Green Roofs in the Garden City: Exploring the Opportunities for Green Roof Policies in Missoula, Montana

Global climate change is expected to have adverse impacts on the Rocky Mountain West, including impacts on water and land use, energy consumption, weather patterns, and wildlife stewardship. The State of Montana, Missoula County and the City of Missoula all have recognized these threats and are taking steps to address climate change impacts. In response to the unique challenges posed by urban environments, the practice of green, or vegetative, roofing has been promoted through policy measures by a number of cities in the United States and abroad. This project explores green roofing and the policies used to encourage the practice with the goal of recommending what kind of green roof policy, if any, would be politically and practically feasible in the City of Missoula. This project explores the practice of green roofing through a discussion of its history and the benefits green roofs offer to building owners and communities. It explores three obstacles to widespread green roof adoption. It introduces the six main green roof policy tools identified through research, and presents eight case examples of cities with green roof policies in place to gain an understanding of these programs’ goals, the policy measures employed, and how successful these policies have been. It presents interview data from fourteen interviews with twenty-two Missoula-area stakeholders from four stakeholder groups: City administrators, architecture, design and building organizations, the conservation community, and others. These groups are analyzed to determine whether they support the City of Missoula taking policy steps to encourage green roofing, and to determine these groups’ preferred policy tools. Based on this research, the project concludes with six recommendations as to how the City of Missoula can best promote the practice of green roofing: educating residents and building owners; pursuing a City-lead green roof demonstration project; establishing standards for green roofs in the Missoula Building Code; passing a nonbinding resolution in favor of green roofing; committing to a strong sustainable building policy for City buildings; and offering nonmonetary incentives for green roof installation

Soil Genesis Across A Climo-Lithosequence of Western Haleakalā, Maui

The soils of western Haleakalā are incredibly diverse due to two primary reasons: 1) they receive varying levels of rainfall based on location relative to Haleakalā, and 2) volcanic vents upwind of the area indicate that volcanic ash has blanketed much of western Haleakalā in the past. Ash can weather to form short-range-order materials, which contribute to the classification of andic soil properties. Due to their structure, short-range-order materials impart soil behavior that creates benefits and challenges in land management. Therefore, an understanding of how these soils formed and differ, and where andic soils occur is crucial. The objectives of this study were to observe soil properties to determine how they vary across the precipitation gradients of the study area and how they relate to soil formation and diversity; and to utilize spatial statistics to predict where andic soils may occur to improve soil mapping. Sixteen soils were sampled on the same mapped substrate of northwest-facing slopes \u3c 5% across gradients in elevation (7-1362 m) and mean annual precipitation (283-2768 mm MAP). Soils were described by horizon to at least 1-m depth, or a rootrestricting layer, and rock fragments at the base of each soil pit were sampled. Soil chemical, physical, and mineralogical properties were performed, and soil data across depth and location were compared. Using climate raster data and soil property data used to classify andic soils for the 16 soils sampled, we created and validated models to predict the areal extent of andic soils in the study area. Soil organic carbon increased with increasing precipitation before decreasing at 2300 mm MAP. Base saturation and pH remain high until a threshold at 1500 mm MAP before decreasing abruptly. The degree of mineral weathering and soil development increased with increasing MAP. The lowland soils of central Maui are likely much older than soils of upcountry Maui. Ash-influenced soils of upcountry Maui were less developed, more likely to have andic soil properties, and had disrupted pedogenic thresholds for pH and base saturation. Spatial predictions of soil properties used to classify andic soils accurately classified Natural Resources Conservation Service soils to 88.9%

Bankfull Geomorphic Relationships and HEC-RAS Assessment in Small Catchments of the Cumberland Plateau Ecoregion

