Environmental Monitoring Commons^™

Enhancing The Value Of Satellite Earth Observations For Coastal Management: Tools For Collaboration And Co-Development, Nicole Dejeet Bartlett

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

Despite unprecedented satellite Earth observation (EO) capabilities and free data availability, widespread adoption in coastal management remains limited due to persistent communication barriers between satellite experts and coastal practitioners. This dissertation addresses the fundamental challenge of translating satellite EO technical capabilities into management-relevant applications. Through synthesis of literature, stakeholder interviews, and two multi-year co-development case studies in Virginia's Middle Peninsula and Cape Cod, Massachusetts, this research identifies systematic barriers to satellite EO adoption and develops innovative frameworks for overcoming them.

The work argues for a common language between satellite product developers and coastal managers, identifying communication barriers spanning technical, institutional, …

Highly Contaminated Sediments From The Gowanus Canal (New York) Superfund Site: An Environmental Forensic Approach, Michael A. Kruge, Kevin K. Olsen, Eric A Stern, Maria Mastalerz, Albert Permanyer

Department of Earth and Environmental Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The 2.5 km long Gowanus Canal (Brooklyn, NY, USA) is a severely contaminated urban waterway dating from the mid-19th century, listed as a US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) Superfund site since 2010. Applying an environmental forensics approach to the extensive USEPA data set, we detect systematic variations in parent PAH ring number distributions in the canal sediments, as well as an extraordinary enrichment in organic carbon. We subjected a supplemental sample set to a more detailed analysis by quantitative pyrolysis-GC-MS, Rock-Eval pyrolysis, and organic petrology. With these sensitive methods, we can confirm the alkyl-PAH fingerprint of coal tar (a legacy …

Re: Comment Letter For Clark Tailings Consolidated Waste Management Area (Ctcwma) Site Investigation Quality Assurance Project Plan Revision 01 (Dated June 6, 2025), Emma Rott

Silver Bow Creek/Butte Area Superfund Site

No abstract provided.

Revised Draft Final Uniform Federal Policyquality Assurance Project Plan, Hydrogeologic, Inc.

Silver Bow Creek/Butte Area Superfund Site

No abstract provided.

Assessing Effectiveness Of Runnel Restoration In New England Salt Marsh Habitats, David M. Burdick, Grant Mckown, Gregg Moore, Jenny Gibson, Wenley Ferguson, John Herbert, Nancy Pau, Susan Adamowicz, Geoff Wilson

Faculty Publications

Rising sea levels that increase flooding in salt marshes recovering from hydrologic impairments is reducing nesting habitat for salt marsh sparrows. Abandonment of colonial farming practices (1600s through 1900s) has resulted in large, waterlogged basins characterized by shallow depressions (pannes) dominated by short-form Spartina alterniflora and unvegetated megapools that are subsiding. A relatively new technique designed to provide regular tidal flooding and drainage to the waterlogged basins that have formed on the marsh is runnelling – creation of shallow hydrologic features on the marsh surface. Will runnels result in revegetation of pannes and pools with productive perennial grasses that are …

Adaptive Crop Switching For Irrigated Agriculture In Response To Climate Change In The Western U.S., Shahryar Fazli, Wenzhao Li, Surendra Maharjan, Rejoice Thomas, Aqil Tariq, Hesham El-Askary

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

Adaptive irrigation strategies are crucial for balancing water use, economic viability, and food security in the arid Western United States. However, as a key indicator vital in regulating agricultural productivity and crop irrigation, water use efficiency (WUEc) is becoming increasingly complex to estimate due to climate change. This study explores the critical role of key meteorological drivers, such as maximum temperature (tmax) and vapor pressure deficit (vpd), and their impacts on crop-specific WUEc. Future impacts are also assessed through integrating machine learning models with climate projections from the CMIP6 framework under SSP2–4.5 and SSP5–8.5 scenarios to forecast WUEc trends from …

Re: Butte Mine Flooding Operable Unit Berkeley Pit And Discharge Pilot Project – June 2025 Monthly Discharge Monitoring Report, Mark Thompson, Dave Griffis

Silver Bow Creek/Butte Area Superfund Site

No abstract provided.

High Spatial Resolution Crop Type And Land Use Land Cover Classification Without Labels: A Framework Using Multi-Temporal Planetscope Images And Variational Bayesian Gaussian Mixture Model, Minh Tri Le

