Toward improved calibration of hydrologic models: Multiple and noncommensurable measures of information

Several contributions to the hydrological literature have brought into question the continued usefulness of the classical paradigm for hydrologic model calibration. With the growing popularity of sophisticated 'physically based' watershed models (e.g., landsurface hydrology and hydrochemical models) the complexity of the calibration problem has been multiplied many fold. We disagree with the seemingly widespread conviction that the model calibration problem will simply disappear with the availability of more and better field measurements. This paper suggests that the emergence of a new and more powerful model calibration paradigm must include recognition of the inherent multiobjective nature of the problem and must explicitly recognize the role of model error. The results of our preliminary studies are presented. Through an illustrative case study we show that the multiobjective approach is not only practical and relatively simple to implement but can also provide useful information about the limitations of a model

An inventory of undiscovered Canadian mineral resources

Unit regional value (URV) and unit regional weight are area standardized measures of the expected value and quantity, respectively, of the mineral resources of a region. Estimation and manipulation of the URV statistic is the basis of an approach to mineral resource evaluation. Estimates of the kind and value of exploitable mineral resources yet to be discovered in the provinces of Canada are used as an illustration of the procedure. The URV statistic is set within a previously developed model wherein geology, as measured by point counting geologic maps, is related to the historical record of mineral resource production of well-developed regions of the world, such as the 50 states of the U.S.A.; these may be considered the training set. The Canadian provinces are related to this training set using geological information obtained in the same way from geologic maps of the provinces. The desired predictions of yet to be discovered mineral resources in the Canadian provinces arise as a consequence. The implicit assumption is that regions of similar geology, if equally well developed, will produce similar weights and values of mineral resources

The classification and management of limestone pavements - an endangered habitat

This thesis describes an in-depth study of limestone pavements across North West England and North Wales. The aim was to combine elements of geodiversity and biodiversity in order to create a holistic limestone pavement classification to inform future management. A field-based research protocol was used to assess a stratified random sample (46 pavements), accounting for approximately 10% of the limestone pavements in the geographical area. Detailed analyses of key elements are presented, along with important issues that continue to pose threats to this Annex One Priority Habitat. This research resulted in a comprehensive classification, using TWINSPAN analysis and Nonmetric Multidimensional Scaling, identifying six distinct holistic functional groups. The prime factors driving limestone pavement morphology, and hence the classification, were established to be lithology, proximity to structural fault, altitude and human intervention, particularly in terms of grazing intensity. Three upland, open limestone pavement classes were formed. Of these, the richest in terms of geodiversity and biodiversity was the group with the thickest bedding planes and hence the deepest grikes, typically greater than 1m. The class that was most species-poor was "at the highest altitude (above 450m), formed on the thin limestones of the Yoredales. These were characterised by shallow, wide grikes. The third upland limestone pavement group had mid-range grikes, generally 0.5-1m in depth, and small clints. Two wooded classes were identified. One was a lowland 'classic' wooded limestone pavement group with deep, narrow grikes and shallow soils. Indicator species included Juniperus communis and Taxus baccata. The second wooded group was situated proximal to a major structural fault. In this group the pavement dip ranged between 10°-40° with well-runnelled clints that were heavily moss-covered. The sixth group was low altitude, proximal to the coast, characterised by low moss growth, un-vegetated clints and the presence of Ulex europaeus. Conservation management was identified as key to the quality of the limestone pavement habitat and this thesis identifies best management practises and links these to the holistic limestone pavement classification. Finally, as a sample case study, this thesis presents mollusc species and diversity from eleven of the Yorkshire limestone pavements. Analysis establishes significant links between geodiversity and mollusc populations, with key drivers for mollusc communities echoing those of plant species on limestone pavement.Funded by the Yorkshire Dales National Park and the University of Chester

Development of a Grade Control Technique Optimizing Dilution and Ore Loss Trade-off in Lateritic Bauxite Deposits

This thesis focusses on the development of new techniques to improve the resource estimation of laterite-type bauxite deposits. Contributions of the thesis include (1) a methodology to variogram-free modelling of the ore boundaries using multiple-point statistics, (2) an approach to automate the parameter tuning process for multiple-point statistical algorithms and (3) a grade control technique to minimise the economic losses due to dilution and ore loss

