Water Resource Management Commons^™

Climate-Informed Environmental Inflows To Revive A Drying Lake Facing Meteorological And Anthropogenic Droughts, Aneseh Alborzi, Ali Mirchi, Hamed Moftakhari, Iman Mallakpour, Sara Alian, Ali Nazemi, Elmira Hassanzadeh, Omid Mazdiyasni, Samaneh Ashraf, Kaveh Madani, Hamid Norouzi, Marzi Azarderakhsh, Ali Mehran, Mojtaba Sadegh, Andrea Castelletti, Amir Aghakouchak

Publications and Research

The rapid shrinkage of Lake Urmia, one of the world's largest saline lakes located in northwestern Iran, is a tragic wake-up call to revisit the principles of water resources management based on the socio-economic and environmental dimensions of sustainable development. The overarching goal of this paper is to set a framework for deriving dynamic, climate-informed environmental inflows for drying lakes considering both meteorological/climatic and anthropogenic conditions. We report on the compounding effects of meteorological drought and unsustainable water resource management that contributed to Lake Urmia's contemporary environmental catastrophe. Using rich datasets of hydrologic attributes, water demands and withdrawals, as well …

Impacts Of Stress On Forest Recovery And Its Interaction With Canopy Height, Peipei Xu, Tao Zhou, Chuixiang Yi, Hui Luo, Xiang Zhao, Wei Fang, Shan Gao, Xia Liu

Publications and Research

Global climate change is leading to an increase in the frequency, intensity, and duration of drought events, which can affect the functioning of forest ecosystems. Because human activities such as afforestation and forest attributes such as canopy height may exhibit considerable spatial differences, such differences may alter the recovery paths of drought-impacted forests. To accurately assess how climate affects forest recovery, a quantitative evaluation on the effects of forest attributes and their possible interaction with the intensity of water stress is required. Here, forest recovery following extreme drought events was analyzed for Yunnan Province, southwest China. The variation in the …

Freshwater Reservoir Offsets And Food Crusts: Isotope, Ams, And Lipid Analyses Of Experimental Cooking Residues, John P. Hart, Karine Taché, William A. Lovis

Publications and Research

Freshwater reservoir offsets (FROs) occur when AMS dates on charred, encrusted food residues on pottery predate a pot’s chronological context because of the presence of ancient carbon from aquatic resources such as fish. Research over the past two decades has demonstrated that FROs vary widely within and between water bodies and between fish in those water bodies. Lipid analyses have identified aquatic biomarkers that can be extracted from cooking residues as potential evidence for FROs. However, lacking has been efforts to determine empirically how much fish with FROs needs to be cooked in a pot with other resources to result …

Bathymetry Data For Lakes Azuei And Enriquillo, Michael Piasecki, Mahrokh Moknatian

Publications and Research

This data set supports and forms the basis for the development of Digital Bathymetry Models (DBM) for Lakes Azuei (Haiti) and Enriquillo (Dominican Republic). Bathymetric Data is typically acquired using Sonar devices that measure the depth at specific points along a boat track and for which the longitude and latitude is recorded. From the resulting point cloud one develop a seamless representation of the floor of the lake on either a raster set (which is what we have done) or try to use a contour (vector representation) model in which the depth contours appear as polygons or -lines. The raw …

Escape Burrowing Of Modern Freshwater Bivalves As A Paradigm For Escape Behavior In The Devonian Bivalve Archanodon Catskillensis, Katja Knoll, Rebecca B. Chamberlain, John A. Chamberlain

Publications and Research

Many freshwater bivalves restore themselves to the sediment water interface after burial by upward escape burrowing. We studied the escape burrowing capacity of two modern unionoids, Elliptio complanata and Pyganodon cataracta and the invasive freshwater venerid Corbicula fluminea, in a controlled laboratory setting varying sediment grain size and burial depth. We found that the relatively streamlined E. complanata is a better escape burrower than the more obese P. cataracta. E. complanata is more likely to escape burial in both fine and coarse sand, and at faster rates than P. cataracta. However, successful escape from 10 cm burial, especially in fine …

Spatial Analysis Of High-Resolution Radar Rainfall And Citizen-Reported Flash Flood Data In Ultra-Urban New York City, Brianne Smith, Stephanie Rodriguez

