A flexible approach to the estimation of water budgets and its connection to the travel time theory.

The increasing impacts of climate changes on water related sectors are leading the scientists' attentions to the development of comprehensive models, allowing better descriptions of the water and solute transport processes. "Getting the right answers for the right reasons", in terms of hydrological response, is one of the main goals of most of the recent literature. Semi-distributed hydrological models, based on the partition of basins in hydrological response units (HRUs) to be connected, eventually, to describe a whole catchment, proved to be robust in the reproduction of observed catchment dynamics. 'Embedded reservoirs' are often used for each HRU, to allow a consistent representation of the processes. In this work, a new semi-disitrbuted model for runoff and evapotranspiration is presented: five different reservoirs are inter-connected in order to capture the dynamics of snow, canopy, surface flow, root-zone and groundwater compartments. The knowledge of the mass of water and solute stored and released through different outputs (e.g. discharge, evapotranspiration) allows the analysis of the hydrological travel times and solute transport in catchments. The latter have been studied extensively, with some recent benchmark contributions in the last decade. However, the literature remains obscured by different terminologies and notations, as well as model assumptions are not fully explained. The thesis presents a detailed description of a new theoretical approach that reworks the theory from the point of view of the hydrological storages and fluxes involved. Major aspects of the new theory are the 'age-ranked' definition of the hydrological variables, the explicit treatment of evaporative fluxes and of their influence on the transport, the analysis of the outflows partitioning coefficients and the explicit formulation of the 'age-ranked' equations for solutes. Moreover, the work presents concepts in a new systematic and clarified way, helping the application of the theory. To give substance to the theory, a small catchment in the prealpine area was chosen as an example and the results illustrated. The rainfall-runoff model and the travel time theory were implemented and integrated in the semi-distributed hydrological system JGrass-NewAge. Thanks to the environmental modelling framework OMS3, each part of the hydrological cycle is implemented as a component that can be selected, adopted, and connected at run-time to obtain a user-customized hydrological model. The system is flexible, expandable and applicable in a variety of modelling solutions. In this work, the model code underwent to an extensive revision: new components were added (coupled storages water budget, travel times components); old components were enhanced (Kriging, shortwave, longwave, evapotranspiration, rain-snow separation, SWE and melting components); documentation was standardized and deployed. Since the Thesis regards in wide sense the building of a collaborative system, a discussion of some general purpose tools that were implemented or improved for supporting the present research is also presented. They include the description and the verification of a software component dealing with the long-wave radiation budget and another component dealing with an implementation of some Kriging procedure

Advancing Cyberinfrastructure for Collaborative Data Sharing and Modeling in Hydrology

Hydrologic research is increasingly data and computationally intensive, and often involves hydrologic model simulation and collaboration among researchers. With the development of cyberinfrastructure, researchers are able to improve the efficiency, impact, and effectiveness of their research by utilizing online data sharing and hydrologic modeling functionality. However, further efforts are still in need to improve the capability of cyberinfrastructure to serve the hydrologic science community. This dissertation first presents the evaluation of a physically based snowmelt model as an alternative to a temperature index model to improve operational water supply forecasts in the Colorado River Basin. Then it presents the design of the functionality to share multidimensional space-time data in the HydroShare hydrologic information system. It then describes a web application developed to facilitate input preparation and model execution of a snowmelt model and the storage of these results in HydroShare. The snowmelt model evaluation provided use cases to evaluate the cyberinfrastructure elements developed. This research explored a new approach to advance operational water supply forecasts and provided potential solutions for the challenges associated with the design and implementation of cyberinfrastructure for hydrologic data sharing and modeling

VGC 2023 - Unveiling the dynamic Earth with digital methods: 5th Virtual Geoscience Conference: Book of Abstracts

Conference proceedings of the 5th Virtual Geoscience Conference, 21-22 September 2023, held in Dresden. The VGC is a multidisciplinary forum for researchers in geoscience, geomatics and related disciplines to share their latest developments and applications.:Short Courses 9 Workshops Stream 1 10 Workshop Stream 2 11 Workshop Stream 3 12 Session 1 – Point Cloud Processing: Workflows, Geometry & Semantics 14 Session 2 – Visualisation, communication & Teaching 27 Session 3 – Applying Machine Learning in Geosciences 36 Session 4 – Digital Outcrop Characterisation & Analysis 49 Session 5 – Airborne & Remote Mapping 58 Session 6 – Recent Developments in Geomorphic Process and Hazard Monitoring 69 Session 7 – Applications in Hydrology & Ecology 82 Poster Contributions 9

