Sustainability Commons^™

Source Apportionment And Health Risk Assessment Of Nitrate In Foothill Aquifers Of Western Ghats, South India, Banajarani Panda, S. Chidambaram, Daniel D. Snow, Arindam Malakar, Dhiraj Kr Singh, L. Ramanathan

Nebraska Water Center: Faculty Publications

The present research reports the level of nitrate (NO₃^-), associated health risks and possible sources of contamination in groundwater from south India. Many samples (32%) are above or approaching the recommended level of NO₃^- for safe drinking water. The correlation analysis indicates different sources of NO₃^- contamination in different regions rather than a common origin. The isotopic measurements provide information about potential nitrogen sources contributing NO₃^- to the groundwater. Based on isotope analysis, the sources of NO₃^- in the groundwater of this region are likely to be from (a) …

2021 Fall Engr333 Project Section B Final Report, Calvin University 2021 Engr333 Section B

ENGR 333

In 2020, residences used 16.5% of all final energy in the United States, and residences were responsible for 19.3% of all U.S. CO2 emissions. Calvin ENGR 333 students partnered with Habitat for Humanity to tackle the issue of carbon emissions when designing their homes. Habitat for Humanity for Kent County is endeavoring to design homes that reduce energy consumption, energy expenditures, and carbon emissions. They are embarking upon a “carbon footprint build” that will minimize energy consumption and carbon emissions, both during construction and across the lifetime of their new Habitat for Humanity homes. This semester, the senior mechanical engineering …

2021 Fall Engr333 Project Section A Final Report, Gerald Darkey, Jonathan Jansma, Chris Singh, Ryan Whitney, Adam Brunsting, Adam Tjoelker, Jack Van Der Molen, Cornelius Van Liere, Derrick Bittner, William Terpstra, Matthew Winkle, Kelsey Yen, Kasen Anderson, Jack Cahalane, Samantha Krupa, James Kulaga, Chukwudubem Nweke, Nathan Holwerda, Jacob Meulink, John Stehouwer, Isaac Spackman, Moses Yang

ENGR 333

Habitat for Humanity (HFH) requested a carbon footprint analysis of their most recent home build. Mark Ogland-Hand, a representative of HFH, connected with Professor Heun’s ENGR 333 students to perform the carbon footprint analysis on their new low carbon house. Assuming Consumer’s Energy will incorporate their predicted percentage of renewables into their electric grid, the London home reduces projected carbon emissions by 18% when compared to a “To Code” house over a 25 year lifespan. For the current Consumer’s Energy grid, the “Improved” London house is shown to reduce projected carbon emissions by 30% when compared to the current London …

Water Utility Services: Understanding The Tension Between Viability And Affordability, Daniel Van Abs

Sustainability Seminar Series

Nationally, the cost of drinking water and sewer utility services has been increasing faster than the consumer price index (inflation) since 1980, propelled by more stringent environmental standards, service area expansion, and repairs for aging infrastructure. These pressures are not abating, and in many ways are increasing. The result is that utilities need more revenue, but an increasing number of households face utility costs that are unaffordable. Shutting off these customers is counterproductive for those low-income households (somewhat like a debtors prison, where you suffer for an inability to pay), society at large, and even the utilities (which face public …

2021 Fall Engr333 Poster, Section B, Calvin University 2021 Engr Section B

ENGR 333

In 2020, residences used 21% of all final energy in the United States and were responsible for 20% of all U.S. carbon dioxide emissions (henceforth referred to as carbon emissions). Habitat for Humanity for Kent County is endeavoring to design homes that reduce energy consumption, energy expenditures, and carbon emissions. They have established a goal of a “low carbon footprint build” that will minimize energy consumption and carbon emissions, both during construction and across the lifetime of the house. To accomplish this goal, Habitat for Humanity for Kent County partnered with Calvin’s ENGR 333 – Thermal System Design and asked …

2021 Fall Engr333 Poster, Section A, Gerald Darkey, Jonathan Jansma, Chris Singh, Ryan Whitney, Adam Brunsting, Adam Tjoelker, Jack Van Der Molen, Cornelius Van Liere, Derrick Bittner, William Terpstra, Matthew Winkle, Kelsey Yen, Kasen Anderson, Jack Cahalane, Samantha Krupa, James Kulaga, Chukwudubem Nweke, Nathan Holwerda, Jacob Meulink, John Stehouwer, Isaac Spackman, Moses Yang

ENGR 333

Habitat for Humanity (HFH) built a low-carbon home at 726 London Street SW. Mark Ogland-hand, a representative of HFH, connected with Professor Matthew Heun to begin a carbon study of this new home with the goals of understanding the carbon footprints of a traditional HFH home, the London home, and future improvements feasible for HFH to make in reducing the carbon emissions of their houses.

