Heat and Mass Transfer in Cold Regions Soils

The work upon which this report is based was made possible by a cooperative aid agreement between the U.S. Forest Service, Institute of Northern Forestry, Fairbanks, Alaska, and the Institute of Water Resources, University of Alaska. Contributions to this study were also made by the University of California at Davis and Ohio State University. The collection of winter data on pore pressures was made possible by a separate grant by the Office of Water Research and Technology (project A-053 ALAS)

Hydrologic Efficiency in Water Conservation

Introduction: The hydrologic cycle can be subdivided into three phases: 1)Humidity is transported within the atmosphere and becomes precipitation, and 2) Water moves downhill until eventually reaching the sea while all the time 3) Evapotranspiration returns exposed moisture to the atmosphere. During its movement, flowing water transports suspended sediments and dissolved minerals to reshape landforms and redistribute the mineral composition of the earth\u27s surface throughout geologic time. It is during the second phase that flowing water can be diverted for uses that generally add to evaportranspiration (through consumptive use) and transport (through waste disposal). The water resources development that serves these uses adds a humanly managed phase to the hydrologic cycle. For simplification in our intiial analysis, we will index the size of a water development project by the amount of dependable flow diverted into the water use system. Opimization of the diversion design involves computing facility costs and estimating benefits for a range of sizes and identifying the project size that maximuzes benefits minus costs as illustrated on Figure 1. The seeming simplicity of the process disguises a multitutde of forecasting asumptions in forming the cost curve and need assumptions in forming the benefits curve. In both cases, a conservative, empirical approach in the face of uncertainty reduces the needs that can be fulfilled by a given water project. The theme of this paper is that scientific appraoches to hydrology and to needs estimation can be used to increase water supply efficiency greatly. Conversely, the research needed to accomplish these increases defines the mixture of contribution required from the traditional sciences to develop hydrologic sciences for water supply and water use. Both aspects are assessed individually below

A Technical Focus for Documenting the Effectiveness of the Cooperative OWRT-Institute Water Resources Research Program

For years, the cooperative water resources research program of the Office of Water Research and Technology and the water resources research institutes in the respective states has been experiencing considerable difficulty in generating agency, congressional, and user support of a sort that attracts sufficient funding to maintain a dynamic research program. Efforts to increase support have included recruiting greater interaction with research user groups, expansion of the technology transfer program, cultivation of interaction of center directors and research users with congress, shifting requests for added funding within the research program from the allotment funding given the respective states to matching grant and federally funded projects focusing on national priorities, and integrating the OWRT effort into a coordinated five-year research and development program. The results have improved the program and increased user support, but funding difficulties continue unabated. The highlight of the 1979 Annual NAWID meeting was Bill Walker\u27s presentation of the pr6blem and plea to all to get together and solve it. The problem and its solution have been subjected to considerable debate for the last few years within both NAWID and OWRT. Each time, the effort to build a strong case has been forced into the corner of recognizing that OWRT files simply do not contain sufficient documentation to present program achievements. The series of papers, committee reports, and summaries of workshop deliberations reproduced here for ready reference in the continuing effort to improve documentation of program effectiveness argue toward a concept of documentation that d~parts significantly from the emphasis in the efforts to increase support referenced in the previous paragraph. The concept here is to document program content and application rather than to work for improvement through refinement of program administration. The new thrust would demonstrate research achievements with carefully prepared sets of research results that develop and maintain for each technical topic coming within the scope of the total OWRT program, a running summary of the current state of knowledge and of how it is being applied in problem solving. The running documentation would provide bases for 1) judging new proposals, 2) judging the contribution of completed research, 3) identifying OWRT contribution to the total state of the art, 4) abstracting technical knowhow for solving user problems and technology transfer and information dissemination programs, and 5) preparing testimony and answering questions in program presentations

Expected Water Surface Levels for the Great Salt Lake

Flooding at the Great Slat Lake could become a major disaster through the high cost of coping with the rising level, sudden collapse of protective levees, failure of pumping to the West Desert to induce increased evaporation, or, fiscally, by a rapid drop in the lake level just after a large protective decision making in the private sector, provide for the design of hydrologically safe levees, and optimize pumping schemes for moving water within a partitioned lake. Doing so will require crossing major theoretical frontiers in the study of basin scale hydrology in an arid climate and for forecasting extreme high flows over extended periods

Economic Analysis of Flood Detention Storage by Digital Computer

The objective of this study was to develop a digital computer procedure for preliminary analysis of the economic justification of reservoir detention storage for flood control and to present a sample study illustrating its application. A computer program called the University of Kentucky Flood Control Planning Program III was developed and tested on the flood plain of the South Fork of the Licking River in northeastern Kentucky. Given a specified reservoir site and a downstream flood plain divided into planning units, Program III selects the economically efficient combination of reservoir detention storage and the associated combination of channel improvement, flood proofing, land-use management, and residual flooding for each downstream planning unit. The Program does not attempt final measure design but isolates those combinations of measures for which detailed data collection and analysis is warranted. This study presents a description of the basic Program logic and the results of its application along the South Fork, Licking River, as well as a FORTRAN IV listing of the computer program and a listing of the input data used in the South Fork, Licking River analysis