Graphs for Ontology, Law and Policy

Le livre est en accès libre. The book is in open acces

Archaeological Investigations at the Adams Bay Site (16PL8), Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana: Assessing Natural and Anthropogenic Effects to a Louisiana Coastal Archaeological Site

The Adams Bay site (16PL08), located in the coastal marsh of Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, is a precolonial mound site containing an earthen mound on the north edge of a plaza and a remnant mound on the southern edge. The layout of the mounds in cardinal directions around the plaza suggests that this component of the site dates to the Coles Creek period. On the eastern side of the site an extensive, wave-washed and re-deposited oyster (Crassostrea virginica) and rangia (Rangia cuneata) shell midden contains diagnostic Coles Creek, Plaquemine, and Mississippian pottery. Archaeological research at the site was conducted to confirm the cultural affiliation of the mound group and midden, and to assess the effects of natural and anthropogenic processes and their impacts to the site. Surface collection yielded 102 pottery sherds that were collected and analyzed. Cores were collected along the edges of the mound, the plaza, as well as the eastern and western limits of the site in order to identify in situ archaeological deposits. The results of this investigation produced data that will allow archaeologists to more accurately compare precolonial coastal Louisiana and inland regions. Furthermore, this research will aid in identifying the geological and anthropogenic environmental stressors threatening Louisiana’s coastal archaeological sites

The occurrence and origin of salinity in non-coastal groundwater in the Waikato region

Aims The aims of this project are to describe the occurrence, and determine the origin of non-coastal saline groundwater in the Waikato region. High salinity limits the use of the water for supply and agricultural use. Understanding the origin and distribution of non-coastal salinity will assist with development and management of groundwater resources in the Waikato. Method The occurrence of non-coastal groundwater salinity was investigated by examining driller’s records and regional council groundwater quality information. Selected wells were sampled for water quality analyses and temperatures were profiled where possible. Water quality analyses include halogens such as chloride, fluoride, iodide and bromide. Ratios of these ions are useful to differentiate between geothermal and seawater origins of salinity (Hem, 1992). Other ionic ratio approaches for differentiating sources and influences on salinity such as those developed by Alcala and Emilio (2008) and Sanchez-Martos et al., (2002), may also be applied. Potential sources of salinity include seawater, connate water, geothermal and anthropogenic influences. The hydrogeologic settings of saline occurrence were also investigated, to explore the potential to predict further occurrence. Results Numerous occurrences of non-coastal saline groundwater have been observed in the Waikato region. Where possible, wells with relatively high total dissolved solids (TDS) were selected for further investigation. Several groundwater samples are moderately saline and exceed the TDS drinking water aesthetic guideline of 1,000 g m-3 (Ministry of Health, 2008). Selected ion ratios (predominantly halogens) were used to assist in differentiating between influences on salinity such as seawater and geothermal. Bromide to iodide ratios, in particular, infer a greater geothermal influence on salinity, although other ratios are not definitive. The anomalously elevated salinity observed appears natural but nevertheless has constrained localised groundwater resource development for dairy factory, industrial and prison water supply use. Further work may show some relationship with geology or tectonics, which could assist prediction of inland saline groundwater occurrence

Applications of Google Earth Engine in fluvial geomorphology for detecting river channel change