The Potential Of Remotely Sensed Vegetation Indices For Monitoring Pasture Condition, Pouria Ramzi, Karen Holmes

Resource management technical reports

The Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development (DPIRD) is developing an integrated monitoring system using remote sensing and on-ground measurements to track pasture condition across Western Australia’s pastoral region. We extended and adapted the methods developed in the Pastoral Lease Assessment Using Geospatial Analysis (PLAGA) project (Robinson et al. 2012), which combined remotely sensed vegetation indices (VIs) with on-ground pasture condition observations to assess the potential of using different vegetation indices in a statewide condition monitoring system.

There were 6 regions in WA’s pastoral rangelands with DPIRD on-ground condition traverse points: Kimberley and Broome, Pilbara, Yalgoo and Sandstone, Goldfields, …

Community Perceptions And Aesthetic Valuation Of Remediation Gardens, Rachel Bechtold

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Creating successfully remediated landscapes may rely on both natural resources and human perception in landscape design. Urban areas present a dynamic environment wherein communities and nature compete for resources and space. This dissertation study was designed to better understand aesthetic perceptions of native plants capable of land remediation in midwestern communities. Findings from this study show the importance of aesthetic perceptions of stakeholders towards rehabilitated landscapes and the importance of organizing indicators for future design decisions in an interdisciplinary fashion. Recommendations include continued evaluation of aesthetic perceptions for plant species in urban landscapes and modeling a more consistent framework for …

2021 Fall Engr333 Seminar Presentation, Anika Huizinga, John Stehouwer, William Terpstra, Duncan Waanders

ENGR 333

File for student presentation, given by students in the Fall 2021 class of ENGR333.

A Remote Sensing Perspective: Mapping The Human Footprint In The Zambezi Region Of Namibia., Ariel E Weaver

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The “human footprint” can be used as a general proxy to estimate human activities across the landscape. The human footprint in the Zambezi Region of Namibia is critically important for regional management of conservation efforts and land use planning. The land covers in the Zambezi Region are characteristically difficult to separate spectrally, due to a highly heterogeneous savanna landscape. Object Based Image Analysis (OBIA) and Random Forest (RF) methods are notable for their ability to improve classification accuracies of remotely sensed imagery. In this study, I investigate the extent of the human footprint in the Zambezi Region of Namibia, using …

Use Patterns And Influencing Factors Of Irrigation Best Management Practices In The Lower Mississippi River Basin, Merri E. Day

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study uses the 2016 Irrigation Survey from Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi to document the use of irrigation best management practices (IBMPs), analyze use patterns, and use quantitative methods to determine factors that influence producers’ decisions regarding IBMPs. IBMPs included in the survey can be grouped as: field management practices (zero-grade leveling, precision-grade leveling, end blocking, warped surface, and deep tillage), water flow control practices (computerized pipe-hole selection, multiple-inlet irrigation, surge irrigation, alternate wetting and drying, cutback irrigation, flow meters, and pump timers), water recovery/storage practices (tail-water recovery system and on-farm storage reservoir), and advanced irrigation scheduling practices (soil moisture …

Why Science Is Important To Us All: Identity And Environment, Anita K. Foeman

Sustainability Research & Practice Seminar Presentations

Professor Anita Foeman, Communication and Media - Why Science is Important to Us All: Identity and Environment

Risk-Based Machine Learning Approaches For Probabilistic Transient Stability, Umair Shahzad

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Power systems are getting more complex than ever and are consequently operating close to their limit of stability. Moreover, with the increasing demand of renewable wind generation, and the requirement to maintain a secure power system, the importance of transient stability cannot be overestimated. Considering its significance in power system security, it is important to propose a different approach for enhancing the transient stability, considering uncertainties. Current deterministic industry practices of transient stability assessment ignore the probabilistic nature of variables (fault type, fault location, fault clearing time, etc.). These approaches typically provide a conservative criterion and can result in expensive …

Cover Crop Effects On Near-Surface Soil Aggregate Stability In The Southern Mississippi Valley Loess (Mlra 134), Chandler M. Arel

