The goal of this study was to develop an alternative approach to typical seagrass transplantation techniques that damage the donor bed. Floating individuals of Halodule wrightii were collected in the Indian River Lagoon (IRL), Florida, during fall of 2013 and spring of 2014, with the fall collection planted in outdoor tanks. Only 25% of individuals collected in the fall survived the winter in the tanks. Individuals from both collections were deployed onto biodegradable mats in a capped dredge hole in the IRL in March, 2014. Approximately 66% of the mats survived the six-month experiment, and the area covered by seagrass quadrupled. Growth in shoot count, average height, horizontal spread, and biomass was similar for both fall and spring treatments. Thus, time and effort of overwintering had no benefit over spring harvesting. The use of floating individuals can provide a more practical, environmentally friendly alternative to traditional transplanting for seagrass re storation. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.S.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2015. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Growing populations and industrialized agriculture practices have eradicated much of the United States wetlands along river floodplains. One program available for the restoration of floodplains is the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). The current research explores the effects CRP land change has on flooding zones, utilizing Flood Modeller and HEC-RAS. Modelling in both one-dimensional and two-dimensional approaches were tested and analyzed for the same river reach. Flood Modeller is proven a viable tool for flood modeling within the United States when compared to HEC-RAS. Application of the software is used in the Nodaway River system located in the western halves of Iowa and Missouri, to model the effects of introducing new forest areas within the region. Flood stage during the conversion first decreases in the early years, before rising to produce greater heights. Flow velocities where CRP land is present are reduced for long-term scopes. Velocity reduction occurs as the Manning’s roughness values increase due to tree diameter and brush density. Flood zones become more widespread with the implementation of CRP. Comparing one-dimensional and two-dimensional flood mapping zones, the two-dimensional model shows less inundation. CRP land cover effects evolve over time, with the greatest impact appearing at the end of the contract.

Interactions between fluvial processes and vegetation along the natural channel margins have been shown to be fundamental in determining meandering rivers development. By colonizing exposed sediments, riparian trees increase erosion resistance and stabilize fluvial sediment transport through their root systems, while during a flood event the above-ground biomass interacts with the water flow inducing sediment deposition and altering scour patterns. In turn river dynamics and hydrology influence vegetative biomass growth, affecting the spatial distribution of vegetation. These bio-morphological dynamics have been observed to direct control accretion and degradation rates of the meander bend. In particular, vegetation encroachments within the point bar (i.e. colonizing species and strand wood), initiate pioneeristic landforms that, when evolving, determine the lateral shifting of the margin that separates active channel from river floodplain and thus inner bank aggradation (bar push). This diminishes the portion of the morphologically active channel cross-section, influencing the erosion of the cutting bank and promoting channel widening (bank pull ). As a result of the cyclical occurrence of these erosional and depositional processes, meandering rivers floodplain show a typical ridge and swale pattern characterized by the presence of complex morphological structures, namely, benches, scrolls and chutes within the new-created floodplain. Moreover, difference in migration rate between the two banks have been observed to induce local temporal variations in channel width that affect river channel morphodynamics and its overall planform through their influence on the local flow field and channel bed morphology. Despite enormous advances in field and laboratory techniques and modelling development of the last decades, little is known about the relation between floodplain patterns and their controlling bio-morphological interactions that determine the bank accretion process. This knowledge gap has so far limited the development of physically-based models for the evolution of meandering rivers able to describe the lateral migration of banklines separately. Most existing meander migration models are indeed based on the hypothesis of constant channel width. Starting from this knowledge gap, the present doctoral research has aimed to provide more insight in the mutual interactions among flow, sediment transport and riparian vegetation dynamics in advancing banks of meandering rivers. In order to achieve its aims, the research has been designed as an integration of remote sensing and in-situ field observations with a mathematical modelling approach to i) provide a quantitative description of vegetation and floodplain channel topography patterns in advancing meanders bend and to ii) explore the key control factors and their role in generating the observed patterns. The structure of the present PhD work is based on four main elements. First, two types of airborne historical data (air photographs and Lidar survey) have been investigated, in order to quantify the effects of spatial-temporal evolution of vegetation pattern on meander morphology and to provide evidence for the influence of vegetation within the topography of the present floodplain. Such remote sensing analysis has highlighted a strong correspondence between riparian canopy structure and geomorphological patterns within the floodplain area: this has clearly shown the need to interpret the final river morphology as the result of a two-way interaction between riparian vegetation dynamics and river processes. Second, field measurements have been conducted on a dynamic meander bend of