Creative Thinking and Modelling for the Decision Support in Water Management

This paper reviews the state of art in knowledge and preferences elicitation techniques. The purpose of the study was to evaluate various cognitive mapping techniques in order to conclude with the identification of the optimal technique for the NetSyMod methodology. Network Analysis – Creative System Modelling (NetSyMod) methodology has been designed for the improvement of decision support systems (DSS) with respect to the environmental problems. In the paper the difference is made between experts and stakeholders knowledge and preference elicitation methods. The suggested technique is very similar to the Nominal Group Techniques (NGT) with the external representation of the analysed problem by means of the Hodgson Hexagons. The evolving methodology is undergoing tests within several EU-funded projects such as: ITAES, IISIM, NostrumDSS.Creative modelling, Cognitive mapping, Preference elicitation techniques, Decision support

Geographical extrapolation domain analysis: Scaling up watershed management research projects, a toolkit to guide implementation

Funding agencies, research programs, and organizations involved in the implementation of research need to know the potential worldwide impact and applicability of their efforts and investments. The extrapolation domain analysis method (EDA) was developed to produce information about the location, areas, and population potentially influenced by research outputs. This working paper presents detailed steps how to implement an EDA. For a particular research project, it starts with establishing a baseline assessment of the project, and proceeds through data collection, preparation, and similarity modeling concluding with reporting and validation. The guide is designed for users with intermediate knowledge of GIS and Bayesian statistics for a smooth and easy implementation of the method. It also requires the participation of the members of the research project for proper identification of key variables to be used in the process

A new classification approach: improving the regional ecosystem classification system in Queensland, Australia

Eda Addicott designed a quantitative approach for identifying the plant communities in Queensland. She found that plant communities identified using the new approach were more recognisable and more useful for land management planning. The Queensland Herbarium is using the new approach to identify plant communities as a state-wide standard

A Machine Learning Approach: Socio-economic Analysis to Support and Identify Resilient Analog Communities in Texas

Identification of analog resources or items are important during the planning and development of new communities because available information is usually limited or absent. Conventionally, analogs are made by domain experts however, this is not always readily obtainable. Coupled with this challenge, most of the available data in socioeconomic systems have high dimensionality making interpretation, and visualization of these datasets difficult. Hence, it is crucial to adopt a workflow that can be used to identify analogs regardless of its existing high dimensionality. To this end, we present a systematic and unbiased measure, group similarity score (GCS) and similarity scoring metric (SSM) to support the predictive search of missing properties for target communities and identification of analogous cities based on available socioeconomic data and modeling. Knowing that each Texan community can be characterized by its associated properties, the workflow combines both spatial and multivariate statistics in a novel manner to determine the GCS & SSM whilst visualizing the associated uncertainty space. The workflow consists of three major steps: 1) key parameter selection via feature engineering, 2) multivariate and spatial analysis using multidimensional scaling (MDS) and density-based spatial clustering of applications with noise (DBSCAN) for clustering analysis, 3) similarity ranking using a modified Mahalanobis distance function as a clustering basis on preprocessed data. Afterwards, to assess the quality of the predicted feature and analog communities obtained, K-nearest neighbor algorithm is applied, then the analog cities are found. The workflow is demonstrated using on high dimensional socio-economic data. We find analogs for each community cluster identified with their GCS and SSM in relation to 4 randomly selected communities used for testing. Thus, it is recommended to apply the integration of this workflow in uncertainty exploration, trend-mappings, and community analog assignment, and benchmarking to support decision making.IC2 InstitutePetroleum and Geosystems Engineerin

Evaluation of Stream Assessment Protocols for the Evaluation of Habitat in Intermittent Headwater Streams