Publications and Research

New York City (NYC) is an ultra-urban region, with over 50% impervious cover and buried stream channels. Traditional flood studies rely on the presence of stream gages to detect flood stage and discharge, but these methods cannot be used in ultra-urban areas. Here we create a high-resolution radar rainfall dataset for NYC and utilize citizen and expert reports of flooding throughout the city to study flash flooding in NYC. Results indicate that interactions between the urban area and land–sea boundary have an important impact on the spatial variability of both heavy rainfall and flooding, sometimes in contrast to results obtained …

Influence Of The Interaction Of Calcium Carbonate Particles With Surfactants On The Degree Of Water Pollution In Small Rivers, Petry Spataru, Francisco Fernandez, Joseph W. Sista, Tudor Spataru, Oxana Spinu, Igor Povar

Publications and Research

Introduction: The influence of the interaction of calcium carbonate (CaCO3) and surface-active substances (SAS; surfactants) with different chain lengths and cationic and anionic hydrophilic centers has been analyzed.

Results: Laboratory simulations indicate reduced negative influences on cationic SAS nitrification/self-purification processes in the presence of anionic species. This suggests the role of complex ionic formation [anionic SAS * cationic SAS] as a cause of this effect. UV-Vis spectra of lauryl sulfate (LS) and of cetyltrimethylammonium (CTMA), as well as of their mixtures in ratios of 2:1 and 1:1, treated by fine particles of CaCO3, display decreased amounts of SAS in analyzed …

Recovery And Resilience Of Urban Stream Metabolism Following Superstorm Sandy And Other Floods, Alexander J. Reisinger, Emma J. Rosi, Heather A. Bechtold, Thomas R. Doody, Sujay S. Kaushal, Peter M. Groffman

Publications and Research

Urban streams are exposed to multiple different stressors on a regular basis, with increased hydrological flashiness representing a common urban stream stressor. Stream metabolism, the coupled ecosystem functions of gross primary production (GPP) and ecosystem respiration (ER), controls numerous other ecosystem functions and integrates multiple processes occurring within streams. We examined the effect of one large (Superstorm Sandy) and multiple small and moderately sized flood events in Baltimore, Maryland, to quantify the response and recovery of urban stream GPP and ER before and after floods of different magnitudes. We also compared GPP and ER before and after Superstorm Sandy to …

Bathymetric Survey For Lakes Azuei And Enriquillo, Hispaniola, Michael Piasecki, Mahrokh Moknatian, Fred Moshary, Joseph Cleto, Yolanda Leon, Jorge Gonzalez, Daniel Comarazamy

Publications and Research

The two largest lakes on the Caribbean Island of Hispaniola, Lake Azuei in Haiti and Lake Enriquillo in the Dominican Republic, have experienced dramatic growth and surface area expansion over the past few years leading to severe flooding and loss of arable land around the lake perimeters. In order to better understand the reasons for this unprecedented rate of expansion and the resulting consequences a multi-disciplinary team comprised of researchers from Haiti, the DR, and the US have embarked on an extensive data collecting and hydrologic and climatological modeling campaign. While the sensor deployment entails stations that measure climatological data …

Adsorption Of Antibiotics By Vermiculite, Mosa J. Ferdous

Dissertations and Theses

The occurrence of residual antibiotics in the environment has been a worldwide issue and warrants the development of inexpensive yet effective methods for antibiotics removal from contaminated water. In this thesis work, the adsorption of four antibiotics, namely chlorotetracycline (CTC), oxytetracycline (OTC), ofloxacin (OFL), and enrofloxacin (ENR), onto natural vermiculite has been studied using batch (static) and column (dynamic) adsorption techniques. The Langmuir and Freundlich isotherm models were initially used to explain the adsorption processes. The separation factor (RL) values derived from the Langmuir model and the 1/n values derived from Freundlich model in the present investigation were less than …

Can Improved Agricultural Water Use Efficiency Save India’S Groundwater?, Ram Fishman, Naresh Devineni, Swaminathan Raman

Publications and Research

Irrigated agriculture is placing increasing pressure on finite freshwater resources, especially in developing countries, where water extraction is often unregulated, un-priced and even subsidized. To shift agriculture to a more sustainable use of water without harming the food security and livelihoods of hundreds of millions of smallholders, substantial improvements of water use efficiency will be required. Here, we use detailed hydroclimatic and agricultural data to estimate the potential for the widespread adoption of efficient irrigation technologies to halt the depletion of India's groundwater resources. Even though we find substantial technical potential for reversing water table declines, we show that the …