the lower reach of the Tagliamento River, Italy, with the initial aim of checking the outcomes of the remote sensing analysis through ground data. The outcomes of the field measurements have further supported the results, providing ground evidence on the relations between vegetation and topographic patterns within the transition zone that is intermediate between the active channel bed and the vegetated portion of the accreting floodplain. The influence of vegetation on inner bank morphology has also been interpreted in the light of the expected time scales of inundation and geomorphic dynamics that characterize the advancing process of the inner bank. The combined analysis of both remotely sensed data and field measurements associated with the historical hydrological dataset have allowed to quantitatively characterize the biophysical characteristics of the buffer zone, close to the river edge, where the accretion processes take place. The third research element has foreseen the development of a biophysically- based, simplified bio-morphodynamic model for the lateral migration of a meander bend that took advantage of the empirical knowledge gained in the analysis of field data. The model links a minimalist approach that includes biophysically-based relationships to describe the interaction between riparian vegetation and river hydro-morphodynamic processes, and employs a non linear mathematical model to describe the morphodynamics of meander channel bed. Model application has allowed to reproduce the spatial oscillations of vegetation biomass density and ground morphology observed in the previous analyses. Overall, the model allows to understand the role of the main controlling factors for the ground and vegetation patterns that characterize the advancing river bank and to investigate the temporal dynamics of the morphologically active channel width, providing insights into the bank pull and bar push phenomena. The fourth and concluding element of the present PhD research is an analytical investigation of the fundamental role of unsteadiness on the morphodynamic response of the river channel. Results obtained in the previous elements have clearly showed the tendency of a meander bend to develop temporal oscillations of the active channel width during its evolution, but no predictive analytical tool was previously available to investigate the channel bed response to such non-stationary planform dynamics. A non linear model has therefore been proposed to investigate the effect of active channel width unsteadiness on channel bed morphology. The basic case of free bar instability in a straight channel has been used in this first investigation, which has shown the tendency of channel widening to increase river bed instability compared to the steady case, in qualitative agreement with experimental observations. Overall, the research conducted within the present Doctoral Thesis represents a step forward in understanding the bio-morphodynamics of meandering rivers that can help the development of a complete bio-morphodynamic model for meandering rivers evolution, able to provide support for sustainable river management.

The dissertation presented in this manuscript contributes to river science by providing a detailed overview on the state of the art on the interaction between riparian vegetation and hydrogeomorphological processes, by devising a novel model encompassing most of such processes and by proposing a field methodology aimed at providing means for improving the modelling of such interactions. The state of the art is summarized in an extensive review describing riparian vegetation and hydrogeomorphological processes mutual feedbacks. Such review did not simply seek to describe these feedbacks but, compiling from a large array of results from field, laboratory and modelling studies, provides a set of physical thresholds that trigger system changes. Therefore, processes are not only described terms but also explained with a quantitative approach. Processes description provided the conceptual foundation for the development of the novel simulation model while model parameterization was based on the quantitative information collected in the review. Such novel model, encompasses the main relationships entwining riparian woody vegetation and hydrogeomorphological processes and is able of replicating long term riparian landscape dynamics considering disturbance events, environmental stressor and riparian woody vegetation establishment from seeds and large wood. The manuscript presents the model structure and its conceptual validation by means of hydrological scenarios aimed at testing the coherence of the simulation results with expected system behaviour. Examples of such coherences are vegetation growth rate in response to hydrological regime, entrainment and establishment of large wood in an unconfined river system and vegetation effect on erosion and deposition patterns. Analysis of sedimentation patterns from the modelled results suggested that vegetation flow resistance should be modelled with greater detail. These conclusions pointed the dissertation research towards the testing of a novel class of vegetation flow resistance equations, proposed by different authors, able of describing woody vegetation flow resistance on a physical basis. These equations have the advantage of considering flow stage, plants foliation level and species-specific flexibility. However, the use of such equations is limited by the difficulty of measuring the vegetation properties required as equation-inputs. In order to test if these equations could effectively improve sediment dynamics predictions, a field method was formulated and tested. The field method allows to sample vegetation properties that can be used with these novel class of flow resistance equations. In the manuscript, such method is applied and the resulting vegetation properties used in several modelling scenarios. Such scenario proved that hydraulic variables modelled with these novel flow resistance approaches are more realistic and thus that the model developed during the dissertation could benefit from inclusion of such flow resistance equations in its source code.