EPA and state water resource agencies are now placing greater emphasis on monitoring and managing headwater streams. Two EPA stream protocols are available for headwater stream assessment but little effort has been made to compare these two methods or their resulting habitat quality index scores. The objectives of this effort were to 1) compare data types of the two protocols; 2) compare how the two protocols assess intermittent streams using habitat quality index (HQI) scores; and 3) compare stream characteristic emphases (geomorphology, riparia, substrate, in-stream cover for biota and hydrology) between the two protocols and their effect on overall HQI scores. This study was conducted within the Northern Glaciated Plains Ecoregion (NGP) of South Dakota. Forty reference sites were chosen using EPA’s Analytical Tools Interface for Landscape Assessments (ATtILA). Twenty more sites were chosen to validate the reference sites condition. Ten of the validation sites were selected at random and the other ten were targeted sites selected through consultation with state officials. All sites were field validated using the “North Carolina Division of Water Quality’s Identification Methods for the origins of Intermittent and Perennial Streams” and the “Riparian, Channel, and Environmental Inventory for small streams in the agricultural landscape.” Habitat assessments of 60 total streams occurred monthly (April-August) during the summer of 2008 following EPA’s “Western Pilot Study: Field Operations Manual for Wadeable Streams” and “Field Operations Manual for Assessing the Hydrologic Permanence and Ecological Condition of Headwater Streams.” Headwater streams in the NGP can be summarized as low gradient ( X = 0.02%) streams showing little incision ( X = 0.4 m). Channel dimensions were variable (CV = 1306.1 width/depth ratio) with flat banks ( X = 27.4ºC) and homogenous thalwegs ( X CV = 48.9 %). Substrates consisted of mostly soft/small sediments with herbaceous vegetation as the most frequently occurring instream cover for biota. With the exception of the Prairie Coteau Escarpment Ecoregion (46l), riparian trees were rare. Peck’s protocol had 51 measurements with a mixture of ratio (n = 14), interval (n = 2), ordinal (n = 23) and nominal (n = 12) data types. Fritz’s protocol had 15 measurements yielding mostly ratio (n = 10) data types, and a few interval (n = 2) and nominal data (n = 3). Substrate type was assessed differently by the two protocols. Organic substrates occurred with a frequency of 65% using Peck’s protocol, while the substrate class “sand/silt/clay” occurred most frequently (89%) using Fritz’s protocol. HQI scores for both protocols were compared using a sign test and a Wilcoxon Rank Sum test, revealing that they were different (p \u3c 0.01). Reference HQI scores generated from Fritz metrics ( X = 71%) were higher (p \u3c 0.01) than Peck’s HQI’s ( X = 63%). Riparian metrics composed 51% of Peck’s measurements and 7% of Fritz’s measurements but Peck’s riparian HQI’s scored lower (p \u3c 0.01) than Fritz’s riparian HQI’s. Hydrologic metrics composed 36% of Fritz’s protocol and 4% of Peck’s protocol and still the HQI’s compared favorably between the two protocols. Evaluation of stream assessments within either protocol revealed high variability in stream characteristics within the NGP ecoregion. Stream habitat scores exhibited greater similarity within level IV EPA ecoregions than between ecoregions. This supports that regionalization by level IV ecoregions may be necessary to account for regional differences in landscape features. The use of more measurements for Peck’s protocol increased the ability to detect the influence of human management practices. However, some metrics were similar within Peck’s protocol, leading to high redundancy. Fritz’s protocol contained fewer metrics with less focus on riparian metrics, reducing the sensitivity of this protocol to human management practices. Data types also differed between and within the two protocols, complicating integration and analysis. Peck’s protocol included a large number of ordinal and nominal measurements, which require training and consistency to remain unbiased. Thus, Peck’s assessments were more subjective, adding another source of disparity between protocol assessments. Substrate was the only parameter measured by both protocols, but assessments differed due to the use of different substrate classes and a different cross-sectional methodology. Results of HQI differences provide evidence that the two protocols do not respond similarly to physical habitat changes. This can be attributed to the divergence in stream characteristics emphasized by the two protocols. Differences in metric emphasis reflect a focus on hydrologic permanence by the Fritz protocol and riparian metrics by the Peck protocol. Riparian condition reflect the influence of human activities more successfully based on HQI scores than hydrologic condition. This helps to explain differences seen in HQI scores and provides incentive for the continued use of riparian metrics in stream habitat assessments. A new combined habitat metric set is proposed which places more balance between riparian and hydrologic stream characteristics