Role Of Engineering In Sustainable Water Management, Balázs M. Fekete, János J. Bogárdi

Publications and Research

The recognition of the limits of resources is almost as old as the realization that our planet is a sphere leading to concerns about sustainable resources management. Water resources in particular receive growing attention given its uneven distribution in many parts of the world. Engineering solutions to address water management challenges played significant roles in the past in areas such as access to clean water and sanitation, providing water for irrigation, offering protection against floods, allowing power generation, etc. Despite their proven benefits, engineering solutions are receiving increasing criticism due to their negative environmental and societal impacts and the high …

Water Conservation To Reduce Wet Weather Pollution Loads To The Gowanus Canal, Brooklyn, Ny, Suzanne Carol Stempel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Public participation plays an important role in wet weather pollution management. However, the effects of participation programs on local water quality are often difficult to quantify. This project aims to quantify the potential effects of a community based, non-structural, BMP aimed at controlling inputs to combined sewage systems by encouraging residents to reduce their water use during rain events. A household could participate by reducing the amount of water they use for flushing toilets, washing dishes, taking showers, etc. during rain events; thereby reducing stress on the system during the time of highest demand. The Gowanus Canal sewershed in Brooklyn, …

Optimizing Bio-Retention Locations For Stormwater Management Using Genetic Algorithm, Dieu Huong Trinh, Ting Fong May Chui

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

To minimize the change of hydrological regime due to urbanization, stormwater best management practices have been enforced in the past few decades in certain urban areas. One approach is to implement small-scale hydrologic controls, such as bio-retention systems, throughout a catchment. Optimization techniques have also been applied to determine the locations that give the most hydrological benefits. However, optimization tools are commonly built in together with specific hydrological models. Thus, the choices and components of hydrological models are usually restricted. Furthermore, it is redundant to build another hydrological model that has a built-in optimization tool if a hydrological model, and …

Developing A High Performance Computing (Hpc) Based Hydrological Modelling Framework To Support Extreme Weather Impact Studies, Dehua Zhu, Yunqing Xuan, Mike Webster, Ian Cluckie

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

Computer based modelling has long been an established norm in hydrological studies. The demand of computing power in hydrological modelling domain, although keep steadily growing over past decades, it has never been higher as we now look into many impact studies due to climate change. While HPC has long been a major player in the neighbouring field of climate sciences, its role has yet to be defined when the resources become increasingly accessible to hydrological modellers attempting to address the impact of climate change in terms of extreme weather events. In this paper, we present a framework of HPC based …

Linked Data Approach For Automated Failure Detection In Pressure Sewers Using Real-Time Sensor Data, Jonathan Yu, Paul Davis, Kerry Taylor, Scott Gould

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

The increased availability of sensor data presents opportunities for machine-assisted analytics, reporting and exploration of the sensed environment. Sensor networks provide the ability to observe physical phenomena in real-time and provide useful information to help conservation and management of environmental resources. Thus, exploring these real-time datasets can provide valuable insights for informing policy and decision support in domains such as water quality monitoring, early warning disaster detection, and physical asset degradation monitoring. However, the semantic meaning, format and interface heterogeneity of the sensors and sensor observations are barriers to effective discovery and analysis of events. We propose ontology-driven approaches for …

On The External And Iterative Coupling Of Multiple Open Channel Flow Models With Openmi, Bernhard P.J. Becker, Jan Talsma

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

For water management questions on the national scale, cross-border studies or for water authorities it can be necessary to couple models of the same type, i. e. models that represent the same flow processes, but different modelling areas, at shared boundaries. With the help of a simple test case how two open channel flow models (Sobek) can be coupled externally or iteratively according to the OpenMI standard. We discuss the simulation results from external coupling and iterative coupling against the simultaneous solution in one equation system. Conclusions on the choice of a coupling method for practical applications are made and …

The Provision Of Data From The Cosmos-Uk Soil Moisture Monitoring Network, Matthew J. Fry, Jonathan Evans, Helen Ward, James Blake, Lucy Ball, Louisa Doughty