There is a great need for state governments to have effective watershed restoration and mitigation efforts to return degraded ecosystems to a stable, healthy condition. Given the growing investment in stream restoration efforts, there is an urgent need for tools to assess and improve the effectiveness of restoration efforts at local, state, and nationwide scales. In 2000 there was less than ten stream restoration permits provided by the state of Tennessee and has increased each year with almost forty permits issued in 2013. To better achieve successful stream restoration, appropriate channel designs must be used that reflect the hydraulic conditions of streams in the appropriate ecoregion. Regional curves describe the relations of stream channel conditions to watershed drainage. Robust design curves that span the spatial scale of restoration efforts in terms of drainage area do not currently exist for the Appalachian Plateaus region of Tennessee. The objectives of this study were to 1) develop regional curves for low-order stream geometry in the Cumberland Plateau ecoregion of Tennessee, 2) compare the developed regional curve relationships for the Cumberland Plateau of Tennessee with similar relationships developed for neighboring ecoregions and, 3) validate the application of combining shear stress modeling and the modified Shield’s diagram for predicting bed substrate size in restoration of low-order streams in the Cumberland Plateau of Tennessee. Regional curves for the Tennessee Cumberland Plateau ecoregion were develop and compared with the regional curves of Alabama Cumberland Plateau, North Carolina Piedmont, and Tennessee Western Ridge and Valley ecoregions. Statistical analysis on the regional curves determined that there is a significant difference between some curves at the 0.05 confidence level. Using HEC-RAS and the modified Shield’s Diagram, the predicted D50 was five to ten times greater than the field measured D50 and D84

Extending Quantum Coherence in Diamond

We experimentally demonstrate over two orders of magnitude increase in the coherence time of nitrogen vacancy centres in diamond by implementing decoupling techniques. We show that equal pulse spacing decoupling performs just as well as non-periodic Uhrig decoupling and has the additional benefit that it allows us to take advantage of "revivals" in the echo (due to the coherent nature of the bath) to explore the longest coherence times. At short times, we can extend the coherence of particular quantum states out from T_2*=2.7 us out to an effective T_2 > 340 us. For preserving arbitrary states we show the experimental importance of using pulse sequences, that through judicious choice of the phase of the pulses, compensate the imperfections of individual pulses for all input states. At longer times we use these compensated sequences to enhance the echo revivals and show a coherence time of over 1.6 ms in ultra-pure natural abundance 13C diamond.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figures; minor syntax/typo. changes and updated reference

The diamond Nitrogen-Vacancy center as a probe of random fluctuations in a nuclear spin ensemble

New schemes that exploit the unique properties of Nitrogen-Vacancy (NV) centers in diamond are presently being explored as a platform for high-resolution magnetic sensing. Here we focus on the ability of a NV center to monitor an adjacent mesoscopic nuclear spin bath. For this purpose, we conduct comparative experiments where the NV spin evolves under the influence of surrounding 13C nuclei or, alternatively, in the presence of asynchronous AC fields engineered to emulate bath fluctuations. Our study reveals substantial differences that underscore the limitations of the semi-classical picture when interpreting and predicting the outcome of experiments designed to probe small nuclear spin ensembles. In particular, our study elucidates the NV center response to bath fluctuations under common pulse sequences, and explores a detection protocol designed to probe time correlations of the nuclear spin bath dynamics. Further, we show that the presence of macroscopic nuclear spin order is key to the emergence of semi-classical spin magnetometry.Comment: 30 pages, 4 figure

Modeling hydrodynamic fluxes in the Nueces River Delta

Center for Research in Water Resource

Light Sensing Automated Blinds

This project is solving the problem of wasted energy within buildings and homes, because currently the lights turned on inside building do not utilize natural, ambient light from the sun. Rather than having unnecessary light from a light source, the automated light sensing smart blinds can sense the amount of light outside the window and in the room, and then adjust the angle of the blinds to save energy by utilizing the available outdoor light. This way, the light source will not be running at maximum power output while there is excess light coming through the window. This project aims to design and construct the light sensing blinds to achieve the aforementioned goals. Hardware test results from this project demonstrate the capabilities of the smart blind system to measure ambient light inside the room and outside the window, to adjust the angle of each of the blinds on the window, and to change the desired brightness of the room

Light Sensing Automated Blinds

This project is solving the problem of wasted energy within buildings and homes, because currently the lights turned on inside building do not utilize natural, ambient light from the sun. Rather than having unnecessary light from a light source, the automated light sensing smart blinds can sense the amount of light outside the window and in the room, and then adjust the angle of the blinds to save energy by utilizing the available outdoor light. This way, the light source will not be running at maximum power output while there is excess light coming through the window. This project aims to design and construct the light sensing blinds to achieve the aforementioned goals. Hardware test results from this project demonstrate the capabilities of the smart blind system to measure ambient light inside the room and outside the window, to adjust the angle of each of the blinds on the window, and to change the desired brightness of the room

Soil Series: Elevation and Agricultural Soil Test Survey of the Godfrey Dryland Experimental Farm, Clarkston, Utah

The survey reported in this fact sheet details the areal distribution of soil type, topographical variation across the site and key agricultural soil test results to serve as baseline guidance information to potential researchers and farm managers