Water Resource Management Commons^™

Towards Advancing Streamflow And Peak Flow Prediction With Machine Learning: Identifying Infrastructure At Risk, Sudan Pokharel

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

Due to climate change and its impact, the need for adaptive strategies for natural disaster mitigation and resource management has never been more urgent. Central to this is water resource management, which is essential for sustainable human activities, ecological balance, and the mitigation of natural hazards like floods. Streamflow is a crucial element of water resource management and plays a vital role in planning and building water infrastructure, implementing emergency response plans, supporting flood mitigation initiatives, and regulating agricultural and industrial use. However, accurate prediction of streamflow still remains a challenge due to the complex non-linear and non-stationary interaction between …

Controls On Nutrient And Sediment Export In A Non-Perennial Agricultural Stream, Kathleen Cutting

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Climate change is expected to increase flow variability and intermittency in streams, changing the magnitude and timing nutrient and sediment delivery. This may exacerbate water quality issues in agricultural landscapes, where nutrient and sediment inputs are often elevated. Elevated nutrients can drive eutrophication in downstream waterways, and excess sediment loss can decrease primary productivity. Non-perennial headwater streams are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and agriculture as they serve as key sites for nutrient cycling at the terrestrial-aquatic interface. Despite their importance, the interactive effects of agriculture and stream intermittency, as well as unpaved roads in rural watersheds …

Training Sensor-Agnostic Deep Learning Models For Remote Sensing: Achieving State-Of-The-Art Cloud And Cloud Shadow Identification With Omnicloudmask, Nicholas J. Wright, John M A Duncan, Nik Callow, Sally E. Thompson, Richard J. George

Natural Resources Research Articles

Deep learning models are widely used to extract features and insights from remotely sensed imagery. However, these models typically perform optimally when applied to the same sensor, resolution and imagery processing level as used during their training, and are rarely used or evaluated on out-of-domain data. This limitation results in duplication of efforts in collecting similar training datasets from different satellites to train sensor-specific models. Here, we introduce a range of techniques to train deep learning models that generalise across various sensors, resolutions, and processing levels. We applied this approach to train OmniCloudMask (OCM), a sensor-agnostic deep learning model that …

Promoting Sustainable Drinking Water Consumption At Bryant University, Matthew Gerdenich

Honors Projects in Biological and Biomedical Sciences

Many higher education institutions have either banned or restricted the sale of disposable plastic water bottles to address environmental pollution and climate change. This project seeks to gather knowledge and data related to disposable water bottle consumption at Bryant University that can be used to provide recommendations for promoting reusable water bottle use on campus. Additionally, the project seeks to find out why community members choose single-use water bottles over reusables ones and how to make reusable water bottle use more attractive and accessible. Primary research included a survey distributed to undergraduate students on campus as well as water samples …

Assessing Relationships Between Water Quality, Precipitation, Land Cover And Stormwater Conveyance Type Across A Range Of Sub-Watersheds In The Southeastern Coastal Zone, Kevencia Sabine Gabriel Faton

Theses and Dissertations

The expansion of urban land use/cover along the coast may degrade water quality by introducing a plethora of pollutants and pathogens that negatively impact human and ecological health. It is hypothesized that anthropogenic contaminants associated with stormwater runoff increase with increasing urban density and vary with the timing and magnitude of rainfall. In this study, we examined land use/cover change and relationships between Escherichia coli (E. coli), turbidity, nutrients, and the timing and magnitude of rainfall in two different types of stormwater conveyances (ditches and ponds) within Murrells Inlet, SC during the summer of 2023. Our results indicate …

Diverse Dust Sources And Warming Trigger Cyanobacteria Abundance In Freshwater Ecosystems In The Western United States, Juan Manuel González-Olalla, Janice Brahney

Watershed Sciences Faculty Publications

The rise in global temperature and the increase in atmospheric transport and deposition of dust linked to greater aridity, land abandonment, and wildfires, are placing significant stress on freshwater microbial communities. Temperature increases and the nutrients contained in the dust may independently and together alter the metabolism and structure of these communities. However, dust chemistry is widely variable, and pre-existing lake conditions will likely influence the response of the algal and microbial communities to added nutrients and temperature stress. To fill this gap of knowledge, we tested the metabolic and structural response of phytoplankton in two aquatic ecosystems in the …

Water Quality Of The Inner Puno Bay Of Lake Titicaca, Zoe Hoaglund

Undergraduate Research Symposium 2025

Lake Titicaca straddles the border between Bolivia and Peru and is the highest lake in the world. The Lake has held great significance, particularly to the Incan empire for the last five thousand years as a source of drinking water, for agricultural use, and is the primary source for protein from native and more recently from non-native species of fish. It currently supports a growing fish farming industry for both Bolivia and Peru. Puno is one of the major urban centers on Lake Titicaca and supports a population of about 1.3 million people which derive their drinking water and a …