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

This paper describes the data available from COSMOS-UK, a new soil moisture monitoring network for the UK based on passive cosmic-ray moisture probes which are capable of measuring average soil water content over a circular footprint of around 350m in radius and depths of up to 0.5 m. Around 35 probes, with an associated array of meteorological and point soil moisture sensors, will be deployed across the UK in a network designed to best represent a range of soil and land cover types, complement existing scientific monitoring over a wide range of subject areas, and capture the variability in soil …

Using Smart Water Meters In (Near) Real-Time On The Iwidget System, Michael G. Barry, Mark E. Purcell, Bradley J. Eck

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

Devices and technologies to measure and report water consumption at sub-daily intervals are growing in popularity. Data from these devices are creating new opportunities to manage the supply and demand of water in near real-time. To this end, The EU FP7 iWidget project is developing a state-of-the art analytics platform for the integrated management of urban water. Key challenges include extracting useful insights from high-resolution consumption data and exploring a range of decision-support tools for water utilities and consumers. To overcome these challenge iWIDGET is developing a distributed, open, robust, collaborative architecture that allows partners and utilities to collect and …

"Smart Pebble" Design For Environmental Monitoring Applications, Manousos Valyrakis, Edgars Pavlovskis

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

Sediment transport, due to primarily the action of water, wind and ice, is one of the most significant geomorphic processes responsible for shaping Earth’s surface. It involves entrainment of sediment grains in rivers and estuaries due to the violently fluctuating hydrodynamic forces near the bed. Here an instrumented particle, namely a “smart pebble", is developed to investigate the exact flow conditions under which individual grains may be entrained from the surface of a gravel bed. This could lead in developing a better understanding of the processes involved, while focusing on the response of the particle during a variety of flow …

Flood Risk From Extreme Events In Mexico, Adrián Pedrozo-Acuña, Pamela Iskra Mejía-Estrada, Juan Pablo Rodríguez-Rincón, Ramón Domínguez Mora, Fernando Jorge González-Villareal

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

Flooding is the most common and damaging natural hazard faced by civilization, and flooding threats are likely to increase given current climate change predictions that suggest more intense hurricanes and precipitation. The latter has been recently experienced in the Mexican state of Guerrero, during the severe flood of September 2013. During this event, the heavy rainfall registered in 2 days (~700 mm) produced extreme river discharges that produced significant fluvial impacts and flooding in large areas of the city of Acapulco, causing severe damages and social disruption. In order to study the causes of this disaster, an integrated methodology to …

Uncertainties In Future Projections Of Extreme Rainfall: The Role Of Climate Model, Emission Scenario And Randomness, Alireza Nazemi, Md. Shahabul Alam, Amin Elshorbagy

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

Climate change has resulted in substantial variations in annual extreme rainfall quantiles in different durations and return periods. Predicting the future changes in extreme rainfall quantiles is essential for various water resources design, assessment, and decision making purposes. Current Predictions of future rainfall extremes, however, exhibit large uncertainties. According to extreme value theory, rainfall extremes are rather random variables, with changing distributions around different return periods; therefore there are uncertainties even under current climate conditions. Regarding future condition, our large-scale knowledge is obtained using global climate models, forced with certain emission scenarios. There are widely known deficiencies with climate models, …

Modflow: An Insight Into Thirty Years Development Of A Standard Numerical Code For Groundwater Simulations, Dalila Loudyi, Roger Falconer, Binliang Lin

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

Of all of the groundwater flow models widely available, the U.S. Geological Survey three-dimensional modular finite-difference, groundwater flow model, MODFLOW, is regarded by many as the most widely used by government agencies and consultancy firms. The Model was first developed in 1984 and since then many changes, updates and corrections have been introduced to the programme, simultaneously with its growing use. Since its establishment as a world-wide standard for groundwater flow modelling, many programmes have been developed to link MODFLOW to other codes that use groundwater flow information in porous saturated media. Processes such as solute transport, variable density flow, …

Analysis Of Semi-Distributed And Global Hydrological Models In The Central Tropical Basins Of The Gulf Of Mexico To The Effects Of Extreme Hydrometeorological Phenomena, Sara Patricia Ibarra Zavaleta, Mariana Castañeda González, Rabindranarth Romero López, Eduardo Castillog Onzalez, Alberto Brando Báez Camarena, Annie Poulin, Mathias Glaus, Robert Hausler