© 2020 The Authors. Cloud-based computing, access to big geospatial data, and virtualization, whereby users are freed from computational hardware and data management logistics, could revolutionize remote sensing applications in fluvial geomorphology. Analysis of multitemporal, multispectral satellite imagery has provided fundamental geomorphic insight into the planimetric form and dynamics of large river systems, but information derived from these applications has largely been used to test existing concepts in fluvial geomorphology, rather than for generating new concepts or theories. Traditional approaches (i.e., desktop computing) have restricted the spatial scales and temporal resolutions of planimetric river channel change analyses. Google Earth Engine (GEE), a cloud-based computing platform for planetary-scale geospatial analyses, offers the opportunity to relieve these spatiotemporal restrictions. We summarize the big geospatial data flows available to fluvial geomorphologists within the GEE data catalog, focus on approaches to look beyond mapping wet channel extents and instead map the wider riverscape (i.e., water, sediment, vegetation) and its dynamics, and explore the unprecedented spatiotemporal scales over which GEE analyses can be applied. We share a demonstration workflow to extract active river channel masks from a section of the Cagayan River (Luzon, Philippines) then quantify centerline migration rates from multitemporal data. By enabling fluvial geomorphologists to take their algorithms to petabytes worth of data, GEE is transformative in enabling deterministic science at scales defined by the user and determined by the phenomena of interest. Equally as important, GEE offers a mechanism for promoting a cultural shift toward open science, through the democratization of access and sharing of reproducible code.Natural Environment Research Council. Grant Number: NE/S00331

Using Spatial Data for Geo-Environmental Studies

The physically-based spatially-distributed model PROMET (Processes of Radiation, Mass and Energy Transfer) is applied to the Greater Damascus Basin, which is considered as one of the most important basins in Syria, to serve as a case study of using spatial data for Geo-environmental studies. Like most areas of the Middle East, the study area is characterized by large temporal and spatial variations in precipitation and by limited water resources. Due to the increasing water demand caused by the economic development and the rapid growth of population, the study area is expected to suffer from further water shortages in the future. This highlights the necessity of developing an integrated Decision Support System (DSS) to evaluate strategies for efficient and sustainable water resources management in the basin, taking into consideration global environmental changes and socio-economic conditions. The work presented here represents the first steps toward achieving this goal through applying a distributed hydrological model (an important component of any integrated DSS for water resources management) to the Greater Damascus Basin utilizing different types of spatial data used as time-dependent (e.g., meteorology) and time-independent (e.g., topography and soil) input parameters. The model PROMET, which was developed within the GLOWA-Danube project as part of the decision support system DANUBIA, is run on an hourly time step (for the period from 1991 to 2005) and a 180*180m spatial resolution to simulate the water and energy fluxes in this basin. The model is embedded within a raster-based GIS-structure which facilitates the integration of the diverse types of spatial data. The spatial information related to topography (such as elevation, slope, and exposition) as well as those related to runoff routing (such as upstream-area, channel width, and downstream proxel) are automatically extracted from Digital Elevation Model (Shuttle Radar Topography Mission, SRTM-90m DEM). The spatial patterns of the different land use/land cover classes are derived from remote sensing data (classification of a cloud-free LANDSAT 7 ETM+ image using the supervised classification algorithm). The spatial fields of meteorological input data are provided on an hourly basis through spatiotemporal interpolation of the measurements of the available weather stations. Spatial information about the soil texture is provided through generalization and aggregation of the soil type classes of the Soil Map of Syria (prepared by USAID) and transferring the soil types to texture classes. Several pedotransfer functions are then used to estimate the soil hydraulic properties for each soil texture class (and each soil layer) found in the study area. While plant physiological parameters (which are assumed to be static, such as minimum stomatal resistance) are estimated for each vegetation class using information taken from literature sources, the temporal evolution of Albedo and Leaf Area Index (LAI) are derived from five cloud-free LANDSAT-7 images acquired at different seasons of the year. The goodness of the results obtained by the model PROMET are verified and/or validated by comparing them either with their corresponding data observed in the filed or with remote sensing-derived information (e.g., snow cover). Two subcatchments are selected for the purpose of calculating the spatially-distributed annual water balances. The results indicate that the modelled mean annual runoff volume fits well with the measured discharge for both chosen subcatchment. In addition, the simulated discharge is compared to the observed one (at seven gauge stations) on a monthly basis, covering the whole simulation period (15 years). The results of the regression analysis for each of these gauge stations (with slope of regression line ranges from 0.79 to 1.04; coefficient of determination 0.69-0.90; and Nash-Sutcliffe Coefficient 0.73-0.95) indicate that there is a good correlation between simulated and observed monthly mean discharge volumes