Crop, Soil and Environmental Sciences Undergraduate Honors Theses

Intensive agricultural cultivation within major land resource area (MLRA) 134, the Southern Mississippi Valley Loess, has led to soil erosion, soil compaction, and the overall destabilization of near-surface soil aggregates. The use of cover crops during the agricultural offseason has been shown to help alleviate soil compaction and provide stabilizing effects against soil erosion, which are particularly important as the silty soils of MLRA 134 have a large erosion potential. This study evaluated the effects of cover crop and no-cover crop treatment on silt-loam soils within MLRA 134. Treatments were implemented during Fall 2018 and Fall 2019 and consisted of …

Reinforcement Learning Policy Gradient Methods For Reservoir Operation Management And Control, Sadegh Sadeghi Tabas

All Theses

Changes in demand, various hydrological inputs, and environmental stressors are among issues that water managers and policymakers face on a regular basis. These concerns have sparked interest in applying different techniques to determine reservoir operation policy and improve reservoir release decisions. As the resolution of the analysis rises, it becomes more difficult to effectively represent a real-world system using traditional approaches for determining the best reservoir operation policy. One of the challenges is the “curse of dimensionality,” which occurs when the discretization of the state and action spaces becomes finer or when more state or action variables are taken into …

Raising The Level Of Environmental Concern Of Senior Students Taking The Electronics Engineering Laws And Ethics Through Climate Change Awareness Study, King Harold A. Recto, Romano Q. Neyra

Electronics, Computer, and Communications Engineering Faculty Publications

Two general areas that future electronics engineers are honed are competence and character. Most of the courses he takes fall in the general area of competence. This includes subjects like Circuit Theory, Electronic Design and Analysis, Communication Systems, and the like. Subjects dealing with character, in contrast, are limited. In some universities, it may just be Electronics Engineering (ECE) Laws and Ethics and the focus is on “engineering made by man for man.” In this traditional view of Engineering, the environment is often neglected since it’s not about “man” (as opposed to the “society”). Over the last years, however, concerns …

Rehydrating The Landscape At Yanget, Geraldton, Western Australia, Jamie Bowyer, Rod O'Bree

Natural resources published reports

Rod and Bridie O’Bree’s farm is 25 km east of Geraldton in the Northern Agricultural Region of Western Australia. The long-term rainfall average is 486 mm although that has dropped to 354 mm over the last 30 years. They run a 150 head beef cattle herd, fatten 500-700 lambs annually and have a 40-60 head horse stud on the farm. They purchased the farm early in 2008 after one of the worst droughts in the area. There was little to no vegetation, brown or green, across the farm and all of the water from a 25 mm rain event ran …

Evaluation Of Nitrous Oxide Emissions From Furrow-Irrigated Rice On A Silt-Loam Soil In Arkansas, Jordan M. Slayden

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As the number one rice (Oryza sativa)-producing state in the United States, Arkansas also ranks fourth as the largest user of groundwater. Recently, due to the development of drought- resistant hybrid cultivars, the furrow-irrigated rice production system has become an increasingly popular alternative to traditional flood-irrigated production with respect to conserving groundwater and maintaining yield. However, other environmental parameters, like greenhouse gas emissions, specifically nitrous oxide (N2O), have yet to be evaluated under furrow-irrigated rice. The objectives of this study were to i) evaluate the effects of site position (i.e., up-, mid-, and down-slope) and tillage treatment [i.e., conventional tillage …

Relationship Between Sustainability Determinant Variables For Usa, India, China During The Sustainability Awareness Years From An Energy Usage Perspective And Its Relation To Environmental Kuznets Curve: Analysis By Linear Regression, Krishnan Iyer

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Sustainable development promotes economic growth alongside environmental quality preservation and minimizes greenhouse gas emissions .The Environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) shows that, as countries transition from low income to higher income levels of economic development it leads to a deterioration of the environment, but after a certain level of economic growth, environmental quality is preserved alongside economic growth to a good extent and makes the developmental model sustainable. In this research we perform Linear Regression to test the effect of sustainability determinant variables on Total greenhouse gas emissions and perform a comparative study of the test results on the world’s leading …

Longleaf Pine Restoration In The South Carolina Sandhills Wiregrass Gap, Jacob W. Murray

All Theses

Longleaf pine restoration has been a topic of great concern and intrigue in the southeast and has taken on new fervor in recent decades as restoration methods continue to develop. Many landowners and forest managers are now pursuing ecological forestry and restoration ecology in great numbers as a new form of land management. However, niche regions can often be overlooked, as is the case with the Carolina Sandhills Wiregrass Gap, an area devoid of wiregrass and one that is on the outskirt regions of the historical longleaf pine range. Field studies were conducted pre- and post-harvest during two growing seasons …