Soybean In Nebraska, Mesfin Mekonnen, Arjen Y. Hoekstra, Christopher Michael Usher Neale, Chittaranjan Ray, Haishun Yang

Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute: Faculty Publications

Water productivity benchmarks for irrigated and rainfed agriculture will provide relevant information to manage scarce water resources and control groundwater level decline. We analyze the temporal and spatial variation of the water productivity (WP) of maize and soybean in Nebraska, with WP defined as harvested crop weight per total evapotranspiration. The results show that WP of both maize and soybean increase from west to east within Nebraska and have increased over the last 25 years, mainly due to the increase in crop yields (land productivity). We derive WP benchmarks for each crop per climate zone. Increasing actual WPs in the …

Potential Of Using Spectral Vegetation Indices For Corn Green Biomass Estimation Based On Their Relationship With The Photosynthetic Vegetation Sub-Pixel Fraction, Luan Peroni Venancio, Everardo Chartuni Mantovani, Cibele Hummel Do Amaral, Christopher M.U. Neale, Ivo Zution Gonçalves, Roberto Filgueiras, Fernando Coelho Eugenio

Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute: Faculty Publications

Crop biomass (Bio) is one of the most important parameters of a crop, and knowledge of it before harvest is essential to help farmers in their decision making. Both green and dry Bio can be estimated from vegetation spectral indices (VIs) because they have a close relationship with accumulated absorbed photosynthetically active radiation (APAR), which is proportional to total Bio. The aims of this study were to analyze the potential capacity of spectral vegetation indices in estimating corn green biomass based on their relationship with the photosynthetic vegetation sub-pixel fraction derived from spectral mixture analysis and to analyze the best …

Ferrihydrite Reduction Increases Arsenic And Uranium Bioavailability In Unsaturated Soil, Arindam Malakar, Michael Kaiser, Daniel D. Snow, Harkamal Walia, Banajarani Panda, Chittaranjan Ray

Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute: Faculty Publications

Redox driven mobilization and plant uptake of contaminants under transiently saturated soil conditions need to be clarified to ensure food and water quality across different irrigation systems. We postulate that solid-phase iron reduction in anoxic microsites present in the rhizosphere of unsaturated soil is a key driver for mobilization and bioavailability of contaminants under nonflooded irrigation. To clarify this, two major crops, corn and soybean differing in iron uptake strategies, were grown in irrigated synthetic soil under semiarid conditions with gravimetric moisture content ∼12.5 ± 2.4%. 2-line ferrihydrite, which was coprecipitated with uranium and arsenic, served as the only iron …

Use Of Multiple Environment Variety Trials Data To Simulate Maize Yields In The Ogallala Aquifer Region: A Two Model Approach, Vaishali Sharda, Mesfin Mekonnen, Chittaranjan Ray, Prasanna H. Gowda

Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute: Faculty Publications

With a long-term goal to optimize use of groundwater in the Ogallala Aquifer Region (OAR) to sustain food production systems, this study was conducted to calibrate Decision Support System for Agrotechnology Transfer (DSSAT) and AquaCrop crop modeling platforms to simulate maize production at a regional scale using historic datasets. Calibration of the models with local crop growth data and crop management practices is important, but usually this in-season crop growth information is not available. This study determined the possibility of using maize variety trial data for the evaluation of the CSM-Crop Estimation through Resources and Environmental Synthesis-Maize and AquaCrop models …

Geologic Characterization, Hydrologic Monitoring, And Soil-Water Relationships For Landslides In Kentucky, Matthew M. Crawford, L. Sebastian Bryson, Zhenming Wang, Edward W. Woolery

Report of Investigations--KGS

Complex spatial and temporal variables control the movement of water through colluvial soils in hillslopes. Some of the factors that influence soil-moisture fluctuation are soil type, thickness, porosity and permeability, and slope morphology. Landslide-characterization and field-monitoring techniques were part of a method to connect hydrologic and geotechnical data in order to monitor long-term hydrologic conditions in three active landslides in Kentucky, establish hydrologic relationships across the slope, and analyze specific soil-water relationships that can predict shear strength. Volumetric water content, water potential, and electrical conductivity were measured between October 2015 and February 2019. The duration and magnitude of drying and …

Hydrogeology And Geology Of The Lower North And South Platte Rivers Of Nebraska: Nebraska Geological Society Field Trip 2020, Douglas R. Hallum, Paul R. Hanson, Shane Tucker, Robert F. Diffendal Jr.