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

In the last years extreme hydrometeorological phenomena have increased in number and intensity affecting the inhabitants of various regions, an example of these effects are the central basins of the Gulf of Mexico (CBGM) that they have been affected by 55.2% with floods and especially the state of Veracruz (1999-2013), leaving economic, social and environmental losses. Mexico currently lacks sufficient hydrological studies for the measurement of volumes in rivers, since is convenient to create a hydrological model (HM) suited to the quality and quantity of the geographic and climatic information that is reliable and affordable. Therefore this research compares the …

Compromise Programming Based Scenario Analysis Of Urban Water Systems Management Options: Case Study Of Kerman City, Saeed Nazari, S. Jamshid Mousavi, Koroush Behzadian, Zoran Kapelan

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

Supplying adequate water for urban water systems (UWSs) suffering from lack of water resources has always been a major concern in urban water management. Integrated simulation models are useful tools for sustainable planning and management of UWSs. This paper presents an integrated, conceptual modeling approach for simulation and analysis of an UWS by which different envisaged scenarios of water demand and resources are assessed. Other than water flow, the simulation model quantifies flows of energy, GHG emissions and cost in UWS. The performance of the developed model is demonstrated through its application to the UWS of Kerman City located in …

Development And Application Of A Shallow Water Flow Model Hdm-2d, Chang Geun Song, Il Won Seo, Jae Hyun Shin, In Hwan Park

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

In this study, an unsteady 2D depth-averaged flow model, HDM-2D was developed by employing the finite element algorithm. The shallow water equations were weighted by SU/PG test function of which the shape is deformed by the current direction to introduce balancing diffusion only in the flow direction. The nonlinearity of the discretized momentum equations was linearized by Newton-Raphson method. Triangular or rectangular element with C0 interpolation function can be mixed together in the construction of geometry and the linear set of equations was solved by frontal method. The HDM-2D features (1) the incorporation of secondary current effect by dispersion stresses; …

Software Tools For Large Scale Interactive Hydrodynamic Modeling, Gennadii Donchyts, Fedor Baart, Arthur Van Dam, Bert Jagers, Sander Van Der Pijl

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

Running hydrodynamic models interactively allows both visual exploration and change of model state during simulation. One of the main characteristics of an interactive model is that it should provide immediate feedback to the user, for example respond to changes in model state or view settings. For this reason, such features are usually only available for models with a relatively small number of computational cells, which are used mainly for demonstration and educational purposes. It would be useful if interactive modeling would also work for models typically used in consultancy projects involving large scale simulations. This results in a number of …

Minimum Data Requirements For Integrating Urban Development And Urban Water Infrastructure Models, Christian Mikovits, Michael Mair, Wolfgang Rauch, Manfred Kleidorfer

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

Data quality and availability is a common problem in many modelling studies dealing with regional, spatially distributed case studies. This is true for both, urban development models and urban water management models. As current research in urban water management more and more tries to benefit from an integrated view of the performance of water networks in the context of dynamically growing and shrinking cities, this problem of data scarcity increases. Having different applications with different levels of details available, the question arises which data (and which temporal and spatial resolution) is really necessary to be collected in a modeling study …

Modeling Of District Metered Areas With Relatively High Leakage Rate. The Case Study Of Kalipoli’S Dma, Antonios Bakogiannis, Athanasios Tzamtzis

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

The article reviews the modelling of District Metered Areas (DMAs) with relatively high leakage rate. As a generally recognised approach in modelling of leakage does not exist, modelling of leakage by enginners and other researchers usually takes place by dividing the whole leakage rate evenly to all available nodes of the model. In this article, a new methodology is proposed to determine the nodal leakage by using a hydraulic model. The proposed methodology takes into consideration the IWA water balance methodology, the Minimum Night Flow (MNF) analysis, the number of connections related to each node and the marerial of pipes. …

A Web Based Water Resources Analysis Portal For Occoquan Watershed, Saurav Kumar, Adil Godrej, Thomas Grizzard, Harold Post, Justin Bartlett

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

In most of the developed world, water resources data, including both water quality and quantity, has been collected for decades. Such datasets are often used to calibrate water resources models that in turn are capable of producing large amounts of data useful for activities such as forecasting and risk analysis. Like many other domains (e.g., finance, marketing, etc.), significant education, extension, and policy making benefits may be had by building data analytics tools to derive knowledge from these datasets. The knowledge thus available may be turned into intelligence by policy makers and may also be used to enhance environmental education …