A l’image du Rhône au sud-est de la France, les fleuves font l’objet de multiples usages, entrainant des modifications profondes de leurs dynamiques fluviales. Par conséquent, les fonctionnements hydro-sédimentaire et écologique de leurs chenaux ainsi que de leurs plaines alluviales sont altérés. Des programmes intégrés de restauration s’attellent à définir les potentiels et les risques liés à de tels ‘écosystèmes anthropo-construits’ et de comprendre les interactions entre divers facteurs de contrôle ayant influencé leur formation. La présente étude s’est focalisée sur 293 casiers Girardon – des unités rectangulaires délimitées par des digues submersibles longitudinales et latérales construites dans le lit mineur au 19ème siècle afin d’améliorer la navigabilité du Rhône. Ceux-ci sont distribués sur quatre secteurs court-circuités au 20ième siècle pour la production hydro-électrique. Nous avons analysé les patrons spatio-temporels de la sédimentation, ainsi que la structure et la composition des boisements grâce à des données issues de la télédétection et de terrain. Nous proposons également un modèle conceptuel des facteurs de contrôle et des processus potentiels en lien avec les patrons observés. Quatre-vingts pourcents des casiers ont évolué du stade aquatique à un stade terrestre et boisé, suivant des trajectoires historiques variées à la fois inter- et intra-secteurs. Les boisements diffèrent en caractéristiques structurelles de boisements de référence plus naturels. Leur composition est plus proche de celle des systèmes matures que pionniers. Nous observons également une forte présence d’espèces allochtones, comme par exemple l’Érable negundo (Acer negundo), invasive, en particulier dans les stades de régénération. Notre approche comparative constitue une première étape pour démêler les effets cumulatifs des facteurs de contrôle et hiérarchiser leurs rôles individuels. Nous avons constaté que des facteurs locaux jouent un rôle majeur, en particulier la connectivité au chenal principal court-circuité. L’évolution des facteurs environnementaux eux-mêmes a contribué à la complexité des patrons. Ce travail ouvre la voie à des futures études sur des écosystèmes anthropo-construits sur cours d’eau, et donne une nouvelle perspective aux gestionnaires du Rhône relativement à son échelle spatiale innovante. / The multiple uses made of large rivers, such as the Rhône in south-eastern France, have provoked profound modifications of their fluvial dynamics. As a consequence, the hydro-sedimentary and ecological functioning of their channels and floodplains are highly altered. Integrated restoration programmes struggle in defining potentials and risks related to such ‘novel ecosystems’ and to understand the various interacting drivers which influence their formation. This study comparatively focused on 293 dike fields—rectangular units delimited by longitudinal and lateral submersible dikes constructed in the channel in the late 19th century to promote the navigability of the Rhône. They are distributed over four reaches by-passed in the 20th century for hydro-electric energy production. We investigated the spatio-temporal patterns of sediment deposition and the structure and composition of the forest stands using remote sensing and field data. We also propose a conceptual model of potential drivers and processes behind the observed patterns. Eighty percent of the dike fields have evolved from the aquatic to a terrestrial and forested stage, following variable historical trajectories both between and within reaches. The forest stands presented structural characteristics which differed from more natural reference stands and compositional characteristics closer to mature than to pioneer systems. They featured a high presence of non-native species, such as the invasive Box elder (Acer negundo). Our comparative approach constituted a first step to disentangle the cumulative effects of the drivers and define their individual roles: we discovered a prominent role of local factors, especially the connectivity to the main by-passed channel. The evolution of the environmental factors themselves added to the complexity of the patterns. This work provides a basis for future studies of novel ecosystems on rivers, and a new perspective to river managers on the Rhône due to its innovative spatial-scale.

