Center for Earth and Environmental Science: A Program of Excellence in Water Resources Research

poster abstractResearch and training into the impacts of environmental insults on water systems and the links between water resources and human health are critical needs nationally and internationally. IUPUI is in an excellent position to take on a leadership role in scholarship and teaching about water quality and health. CEES has built its program and reputation around excellence in water resources and ecosystem restoration research. Key to our success has been the development of a research network founded on strong corporate, governmental and community partnerships and collaborations. This framework is strengthened by the mutual benefit realized by all partners and helps to support IUPUI’s core value of community engagement as an urban research university. In order to maximize the efficient use of resources, CEES is pursuing four strategic objectives in a manner that will further the universities goals of pursuing excellence in 1) research, scholarship and creative activity, 2) teaching and learning, and 3) civic engagement while also enhancing the resource base of the university. The Center places the highest priority on four strategic initiatives: 1. The Center will engage in cutting-edge research and training for mixed agricultural and urban watersheds 2. Evaluate and assess watershed Best Management Practices targeting atrazine, nutrients and emerging contaminants and pathogens 3. Establish a K-12 technology based science education program in water, air and energy 4. Work with state agencies to identify watershed issues associated with Major Moves and other economic development initiatives, the standards to be applied and training needs To this end, the Signature Center program in CEES has focused on building new collaborations with water resources and human health risks. Signature Center funding has provided for new faculty member Dr. Meghna Babbar-Sebens to join the Earth Sciences faculty as an Assistant Professor. Her research is focused on the modeling of water-borne contaminants, and decision support systems for management of water quality and associated ecological and human health risks. Dr. Babbar-Sebens research focuses on a) analysis of uncertainty when models are used to conduct spatially referenced systems-scale environmental assessments, b) incorporation of uncertainty analysis within decision support systems used for risk assessment and management, and c) optimization of water resources planning and management strategies for emergency response and water-borne disease prevention

Applied Solutions for Water Resource Challenges: Floods, Contamination and Upland Water Storage

poster abstractThe Center for Earth and Environmental Science, an IUPUI Signature Center, is working on a series of water resources problems and creating solutions. A series of collaborative projects are underway with the HUD, FEMA, the Office of Community and Rural Affairs, the United States Geological Survey, the Indiana State Department of Agriculture, and an international corporate partner in Berlin, KompetenzZentrum Wasser Berlin. Flood Erosion Hazard Program CEES, the USGS, and Polis are working with HUD and the Office of Community and Rural Affairs, though the Indiana Silver Jackets, to create tools for the State of Indiana to incorporate flood erosion hazard risk assessments into community planning. Flooding remains the most costly natural hazard in the US and Indiana. Flood losses continue to rise despite billions of dollars in mitigation. The causes are complex and related to land use, infrastructure design and climate change. Following the June 2008 floods in Indiana, 39 counties were listed as Federal disaster areas. In early 2005, 90% of Indiana counties were declared federal disaster areas after heavy rains fell on saturated soil. There have been seven major regional flooding events since the “Great flood of 1913”. The frequency of large floods appears to be increasing. Four of the eight major floods have occurred since 1982 and the last two occurred in 2005 and 2008. From 1998 through 2007, total insured flood losses in Indiana exceeded $39.8 million. While more restricted in area than the floods of 2008; record flooding occurred again throughout central and southern Indiana in early 2011 following heavy rains in February and March. Traditional flood protection usually consists of three components: flood control reservoirs, urban levees/floodwalls, and agricultural levees. These traditional flood protection methods are focused on one aspect of flooding – inundation. However, the largest single source of flood losses, both in terms of cost and number of affected persons, is damage to transportation infrastructure. Fluvial erosion is a principal cause of this damage. This significant flood-related natural hazard – the “fluvial erosion hazard” (FEH) – is not a specific component of State and local mitigation programs. This project aims to generate the tools for inclusion of FEH into statewide and local community planning. Aquisafe II - Performance Analysis of Selected Mitigation Systems Used to Attenuate Non-Point Source Agricultural Pollution Aquisafe is an international research collaboration with Veolia Environment based in Paris, their corporate partner in Berlin (KompetenzZentrum Wasser – Berlin Center of Competence for Water), the German Federal Environmental Agency, German university partners, and French quasi-governmental agencies in Brittany, France. The project goals are to create new mitigation systems to capture and treat polluted agricultural water running off farm fields prior to flowing into area streams, especially those used for drinking water supplies. The contaminants of specific concern are nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus) and pesticides (atrazine – a corn-herbicide with potential endocrine disrupting effects). We are testing 2-stage, constructed wetlands in Indianapolis, Indiana and Brittany, France that have been designed to intercept and convert contaminants to harmless compounds. Site designs are guided by laboratory technical scale experiments conducted in Berlin that identified the hydrologic retention times and suitable sources of organic carbon necessary for mitigating contaminants. Construction of the experimental systems will begin in April in the Eagle Creek Watershed in cooperation with a private farmer with initial results expected this summer

Ninja: Non identity based, privacy preserving authentication for ubiquitous environments

How should Ubicomp technologies be evaluated? While lab studies are good at sensing aspects of human behavior and revealing usability problems, they are poor at capturing context of use. In-situ studies are good at demonstrating how people appropriate technologies in their intended setting, but are expensive and difficult to conduct. Here, we show how they can be used more productively in the design process. A mobile learning device was developed to support teams of students carrying out scientific inquiry in the field. An initial in-situ study showed it was not used in the way envisioned. A contextualized analysis led to a comprehensive understanding of the user experience, usability and context of use, leading to a substantial redesign. A second in-situ study showed a big improvement in device usability and collaborative learning. We discuss the findings and conclude how in-situ studies can play an important role in the design and evaluation of Ubicomp applications and user experiences

