Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Environmental Engineering
Sensitivity Analysis of a Conceptual, Lumped Model Using VARS-TOOL Applied to Western Ghats Catchments of India
Published: 2020-01-30
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Other Civil and Environmental Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Water Resource Management
The present work considers the application of Variogram Analysis of Response Surfaces Toolbox (VARS-TOOL) to identify the sensitive parameters of a rainfall-runoff model in the Netravati river basin of Karnataka, India using the global sensitivity analysis method. The statistical bootstrapping method is used to obtain the confidence intervals around each of the sensitivity indices. The VARS-TOOL [...]
A Multivariate Outlier Detection Approach for Water Footprint Assessments in Shale Formations: Case Eagle Ford Play (Texas)
Published: 2020-01-16
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Engineering
The increasing trend on water use for hydraulic fracturing (HF) in multiple plays across the U.S. has raised the need to improve the HF water management model. Such approaches require good quality datasets, particularly in water stressed regions. In this work, we presented a QA/QC framework for HF data using a multivariate outlier detection methodology based on five univariate techniques: two [...]
Over 1000 rivers accountable for 80% of global riverine plastic emissions into the ocean
Published: 2019-10-24
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Engineering
Plastic waste increasingly accumulates in the marine environment, but data on the distribution and quantification of riverine sources, required for development of effective mitigation, are limited. Our new model approach includes geographical distributed data on plastic waste, landuse, wind, precipitation and rivers and calculates the probability for plastic waste to reach a river and [...]
Network topology and rainfall controls on the variability of combined sewer overflows and loads
Published: 2019-10-24
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Engineering
Water and pollutant fluxes from combined sewer overflows (CSO) have a significant impact on receiving waters. The random nature of rainfall forcing dominates the variability of sewer discharges, pollutant loads, and concentrations. An analytical model developed here, shows how sewer network topology and rainfall properties variously impact the stochasticity of CSO functioning. Probability [...]
Imbibition in porous media: correlations of displacement events with pore-throat geometry and the identification of a new type of pore snap-off
Published: 2019-08-23
Subjects: Chemical Engineering, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Complex Fluids, Dynamics and Dynamical Systems, Engineering, Engineering Science and Materials, Environmental Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering, Mechanics of Materials, Petroleum Engineering, Transport Phenomena
The displacement of a non-wetting fluid by a wetting fluid in porous media, called imbibition, is important in many natural and industrial processes. During imbibition, the wetting fluid invades the pore space through a series of competitions between piston-like displacement, film and corner flow, snap-off, pore bypassing and trapping. Our understanding of these fundamental pore-scale [...]
Realistic and simplified models of plant and leaf area indices for a seasonally dry tropical forest
Published: 2019-08-06
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Desert Ecology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences, Research Methods in Life Sciences
Leaf Area Index (LAI) models that consider all phenological stages have not been developed for the Caatinga, the largest seasonally dry tropical forest in South America. LAI models that are currently used show moderate to high covariance when compared to in situ data, but they often lack accuracy in the whole spectra of possible values and do not consider the impact that the stems and branches [...]
Can barrier islands survive sea-level rise? Quantifying the relative role of tidal deltas and overwash deposition
Published: 2019-07-18
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Civil Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Geology, Geomorphology, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sedimentology
Accepted open-access publication available at: https://doi.org/10.1029/2019GL085524 Barrier island response to sea-level rise depends on their ability to transgress and move sediment onto and behind the barrier, either through flood-tidal delta deposition, or via overwash. Our understanding of these processes over decadal or longer timescales, however, is limited. Here we [...]
Information-theoretic Portfolio Decision Model for Optimal Flood Management
Published: 2019-06-26
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Civil Engineering, Computational Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Sciences, Geomorphology, Hydraulic Engineering, Hydrology, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering, Other Civil and Environmental Engineering, Other Engineering, Other Environmental Sciences, Other Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Probability, Risk Analysis, Statistics and Probability, Sustainability, Systems Engineering, Water Resource Management
The increasing impact of flooding urges more effective flood management strategies to guarantee sustainable ecosystem development. Recent catastrophes underline the importance of avoiding local flood management, but characterizing large scale basin wide approaches for systemic flood risk management. Here we introduce an information-theoretic Portfolio Decision Model (iPDM) for the optimization of [...]
Decentralized Flood Forecasting Using Deep Neural Networks
Published: 2019-06-22
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Life Sciences, Other Life Sciences
Predicting flood for any location at times of extreme storms is a longstanding problem that has utmost importance in emergency management. Conventional methods that aim to predict water levels in streams use advanced hydrological models still lack of giving accurate forecasts everywhere. This study aims to explore artificial deep neural networks performance on flood prediction. While providing [...]
Technical note: Limitations on the use of space borne differential SAR interferometry for systematic monitoring and failure forecast of alpine landslides
Published: 2019-06-16
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Geology, Geotechnical Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Recent advances on satellite geodesy have boosted our capabilities to map and monitor landslides globally with unprecedented resolutions. In this scenario, differential interferometry of space borne synthetic aperture radar imagery (DInSAR) plays a major role in identifying surface displacements associated to slope instabilities and in monitoring their spatial and temporal evolution. However, [...]
An assessment of the wind influence in local inertial 1D hydrodynamic flow routing
Published: 2019-05-22
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Engineering
One-dimensional (1D) hydrodynamic modeling studies generally do not take into account the influence of wind, although literature experiences demonstrate the importance of this information in some cases. In this context, the present work had the objective to investigate this matter further, studying the influence of wind on hydrodynamic 1D modeling results and proposing an abacus for the rapid [...]
Analysis of Persistence in the Flood Timing and the Role of Catchment Wetness on Flood Generation in a Large River Basin in India
Published: 2019-05-08
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Hydraulic Engineering, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Statistics and Probability
This study contributes to the understanding of the timing of occurrence of floods and role of the catchment wetness in flood processes (i.e., magnitude and the timing of floods) over one of the largest tropical pluvial river basin system, Mahanadi, in India. Being located in the monsoon ‘core’ region (18° - 28° N latitude and 73° - 82° E longitude) and its proximity to Bay of Bengal, Mahanadi [...]
Trends of hydroclimatic intensity in Colombia
Published: 2019-05-08
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Climate, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Life Sciences, Meteorology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Risk Analysis, Statistics and Probability, Water Resource Management
Prediction of changes in precipitation in upcoming years and decades caused by global climate change associated with the greenhouse effect, deforestation and other anthropic perturbations is a practical and scientific problem of high complexity and huge consequences. To advance toward this challenge we look at the daily historical record of all available rain gauges in Colombia to estimate an [...]
Impacts of Coal Resource Development on Surface Water Quality in a Multi-jurisdictional Watershed in the Western United States
Published: 2019-04-19
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Engineering
This study focuses on water quality and quantity impacts from natural resource development on watersheds originating on Crow tribal lands in southeastern Montana. My field research analysis will focus on the surface water quality in three adjacent watersheds. This study will determine impacts to water quality from reclaimed coal mine spoils surface runoff and produced water discharge from coal [...]
Average daily flow of microplastics through a tertiary wastewater treatment plant over a ten-month period
Published: 2019-03-12
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Microplastics (MPs, <5 mm in size) are classified as emerging contaminants but treatment processes are not designed to remove these small particles. Wastewater treatment systems have been proposed as pathways for MPs pollution to receiving waters but quantitative and qualitative data on MP occurrence and transport remains limited, hindering risk assessment and regulation. Here, for the first [...]