Robert F. Diffendal, Jr., Publications

The 2020 Nebraska Geological Society field trip will visit central Nebraska, and explore the geology and hydrogeology of the upper Platte, Lower South Platte and Lower North Platte rivers. The field trip area consists of a roughly east-west strip of land, approximately 100 kilometers long, and generally less than 10 kilometers north and south of the Platte, North Platte and South Platte rivers’ channels over most of the reach; from Brady, NE, upstream to Big Springs on the South Platte River and Lewellen on the North Platte River (Map 1). In addition to the river valleys, participants will observe alluvial …

Measuring The Occurrence Of Antibiotics In Surface Water Adjacent To Cattle Grazing Areas Using Passive Samplers, Nasrin Naderi Beni, Daniel D. Snow, Elaine D. Berry, Aaron R. Mittelstet, Tiffany Messer, Shannon L. Bartelt-Hunt

Nebraska Water Center: Faculty Publications

A wide variety of antibiotics and other pharmaceuticals are used in livestock production systems and residues passed to the environment, often unmetabolized, after use and excretion. Antibiotic residuesmay be transported frommanure-treated soils via runoff and are also capable of reaching surface and groundwater systems through a variety of pathways. The occurrence and persistence of antibiotics in the environment is a concern due to the potential for ecological effects and proliferation of environmental antibiotic resistance in pathogenic organisms. In the present study, the occurrence and seasonal variation of 24 commonly-used veterinary antibiotics was evaluated in surface water adjacent to several livestock …

Spatial And Temporal Controls On Streamflow Variability In The San Juan Mountains, Colorado, Christopher Lewis Hancock

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project characterizes and examines changes to the annual hydroclimatic cycle throughout alpine regions of Colorado with a focus on trends in snowpack and snowmelt hydrology. Datasets analyzed for this research include 79 SNOTEL sites throughout Colorado (24 in the San Juan Mountains) which provide climate metrics for Water Years 1988-2018. Impacts on streamflow are evaluated in the San Juan Region through a network of 11 USGS stream gauges. Correlation matrices and linear regression methods examine the relative controls on the magnitude and timing of discharge, and trend detection using the regional Kendall test quantifies the rate of change within …

Critical Analysis Of The Value Of Drought Information And Impacts On Land Management And Public Health, Tingting Liu, Kelly Helm Smith, Richard Krop, Tonya Haigh, Mark Svoboda

National Drought Mitigation Center: Faculty Publications

This paper reviews previous efforts to assign monetary value to climatic or meteorological information, such as public information on drought, climate, early warning systems, and weather forecast information. Methods and tools that have been explored to examine the benefits of climatic and meteorological information include the avoided cost, contingent valuation, choice experiments, benefit transfer, and descriptive approaches using surveys. The second part of this paper discusses specific considerations related to valuing drought information for public health and the Bureau of Land Management. We found a multitude of connections between drought and the land management and health sectors in the literature. …

Using Climate To Explain And Predict West Nile Virus Risk In Nebraska, Kelly Smith, Andrew Tyre, Jeff Hamik, Michael Hayes, Yuzhen Zhou, Li Dai

National Drought Mitigation Center: Faculty Publications

We used monthly precipitation and temperature data to give early warning of years with higher West Nile Virus (WNV) risk in Nebraska. We used generalized additive models with a negative binomial distribution and smoothing curves to identify combinations of extremes and timing that had the most influence, experimenting with all combinations of temperature and drought data, lagged by 12, 18, 24, 30, and 36 months. We fit models on data from 2002 through 2011, used Akaike's Information Criterion (AIC) to select the best‐fitting model, and used 2012 as out‐of‐sample data for prediction, and repeated this process for each successive year, …

Transforming Agriculture In The Pilbara: Processing Airborne Electromagnetic (Aem) Data, Aaron C. Davis, Mike Donn, John A. Simons, Christopher Schelfhout Dr, Olga Barron