Dissolved Inorganic Carbon (DIC) and Hydrologic Mixing in a Subtropical Riverine Estuary, Southwest Florida, USA

Physical and chemical parameters were measured in a subtropical estuary with a blind river source in southwest Florida, United States, to assess seasonal discharge of overland flow and groundwater in hydrologic mixing. Water temperature, pH, salinity, alkalinity, dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC), δ18O, and δ13CDIC varied significantly due to seasonal rainfall and climate. Axial distribution of the physical and chemical parameters constrained by tidal conditions during sampling showed that river water at low tide was a mixture of freshwater from overland flow and saline groundwater in the wet season and mostly saline groundwater in the dry season. Relationships between salinity and temperature, δ18O, and DIC for both the dry and wet seasons showed that DIC was most sensitive to seawater mixing in the estuary as DIC changed in concentration between values measured in river water at the tidal front to the most seaward station. A salinity-δ13CDIC model was able to describe seawater mixing in the estuary for the wet season but not for the dry season because river water salinity was higher than that of seawater and the salinity gradient between seawater and river water was small. A DIC-δ13CDIC mixing model was able to describe mixing of carbon from sheet flow and river water at low tide, and river water and seawater at high tide for both wet and dry seasons. The DIC- δ13CDIC model was able to predict the seawater end member DIC for the wet season. The model was not able to predict the seawater end member DIC for the dry season data due to secondary physical and biogeochemical processes that altered estuarine DIC prior to mixing with seawater. The results of this study suggest that DIC and δ13CDIC can provide additional insights into mixing of river water and seawater in estuaries during periods where small salinity gradients between river water and seawater and higher river water salinities preclude the use of salinity-carbon models

Production of subtidal tubular and surficial tempestites by Hurricane Kate, Caicos Platform, British West Indies

Storm infilling of deep, open Callianassa burrows with molluscan to peloidal packstone was the dominant style of preservable sedimentation produced by the passage of Hurricane Kate across Caicos Platform, British West Indies, on 18 November 1985. This moderate hurricane was the first to affect an actively studied portion of the carbonate platform environments of the south Florida-Bahama region in 19 years, a time during which many of our concepts of storm sedimentation have evolved. Prior to Hurricane Kate, much of the shallow-platform interior peloidal packstone to grapestone grainstone had a sparse seagrass cover and a highly irregular bottom caused by abundant Callianassa mounds. Hurricane Kate flattened the mounded bottom of the platform interior and caused minor smothering and erosion of the seagrass beds. A thin, surficial tempestite, though deposited over much of the platform, was difficult to identify because it lacked a coarse base. Instead, much of the reworked surface sediment poured down the large Callianassa burrow entrances and filled the vast burrow networks with either a coarse molluscan packstone or peloidal-skeletal packstone. Storm-burrow filling (tubular tempestites) effectively removed the coarse fraction from contributing to a surficial storm layer. Ten percent of the upper 75 cm of platform interior sediment consists of tubular tempestites from Hurricane Kate

Tidal-flat sedimentation from Hurricane Kate, Caicos Platform, British West Indies

Hurricane-generated, thinly bedded grainstones are the dominant style of stratification on the carbonate tidal-flat complex on Caicos Platform, British West Indies. This is in dramatic contrast to the winter-storm-generated millimeter-thick laminae which dominate stratification on the northwest Andros tidal flats and have become the general criteria for recognizing ancient carbonate tidal-flat sequences. Hurricane Kate, which passed directly across the Caicos tidal flats on 18 November 1985, provided an opportunity both to document the character and distribution of a specific storm-sediment layer and to evaluate the role of hurricanes in molding the geometry of the tidal-flat system. Though moderate in strength and producing only incomplete flooding, Hurricane Kate deposited a layer of fine to very fine peloidal grainstone 0.5-2 cm in thickness across significant portions of the extremely broad, low-relief shore and channel levees and the inland algal marsh. These storm layers are interbedded with organic-rich layers which represent prolonged periods of growth of Scytonema algal mat between hurricanes. Recognition that centimeter-thick grainstone layers dominate entire tidal-flat complexes necessitates both a thorough modification of criteria for defining ancient carbonate tidal-flat deposits and a reevaluation of supposedly subtidal, thinly bedded limestones

Spatial identification and optimization of upland wetlands in agricultural watersheds

Wetland ecosystems are considered as potential ecological solutions for increasing the capacity of watersheds to store runoff waters upstream, and thereby, decrease risk of downstream flooding. Especially in tile-drained agricultural landscapes, wetlands constructed to intercept these tiles can serve as storage basins for agricultural runoff, leading to both reduction in peak runoff flows and diminished transport of agricultural nutrients. The objective of this study was to develop a watershed-scale methodology for identifying potential sites for wetlands in a tile-drained landscape in the Midwestern USA, and for optimizing the spatial distribution of these wetlands for reductions in peak runoff flows. The benefits of this methodology is demonstrated by using it for selecting appropriate wetland restoration and/or creation sites in Eagle Creek Watershed (ECW), located 10 miles northwest of Indianapolis, IN, USA. Results show that a large number of potential sites could be identified (e.g., 2953 sites in ECW), and with a choice of effective wetland design parameters and with spatial optimization of their areas, locations, and drainage areas, it is possible to achieve significant peak flow reductions with fewer sites and smaller wetlands.Keywords: Geographic information systems, Simulation-optimization, Hydrology, Wetland