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

Previous studies often combined high spatial resolution data (e.g., PlanetScope) with wider spectral range data (e.g., Sentinel-2) and relied on supervised classification methods to produce land use and land cover (LULC) maps. This study proposed a new unsupervised framework to generate crop type and LULC maps at high spatial resolution (< 5 m) using available PlanetScope data solely without requiring ground truths. We used PlanetScope surface reflectance images and their derived spectral indices during growing seasons to create multi-temporal input features, which were fed into an unsupervised Variational Bayesian Gaussian Mixture Model (VBGMM). The VBGMM, unlike the traditional unsupervised classification methods, (1) first estimated optimal parameters that are most suitable based on the input features and then (2) assigned pixels to the cluster with maximum posteriori probability of a mixture of several Gaussian distributions. The crop type and LULC maps were then generated by labeling the derived clusters using the best possible assignment method, referring to the existing crop type or LULC products. We evaluated the produced PlanetScope-based crop type and LULC maps using true labels, corresponding reference maps, and other unsupervised classification methods. The results demonstrated the robustness and effectiveness of the proposed framework in mapping crop types and LULC at 3–5 m pixels across various ecosystems, climate zones, and human-managed landscapes. The spatial patterns of PlanetScope-based maps were (1) highly comparable with all the reference datasets at 10–30 m spatial resolution and (2) better than the traditional GMM and K-means clustering methods. The VBGMM produced classification maps with high confidence, yielding class probabilities above 0.9 for over 90 % of all study areas. The area percentage for all crop type and LULC classes agreed well with their reference maps, with R2 of 0.95 and RMSE of 1.04 %. The confusion matrices using true labels indicated that PlanetScope-based maps achieved a higher overall accuracy of 84 % than the supervised referenced maps of 81 %. Besides, the entropy comparison showed that our framework-based maps were better at capturing fine-scale features such as developed areas within cities that commonly mix with open space and vegetation, deforestation and cropland conversion in South America, smallholder croplands in Africa and Asia, and generating homogeneous crop fields in North America. This study further highlighted the potential for future research to implement our proposed framework to generate timely and extensive annotated datasets, which can be used for operationally training machine learning models to map crop types and LULC, track deforestation, detect wildfires, and delineate flooded areas at larger scales using medium/coarse Earth observations.

Detection Of Oil Pollution On The Tigris River In Iraq Using Fluorescence And Reflecting Techniques, Ahmad K. Ahmad, Thamer M. Mohammed

Karbala International Journal of Modern Science

In this study, a broadband light source (visible and ultraviolet) was used to name minerals via fluorescence spectra and estimate slick oil thickness, ranging from sub-millimetres, using the reflecting spectrum technique. Using a fluorescent technique, we obtained fluorescence spectra of the samples, converting and processing the signals to produce high-resolution data, which enabled the identification of the types of dissolved elements and oil slicks in the Tigris River, highlighting pollution sources and potential control measures. This system aims to show the faint signal in fluorescence samples collected from the cooling system outlet water throughout the refining process from AL-Dora (Baghdad) …

Re: Comment Letter For The Butte Priority Soils Operable Unit (Bpsou) Draft Final 2022 Unreclaimed Sites Sampling: Ur-12 Site Evaluation Summary Report (Dated April 8, 2025), Molly Roby

Silver Bow Creek/Butte Area Superfund Site

No abstract provided.

Re: Approval Letter For The Butte Priority Soils Operable Unit (Bpsou) Insufficiently Reclaimed Sites Sampling: Bres No. 84 Site Evaluation Summary Report (Dated April 11, 2025), Molly Roby

Silver Bow Creek/Butte Area Superfund Site

No abstract provided.

Re: Comment Letter For The Butte Priority Soils Operable Unit (Bpsou) Unreclaimed Sites Ur-22 Site Evaluation Summary Report (Dated April 2, 2025), Molly Roby

Silver Bow Creek/Butte Area Superfund Site

No abstract provided.

Re: Comment Letter For The Butte Priority Soils Operable Unit (Bpsou) Draft Final 2022 Unreclaimed Sites Sampling: Ur-06 Site Evaluation Summary Report (Dated April 1, 2025), Molly Roby

Silver Bow Creek/Butte Area Superfund Site

No abstract provided.

Re: Comment Letter For Bpsou Uncontrolled Surface Flow Areas Drainage C 30% Design Rawp (Dated June 23, 2025), Molly Roby

Silver Bow Creek/Butte Area Superfund Site

No abstract provided.

Re: Comment Letter For The Butte Priority Soils Operable Unit (Bpsou) Draft Final 2025 Residential Metals Abatement Program (Rmap) Valley Sand & Gravel (Builders Firstsource) Borrow Submittal #1 (Dated June 27, 2025), Molly Roby

Silver Bow Creek/Butte Area Superfund Site

No abstract provided.

Re: Comments On The Repository, Haul Route, And Pipeline Geotechnical Pre-Design Investigation Summary Report (Dated May 13, 2025), Emma Rott

Silver Bow Creek/Butte Area Superfund Site

No abstract provided.

Re: Comment Letter For The Draft Final Butte Priority Soils Operable Unit (Bpsou) 2022 Unreclaimed Sites Sampling: Ur-20 Site Evaluation Summary Report (Dated March 19, 2025), Molly Roby

Silver Bow Creek/Butte Area Superfund Site

No abstract provided.