Natural resources commissioned reports

This report focusses on pre-processing, inversion, and post-processing of airborne electromagnetic (AEM) data from a SkyTEM 312M helicopter-borne time-domain AEM survey conducted north of Newman, Western Australia in October and November 2019. Flight lines for the survey were chosen to trend east-west at 400 m line-spacing in order to produce gridded products at 100 m by 100 m resolution. The line directions were chosen in order to best intersect the Fortescue River Fault which separates the Wittenoom Formation from the Pinjian Chert Formation and Manganese Group, and to map the distribution of transported materials in the alluvial fan north of …

Lake Volume Data Analyses: A Deep Look Into The Shrinking And Expansion Patterns Of Lakes Azuei And Enriquillo, Hispaniola, Mahrokh Moknatian, Michael Piasecki

Publications and Research

This paper presents the development of an evenly spaced volume time series for Lakes Azuei and Enriquillo both located on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola. The time series is derived from an unevenly spaced Landsat imagery data set which is then exposed to several imputation methods to construct the gap filled uniformly‐spaced time series so it can be subjected to statistical analyses methods. The volume time series features both gradual and sudden changes the latter of which is attributed to North Atlantic cyclone activity. Relevant cyclone activity is defined as an event passing within 80 km and having regional monthly …

Trends In Streamflow And Precipitation For Selected Sites In The Elkhorn River Basin And In Streamflow In The Salt Creek And Platte River Basins, Nebraska, 1961–2011, Benjamin J. Dietsch, Kellan R. Strauch

United States Geological Survey: Publications

To better understand the streamflow trends at the streamgages in the Elkhorn River Basin in Nebraska, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in cooperation with the Lower Elkhorn Natural Resources District further investigated streamflow trends at the eight streamgages on the Elkhorn River, Salt Creek, and the Lower Platte River that indicated a positive trend in streamflow characteristics and analyzed precipitation trends in the four basins upstream from the Elkhorn River Basin streamgages. An analysis of four streamgages in the Elkhorn River Basin, one streamgage in Salt Creek Basin, and three streamgages in the Lower Platte River Basin that had previously …

Modeling Escherichia Coli In The Missouri River Near Omaha, Nebraska, 2012–16, Brenda K. Densmore, Brent M. Hall, Matthew T. Moser

United States Geological Survey: Publications

The city of Omaha, Nebraska, has a combined sewer system in some areas of the city. In Omaha, Nebr., a moderate amount of rainfall will lead to the combination of stormwater and untreated sewage or wastewater being discharged directly into the Missouri River and Papillion Creek and is called a combined sewer overflow (CSO) event. In 2009, the city of Omaha began the implementation of their Long Term Control Plan (LTCP) to mitigate the effects of CSOs on the Missouri River and Papillion Creek. As part of the LTCP, the city partnered with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in 2012 …

Annotated Bibliography Of Scientific Research On Greater Sage-Grouse Published From 2015 To 2019, Sarah K. Carter, Robert S. Arkle, Heidi L. Bencin, Benjamin R. Harms, Daniel J. Manier, Aaron N. Johnston, Susan L. Phillips, Steven E. Hanser, Zachary H. Bowen

United States Geological Survey: Publications

The greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus; hereafter GRSG) has been a focus of scientific investigation and management action for the past two decades. The 2015 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listing determination of “not warranted” was in part due to a large-scale collaborative effort to develop strategies to conserve GRSG populations and their habitat and to reduce threats to both. New scientific information augments existing knowledge and can help inform updates or modifications to existing plans for managing GRSG and sagebrush ecosystems. However, the sheer number of scientific publications can be a challenge for managers tasked with evaluating and …

Groundwater Availability Of The Northern High Plains Aquifer In Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, And Wyoming, Steven M. Peterson, Jonathan P. Traylor, Moussa Guira

United States Geological Survey: Publications

The Northern High Plains aquifer underlies about 93,000 square miles of Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Wyoming and is the largest subregion of the nationally important High Plains aquifer. Irrigation, primarily using groundwater, has supported agricultural production since before 1940, resulting in nearly $50 billion in sales in 2012. In 2010, the High Plains aquifer had the largest groundwater withdrawals of any major aquifer system in the United States.Nearly one-half of those withdrawals were from the Northern High Plains aquifer, which has little hydrologic interaction with parts of the aquifer farther south. Land-surface elevation ranges from more than 7,400 …

2020 Sponsorship Opportunities. Lincoln, Neb., Usa, Oct. 7-9, 2020

Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute: Administrative Materials

The Water for Food Global Conference convenes leading international experts and organizations to focus on achieving global water and food security. “Cultivating Innovation: The Next Decade,” will include keynote speakers, sessions, interactive learning and networking opportunities. The conference also celebrates the 10 year anniversary of the Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute, headlining a week of water and food security-related activities.