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1991. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 267-273). / The growth and decline of manufacturing industries in the past century and the industrial landscape that this activity has produced has had profound physical, environmental, social and economic impact on the communities of which they are an integral part. Throughout the past century, industry has dominated the man-made environment in tenns of its size, frequency of occurrence and highly prominent position in the community. In America this is particularly true, as the history of urban industrialism has shaped our nation and the character of our urban environment over the last one hundred years. Because industrial sites have played a significant role in the physical form, social composition and environmental-both natural and man-made character of American communities - their obsolescence, whether creating a change in function or eliminating the function entirely, leaves a tremendous void, both physically and economically. The obsolete industrial landscape,whether abandoned or underutilized, leaves the public and private sectors, as well as the community with the task of "reconstructing"-the reintegration of large scale environments through reuse and reprogramming-the site, architecture and infrastructure that is left as obsolete. Reconstruction of obsolete or redundant industrial sites occurs in various ways, though efforts are generally of a fairly singular focus, with the private sector making decisions based largely on market and financial considerations. While the private sector has made some effort to retrofit existing facilities with new technology and processes, the conventional approach has been to leave them behind and start fresh. Existing infrastructure, environmental quality and employee relations are generally deemed too difficult to retrofit, and so new plants are developed on green fields elsewhere, while older facilities are abandoned, demolished or sold to other parties for redevelopment. Reuse strategies have focused on the subdivision of older industrial structures to accommodate incubator industries which require less square footage than traditional heavy industries. While examples of this conventional redevelopment approach dominate in the United States, a multidisciplinary, participatory approach has been used in both European countries and the United States. Over the last decade, increased interest in the industrial landscape and its reconstruction has spawned numerous efforts world wide. In Italy and France, private sector finns such as Fiat, Pirelli, and Schlumberger have joined forces with the public sector in order to develop planning and design directions for important pieces of the urban landscape. Programs range from institutional and mixed use development to industrial and commercial reuse. In the United States, planning efforts at the federal, state and local levels have produced various participatory approaches. In recent years, the Department of the Interior through the National Park Service, has developed and implemented a program of "heritage areas", focused on the country's transportation and industrial heritage. The objectives of the cultural development strategy are to preserve industrial heritage while catalyzing economic development in the surrounding community. A candidate for multidisciplinary reconstruction planning is the Ford Rouge Complex in Dearborn, Michigan. The Rouge Complex has served for its 75 years as the center piece of the regional automotive economy in Southeastern Michigan and the automotive manufacturing in the country as a whole. From its modest beginnings on remote farm and marshland in 1917, Henry Ford I and Albert Kahn's joint vision for the Rouge quickly eclipsed their revolutionary Highland Park facility, inherited its assembly line and grew to become the largest manufacturing complex in the world. Once, the self proclaimed "industrial city" was admired, imitated, portrayed and visited by industrialists, artists and designers and tourists from every comer of the world. Today, the complex is in a state of transition and uncertainty about the future. Poised for reconstruction, it is now at the center of an economy which has been wholly dependent on the cyclical nature of the automotive industry and tied to its convulsions, relocations and downsizing. The Rouge is also in the midst of the region's economic and social strife Based on these existing conditions, can a reconstruction approach for the site create new economic and social value? If a strategy which embraces a multidimensional notion of value, emphasizing "information value", is employed, the answer may be in the affirmative. Considered in this way, the Rouge represents a major redevelopment opportunity. Nowhere is there a more potent site for such a redevelopment; nowhere in the region does the confluence of these three notions of value occur in a more powerful way. The infrastructure that exists there could not be cost effectively reproduced today. There is no other location in the region which is better served by modal options or better positioned in relation to such options. Most importantly, there are few other sites in the world which are so charged with historic and cultural meaning which is of significance at a local, national and international level, and where the juxtaposition of 20th and 21st century industrial landscape and technology meet. The thesis concludes with a recommended scenario for the reconstruction of the Rouge, focusing on a master planning approach and recommended development program which draw from examples of industrial reconstruction precedents in the the European Community and the United States. The recommended scenario advocates a multidisciplinary, participatory master planning approach. The process identifies different notions of "value" that are inherent in the Rouge. The development concept consists of four development components, each embracing different notions of value, all of which hold economic potential: infrastructure value, which focuses on the value of the buildings and infrastructure to the market, location value, which focuses on the sites context, adjacencies and linkages; and the information value, which focuses on the symbolic, historic and cultural meaning of the site. In approaching the site with this combination, the results are enhanced economic value and a physical result which addresses the concerns and issues of the stakeholders in the process-the company, the union and the community. / by Constance Corinne Bodurow Rea. / M.S.