Re: June 2025 Berkeley Pit Migratory Waterfowl Protection Monthly Report, Mark Thompson, Loren Burmeister

Silver Bow Creek/Butte Area Superfund Site

No abstract provided.

Re: Comment Letter For Butte Priority Soils Operable Unit (Bpsou) Draft 2024 Groundwater Monitoring Data Summary Report (Dated May 30, 2025), Emma Rott

Silver Bow Creek/Butte Area Superfund Site

No abstract provided.

Re: Butte Priority Soils Operable Unit (Bpsou) Superfund Operation And Maintenance (O&M) Request For Maintenance – Kelley Stormwater Channels (Dated April 22, 2025), Josh Bryson

Silver Bow Creek/Butte Area Superfund Site

No abstract provided.

Re: Comment Letter For The Butte Priority Soils Operable Unit (Bpsou) 2022 Draft Final Insufficiently Reclaimed Sites Sampling Bres No. 30 – Atlantic 1 Site Evaluation Summary Report (Dated February 24, 2025), Molly Roby

Silver Bow Creek/Butte Area Superfund Site

No abstract provided.

Hyperspectral Band Selection Via Heterogeneous Graph Convolutional Self-Representation Network, Junde Chen, Wenzhao Li, Surendra Maharjan, Hesham El-Askary

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

Hyperspectral image (HSI) band selection (BS) plays a crucial role in HSI dimensionality reduction, aiming to identify a representative subset of bands with minimal redundancy. However, conventional BS approaches primarily operate in the Euclidean domain, often overlooking the structural characteristics of pixels and spectral bands, such as spatial continuity and spectral dependencies. In addition, they handle each HSI as an integrated unit to harness implicit spatial information, disregarding spatial distribution variations across different homogeneous regions. To fully leverage structural information, this study introduces a novel BS method, termed the dual heterogeneous graph convolutional network with enhanced self-representation (ESR-HGCN), for HSI …

Re: Comment Letter For The Butte Priority Soils Operable Unit (Bpsou) 2022 Draft Final Insufficiently Reclaimed Sites Sampling: Bres No. 38 – Sister Dump Site Evaluation Summary Report (December 31, 2024), Molly Roby

Silver Bow Creek/Butte Area Superfund Site

No abstract provided.

Re: Comment Letter For The Butte Priority Soils Operable Unit (Bpsou) 2022 Draft Final Insufficiently Reclaimed Sites Sampling: Bres No. 32 Site Evaluation Summary Report (Dated December 11, 2024), Molly Roby

Silver Bow Creek/Butte Area Superfund Site

No abstract provided.

Re: Comment Letter For The Butte Priority Soils Operable Unit (Bpsou) Draft Final Unreclaimed (Ur) Sites Ur-13 Site Evaluation Summary Report (Sesr) (November 1, 2024), Molly Roby

Silver Bow Creek/Butte Area Superfund Site

No abstract provided.

Re: Comment Letter For 2024 Annual Operations And Maintenance Report Butte Reclamation Evaluation System (Bres) Annual Summary Report For Work Completed In Quadrant 4 (Dated May 1, 2025), Molly Roby

Silver Bow Creek/Butte Area Superfund Site

No abstract provided.

Re: Approval Letter For The Response To Comment Letter And The Butte Priority Soils Operable Unit (Bpsou) Draft 2024 Butte Reclamation Evaluation System (Bres) Corrective Action Plans For Reclaimed Sites (Both Dated June 6, 2025), Molly Roby

Silver Bow Creek/Butte Area Superfund Site

No abstract provided.

Re: Approval Of The Butte Priority Soils Operable Unit (Bpsou) Butte Reclamation Evaluation System (Bres) Revised Draft 2024 Field Evaluation Summary And Technical Recommendations Report (Dated June 4, 2025), Molly Roby

Silver Bow Creek/Butte Area Superfund Site

No abstract provided.

Re: Comment Letter For The Butte Priority Soils Operable Unit (Bpsou) 2024 Draft Final Backfill And Cover Material Quality Assurance Project Plan (Dated September 27, 2024), Molly Roby

Silver Bow Creek/Butte Area Superfund Site

No abstract provided.

Mitigation Behaviors Of Homeowners And Renters In The Wildland Urban Interface, Aishwarya Borate, Omar Pérez Figueroa, Douglas Houston, Christopher Ihinegbu, Ariane Jong-Levinger, Jochen E. Schubert, Brett F. Sanders

Biology, Chemistry, and Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles and Research

Residential development within the wildland-urban interface (WUI) has greatly expanded in the United States since the 1990s, amplifying wildfire risk by placing people and structures in greater proximity to flammable vegetation. Household wildfire mitigation actions can vary substantially by cost, knowledge required, and perceived effectiveness, but few studies have examined them separately and how their adoption varies by housing tenure in the context of wildfires. To address this gap, we surveyed residents living in WUI areas within Southern California near recent burn scars in the Santa Ana and San Bernardino Mountain ranges. Drawing on the Protection Motivation Theory and the …