Topics include: • Research and Technology Innovation • Policy/Management Tools and Best Practices • Capacity Development/Youth and Students • Water Quality and Public Health • Climate Change and Ecosystems • Women for Water and Food • Nutrition and Health …

A Model Of Icewedge Polygon Drainage In Changing Arctic Terrain, Vitaly Zlotnik, Dylan R. Harp, Elchin E. Jafarov, Charles J. Abolt

Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences: Faculty Publications

As ice wedge degradation and the inundation of polygonal troughs become increasingly common processes across the Arctic, lateral export of water from polygonal soils may represent an important mechanism for the mobilization of dissolved organic carbon and other solutes. However, drainage from ice wedge polygons is poorly understood. We constructed a model which uses cross-sectional flow nets to define flow paths of meltwater through the active layer of an inundated low-centered polygon towards the trough. The model includes the eects of evaporation and simulates the depletion of ponded water in the polygon center during the thaw season. In most simulations, …

Tidal-Groundwater Study Of The Slaughter Beach Salt Marsh In Slaughter Beach, De, Michael Powers

West Chester University Master’s Theses

Seasonal and decadal monitoring of salt marsh at Slaughter Beach, DE documented long-term and short-term variations in number and sizes of salt ponds. Over 400 salt ponds ranging in size between 0.5 m² to 0.11 km² were identified on 5.5 km² salt marsh platform. The purpose of this study is to quantify hydrologic conditions and measure groundwater discharge of a salt marsh, particularly the impact of tidal forces on groundwater fluctuation.

Four wells with nests of mini-piezometers with ONSET Pressure Transducers were installed along a transect crossing the largest salt pond (0.11 km²) in the …

Sediment Dynamics In The Magdalena River Basin, Colombia: Implications For Understanding Tropical River Processes And Hydropower Development, Luke H. Fisher

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The Magdalena River Basin of Colombia has a globally relevant sediment flux, however, studies of the sediment regime in the basin are limited in scope. This knowledge gap limits application of understanding of sediment dynamics to hydropower decision making. To close this gap, we implemented a sediment budget framework to quantify the impacts of hydropower development in a 118,000 km² portion of the Magdalena River basin. We informed this framework with analysis of background erosion rates derived from ¹⁰Be cosmogenic nuclides and modern sediment fluxes derived from monitoring and optical remote sensing. We standardized these data to spatially …

Attribution Of Soil Surface Temperature Sensitivity To Hydro-Climatic Drivers, Sarah Khalid, Marco Maneta

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Greenhouse gas emissions caused by human economic activity are altering the global hydrologic cycle and the energy exchanges at the land surface. In large portions of the western US there is evidence of reduced summertime precipitation and increased air temperatures and longwave irradiation. At local scales, these changes can translate into more frequent and intense extreme land surface temperature events during the summer, with potential impacts on wildfire activity, forest health, soil biochemical cycles, and thermal comfort for human populations. However, because increases in radiation and sensible heat (air temperature) inputs to the land surface are confounded with changes in …

Isotopic And Geochemical Tracers Of Groundwater Flow In The Shivwits Plateau, Grand Canyon National Park, Jonathan W. Wilson

Theses and Dissertations--Earth and Environmental Sciences

As the impacts of global climate change on water resources continue to become more apparent, proper understanding and management of groundwater resources will be needed as supplies become more strained. Traditional methods of characterizing groundwater systems are time-intensive, costly, and can be difficult to complete in remote areas. Using ambient geochemical tracers from discrete sampling could aid in characterizing spring systems through determining flow paths, recharge areas, and carbon cycling. However, using discrete seasonal samples to understand the hydrogeology of complex, mixed-lithology aquifers has not been extensively examined. Here we explore using δ¹³C of dissolved organic carbon (DOC), …