Evaluating Water Quality Upstream And Downstream From A Proposed Restoration Project On The Pomme De Terre River In Morris, Mn, Payton Prieve

Undergraduate Research Symposium 2025

The recent push to restore natural river conditions provides opportunities to investigate the effects of dam removal and channel modification, particularly if data are collected before such projects are initiated. The MN DNR plans to modify the Pomme de Terre River channel at the Crissy Lake dam (Morris, MN) by constructing and directing water flow over stone arch rapids to remove the barrier to fish, restore flow, and enhance river conditions. We aim to characterize the Pomme de Terre River upstream and downstream from the project site before construction to provide data to compare with river conditions after the project …

James Buttle Review: Bed, Banks And Beyond: River Flood Dynamics, Ellen Wohl, Julianne Scamardo, Ryan R. Morrison

Watershed Sciences Faculty Publications

Floods are amplified and attenuated by features and processes across spatial scales, defined here as flood dynamics. We review and synthesise these influences at the catchment, river network and reach scales as a means of integrating understanding of controls on flood dynamics and identifying key questions that arise because of differences in techniques of investigation and disciplinary emphases between spatial scales. Catchment-scale influences include catchment area, topography, lithology, land cover, precipitation, antecedent conditions and human alterations such as changing land cover. Network-scale influences on flood dynamics include network topology, longitudinal variations in the geometry of successive river corridor reaches, lakes …

Characterizing The Hydrology Of Rock Glaciers And Other High-Mountain Stream Types In The Intermountain West, Usa, Jace Kjar, Anna Shampain

Student Research Symposium

Rock glaciers are high mountain landforms composed of an ice core covered and insulated by unconsolidated talus (Figure 1). Rock glaciers—like other forms of mountain snow and ice (e.g., surface ice glaciers)—are vital water sources in high mountain ecosystems. However, the relevance of rock glaciers for mountain hydrology has been largely overlooked. For this project, I helped to collect and analyze stream flow data from 17 sites across the Wasatch, Teton, and Northern Rockies mountain ranges including rock glacier and non-rock glacier streams. By including multiple sources, our goal was to place rock glacier streams in context.

Discovery Of Suitable Habitat For Freshwater Mussel Species In The Appomattox River Through The Use Of Environmental Dna., Nicholas Duellman

Longwood Senior Thesis Proposal

Freshwater mussels are a keystone species providing crucial ecosystem services and river composition resiliency. Anecdotal evidence suggests the presence of freshwater mussels within the Appomattox river, the specifics of population sizes and suitable habitat remains an open question. Environmental DNA (eDNA) usage in conservation ecology has exploded in use within the past two decades, being far less invasive and cost-demanding than traditional methods. An eDNA metabarcoding pipeline of the 16s mitochondrial ribosomal subunit was built in R v. 4.4.2, using dada2 v. 3.2.1 package to trim MinION single read ASV outputs for freshwater mussel species identification in the interest of …

Water Holding Capacity Of Soil And Resilience To Drought, Taro Mieno

Cornhusker Economics

For the past two years, I have been involved in an NSF-funded research project titled “RII Track-2 FEC: Supporting Rural Livelihoods in the Water-Stressed Central High Plains.” The overarching goal of this project is to evaluate the potential of microbials and biochar to enhance soil water holding capacity (hereafter, WHC), thereby improving drought resilience in crop production and reducing irrigation demand to slow aquifer depletion. Visit the project website for more details. A key component of this research is assessing the economic viability of these interventions, a task for which I am responsible.

To understand the economic benefits of increasing …

Turning Farm Waste Into Energy: Pragmatic Approaches For Cleaner Midwestern American Communities, Rebecca Gaisie

Selected or Submitted Student Research Papers/Projects

Mismanagement of farm waste in the Midwest of the United States has resulted in significant methane emissions, water contamination, and public health concerns. The present manure management rules are still inconsistent, underfunded, and insufficient to motivate individuals to behave in a way that benefits the environment, despite increasing concerns about the environment. This policy study investigates anaerobic digestion as a potential means to convert waste into energy that could support rural and environmental development. Some of the problems with the federal and state legislation examined in this study under an EPI framework are a lack of incentives, inadequate technical support, …

Experimental Evaluation Of Friedel’S Salt For Chloride Removal In Road Salt-Impacted Stormwater And Lakes, Marwan Alhinaai