With increasing demands on limited water resources and unavailability of suitable dam sites, it is essential that available storage works be carefully planned and efficiently operated to meet the present and future water needs.This research report presents an attempt to: i) use Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) for the simulation of the Crocodile water resource system located in the Mpumalanga province of South Africa and ii) use the model to assess to what extent Kwena dam, the only major dam in the system could meet the required 0.9m3/s cross border flow to Mozambique. The modelling was confined to the low flow periods when the Kwena dam releases are significant. The form of ANN model developed in this study is the standard error backpropagation run on a daily time scale. It is comprised of 32 inputs being four irrigation abstractions at Montrose, Tenbosch, Riverside and Karino; current and average daily rainfall totals for the previous 4 days at the respective rainfall stations; average daily temperature at Karino and Nelspruit; daily releases from Kwena dam; daily streamflow from the tributaries of Kaap, Elands and Sand rivers and the previous day’s flow at Tenbosch. The single output was the current day’s flow at Tenbosch. To investigate the extent to which the 0.9m3/s flow requirement into Mozambique could be met, data from a representative dry year and four release scenarios were used. The scenarios assumed that Kwena dam was 100%, 75%, 50% and 25% full at the beginning of the year. It was found as expected that increasing Kwena releases improved the cross border flows but the improvement in providing the 0.9m3/s cross border flow was minimal. For the scenario when the dam is initially full, the requirement was met with an improvement of 11% over the observed flows.

The Upper Mississippi River is in interest to river managers and biologists' dues to its vast ecosystem and past anthropogenic impacts. In order to help restore the river to its once natural state, river managers and biologists need a strong understanding of the hydrodynamics of the system. A two-dimensional hydrodynamic model was developed in Pool 8 of the Upper Mississippi River and utilized for river management applications. The model was constructed using SMS 10.0 grid generation software and processed with SRH-2D software. SRH-2D used Manning's roughness coefficients to calibrate the model to observed water surface elevation data collected by the USGS. The model was validated to an observed water surface elevation profile and percent discharge through 17 transects within the model. The calibrated and validated model was used for river management and biological applications; hypothetical island, drawdown scenarios, residence time study, and habitat suitability assessment. The results showed that the two-dimensional hydrodynamic model could accurately represent a hypothetical island within the lower pool, simulate drawdown scenarios, develop stream traces for particle tracking and residence time calculation, and the creation of habitat suitability maps based on field data. The completion of these applications with the two-dimensional model shows the efficiently and accuracy of the model, and how two-dimensional numerical models are important tools in bridging the gap between engineers and scientists.

The voluminous limnological literature contains few studies of mountain streams. Though there are a few papers on the benthic algae (see Budde 1928, Raabe 1951) only Pennak (1943) reports year-round quantitative data on the phytoplankton. Brinley (1950) gives some phytoplankton information in a summer study of streams in Rocky Mountain National Park.

Over 115 miles of rock revetments that serve to protect river banks have been constructed in the Willamette Basin. In this study the spring and summer bird use of Willamette Basin revetments is examined. Revetments that had not been recently cleared of most woody vegetation and blackberries were found to have significantly greater total and breeding bird use than cleared revetments. Possible factors affecting bird use, such as vegetation on revetments and vegetation adjacent to revetments are examined using linear regression analysis. The results of this study are compared with results of previous work in riparian forests along the Columbia River. It is concluded that revetments represent significant avian habitat, especially for "edge species," and that present maintenance practices involving removal of vegetation adversely affect bird use.