Masters Theses

Road salt (e.g., NaCl) application in cold-temperature regions has increased Cl- concentrations in freshwater. Removing Cl- from water is challenging because it’s highly soluble. This paper is the first to demonstrate and characterize the removal of Cl- from stormwater by Friedel’s salt (Ca4Al2(OH)12Cl2(H2O)4) precipitation (FSP), achieved by adding calcium oxide (CaO) and sodium aluminate (NaAlO2). Laboratory tests were done on Cl- removal with FSP using a range of Ca/Al/Cl ratios in deionized (DI) water and in stormwater samples impacted by road salt. Even the lowest doses resulted in significant removal of Cl- with maximum removal rates for comparable Ca/Al/Cl ratios …

Water Current, Volume 57, No. 1, Spring 2025

Water Current Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Analysis Of The Potential Impacts Of Brine And The Main Challenges Of The Water Importing Project From The Gulf Of California To Phoenix, Arizona (Arizona Water Project Solution), Alejandro Corral Hernandez

Water Resources Professional Project Reports

In December 2022, the Arizona Water Project Solution (AWPS) was presented to the Water Infrastructure Finance Authority of Arizona (WIFA). The project proposes to develop, construct, and operate a Seawater Reverse Osmosis (SWRO) plant in Puerto Peñasco, Sonora, Mexico, and transport potable water through a 200-mile pipeline to supply the city of Phoenix, Arizona, in the United States.

This study includes a cross-multiple-case analysis, incorporating expert data and information, to evaluate the brine impacts and challenges faced in developing the five operational SWRO plants in Israel and the Claude “Bud” Lewis Carlsbad plant in California, United States. By identifying patterns, …

Urban Base Cations: Fate, Transport, And Effect On Nitrogen Cycling Genes In Green Stormwater Infrastructure, Duyen Thuy Lam

Dissertations (1934 -)

Urbanization has significantly changed the natural cycling of base cations, primarily due to the use of deicer salts, such as sodium chloride, and chemical weathering of limestone and concrete infrastructure. An unintended consequence is the accumulation of salt across urban settings. These base cations, transported mainly by stormwater runoff, accumulate in soils, streams, lakes, and groundwater, posing risks to soil health, water quality, and ecosystems. To mitigate stormwater runoff and pollutants, cities have adopted stormwater best management practices, shifting from traditional gray to hybrid gray-green infrastructure. As a result, salt-laden runoff is increasingly routed into green stormwater infrastructure (GSI), where …

Low Dissolved Oxygen Operation Enhances Biological Phosphorus Removal In Wastewater Treatment, Haley Morgan

Civil & Environmental Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Biological phosphorus (bio-P) removal occurs when bacteria are exposed to anaerobic/aerobic conditions that stimulate polyphosphate-accumulating organisms (PAOs) to uptake phosphorus. In most treatment plants, dissolved oxygen (DO) concentrations in the aeration tanks are commonly at or above 2.0 mg O₂/L, which is often referred to as the most optimal aeration condition for bio-P. If bio-P can happen efficiently at lower DO (< 0.3 mg O₂/L), then the energy demand of aeration can be decreased appreciably. This research was conducted in a biological nutrient removal (BNR) pilot plant to assess the performance of bio-P at progressively lower DO operation. This …

Ground-Arthropod Assemblage Response To Groundwater As A Metric Of Flooding In The Middle Rio Grande, Wesley J. Noe

Water Resources Professional Project Reports

Riparian zones are dynamic ecosystems, crucial for maintaining biodiversity and ecological balance, particularly in arid environments like the Middle Rio Grande (MRG). Ground arthropods, with their sensitivity to environmental changes, serve as bioindicators for assessing the impacts of water regime changes in the MRG, specifically flooding which was historically the main driver of the MRG ecosystem. This study investigated the responses of ground arthropod communities to fluctuations in groundwater and land management practices within MRG riparian habitats. Using a combination of pitfall trapping and habitat assessments, arthropod abundance was assessed in relation to depth to groundwater (DTG). Findings revealed shifts …

Ground-Arthropod Assemblage Response To Groundwater As A Metric Of Flooding In The Middle Rio Grande, Wesley Noe

Water Resources Professional Project Reports

Riparian zones are dynamic ecosystems, crucial for maintaining biodiversity and ecological balance, particularly in arid environments like the Middle Rio Grande (MRG). Ground arthropods, with their sensitivity to environmental changes, serve as bioindicators for assessing the impacts of water regime changes in the MRG, specifically flooding which was historically the main driver of the MRG ecosystem. This study investigated the responses of ground arthropod communities to fluctuations in groundwater and land management practices within MRG riparian habitats. Using a combination of pitfall trapping and habitat assessments, arthropod abundance was assessed in relation to depth to groundwater (DTG). Findings revealed shifts …