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Bangladesh and India share 54 transboundary rivers. Despite that, the transboundary water management between these two countries is heavily concentrated on the Ganges river basin, in which, mode of cooperation is still based on physical sharing of water. The study is developed on the argument that Bangladesh and India need a shift of focus in their current mode of transboundary water management from physical sharing of water to sharing of benefits derived from the use (and non-use) water in order to foster transboundary water cooperation in the Ganges river basin. Based on a single-case study, the research work aims to explore the scope of benefit-sharing in the transboundary water cooperation in the Ganges river basin and how benefit-sharing can be facilitated between these two countries. The findings show that the water negotiation in the Ganges basin would become much more complicated in the future, primarily due to the growing gap between the demand and the availability of water. The adverse impact of climate change will further deteriorate the situation. Besides, the changing nature of India’s domestic politics and the growing internal conflict between its provincial states will weaken the Indian central government’s authority to manage transboundary water resources jointly. Therefore, in the future, Bangladesh and India would find it difficult to elicit a positive-sum outcome from any water negotiation in Ganges river if they still focus on the volumetric allocation of water. The study suggests that inland navigation and water transit, multipurpose storage dam projects and joint management of the Sundarbans can be the potential areas for benefit-sharing in the Ganges basin. The study stresses the importance of shifting the policy outlook and developing institutional arrangements between Bangladesh and India to introduce and facilitate benefit-sharing in the Ganges river basin that will help to share benefits equitably, hence foster cooperation.

Semi-distributed hydrological models are often used for streamflow forecasting, hydrological climate change impact assessments, and other applications. In such models, basins are broken up into hydrologic response units (HRUs), which are assumed to have a relatively homogenous response to precipitation. HRUs are delineated in a variety of ways, and the procedure used may impact model performance. HRU delineation procedures have been researched, but it is still not clear how important these subdivision schemes are or which delineation methods are most effective. To start addressing this knowledge gap, this project investigated whether or not HRU size has a significant effect on streamflow simulation at the mouth of a watershed. To test this, 30 gaged, relatively unimpaired western U.S. basins were each modeled with 6 HRU sets of different sizes using the Precipitation Runoff Modeling System (PRMS). To isolate size as a variable, HRUs were delineated using stream catchments. For each basin, streams were defined with 6 different threshold levels, producing HRUs of differing sizes. Nineteen model parameters were derived for each HRU using nationally consistent GIS datasets, and all other model parameters were left at default values. Climate inputs were derived from a national 4-km2 gridded daily climate dataset. After calibration, 4 goodness-of-fit metrics were calculated for daily streamflow for each HRU set. Uncalibrated model performance was generally poor for a variety of reasons, but comparison of the models was still informative. Results for the 30 basins across the 6 HRU size classes showed that HRU size did not significantly impact model performance across all basins. However, in basins that had less total precipitation and higher elevation, sensitivity of model performance to HRU subdivision levels was slightly greater, though not significantly so. Findings indicate that, in most basins, little subdivision may be required for good model performance, allowing for desirable simplicity and fewer degrees of freedom without sacrificing runoff simulation accuracy.

Urbanization, often characterized by high impervious surface area, can result in excessive inputs of fine sediments into urban streams. Excessive fine sediments can blanket the stream bed filling the interstitial space in the substratum, which may have adverse effects on stream biota. A field survey was conducted in Oregon urban and non-urban basins to investigate the relationship between fine sediments and stream macroinvertebrates. Physical, chemical, and biological data were collected from 59 stream sites in two urban and two rural streams. The stream sites fulfilled a continuous sediment gradient, which ranged from a low of 2% of fine sediment in the substrate to a high of 64% with an average of 22%. The % fines, in Clear Creek (rural basin) was significantly lower than in the urban basins (Johnson Creek and Tryon Creek) (p=0.005). Johnson Creek (mean=23%) had approximately three times more fine sediment than Clear Creek (mean=7%), while Tryon Creek (mean=32%) had nearly five times as much fine sediment as Clear Creek. EPT taxa richness was significantly higher in both rural streams than in both urban streams (p0.05). For example, regression analysis of EPT taxa richness vs. % fine sediments displayed a coefficient of determination (r2) value of 0.2. Other macro invertebrates metrics displayed similar patterns. The lack of significant correlations may be due to the cumulative effect of basin-wide "historical land use past". Past land use activity may have resulted in long-term reductions of sensitive taxa in the basin taxa pool and efforts to improve local habitats may not be quickly colonized by pollution sensitive taxa. Long-term degradation to the urban streams resulted in a relatively homogenous assemblage of macro invertebrates, which may have confounded the quantitative relationship between sediments and macroinvertebrates. This study suggests there is a clear difference between urban and non-urban streams in terms of macro invertebrates, which may be likely due to sediments, but the quantitative relationship between fine sediments and macro invertebrates is weak.

Recent water scarcities across the southwestern U.S. with severe effects on the living environment inspire the development of new methodologies to achieve reliable drought forecasting in seasonal scale. Reliable forecast of hydrologic variables, in general, is a preliminary requirement for appropriate planning of water resources and developing effective allocation policies. This study aims at developing new techniques with specific probabilistic features to improve the reliability of hydrologic forecasts, particularly the drought forecasts. The drought status in the future is determined by certain hydrologic variables that are basically estimated by the hydrologic models with rather simple to complex structures. Since the predictions of hydrologic models are prone to different sources of uncertainties, there have been several techniques examined during past several years which generally attempt to combine the predictions of single (multiple) hydrologic models to generate an ensemble of hydrologic forecasts addressing the inherent uncertainties. However, the imperfect structure of hydrologic models usually lead to systematic bias of hydrologic predictions that further appears in the forecast ensembles. This study proposes a post-processing method that is applied to the raw forecast of hydrologic variables and can develop the entire distribution of forecast around the initial single-value prediction. To establish the probability density function (PDF) of the forecast, a group of multivariate distribution functions, the so-called copula functions, are incorporated in the post-processing procedure. The performance of the new post-processing technique is tested on 2500 hypothetical case studies and the streamflow forecast of Sprague River Basin in southern Oregon. Verified by some deterministic and probabilistic verification measures, the method of Quantile Mapping as a traditional post-processing technique cannot generate the qualified forecasts as comparing with the copula-based method. The post-processing technique is then expanded to exclusively study the drought forecasts across the different spatial and temporal scales. In the proposed drought forecasting model, the drought status in the future is evaluated based on the drought status of the past seasons while the correlations between the drought variables of consecutive seasons are preserved by copula functions. The main benefit of the new forecast model is its probabilistic features in analyzing future droughts. It develops conditional probability of drought status in the forecast season and generates the PDF and cumulative distribution function (CDF) of future droughts given the past status. The conditional PDF can return the highest probable drought in the future along with an assessment of the uncertainty around that value. Using the conditional CDF for forecast season, the model can generate the maps of drought status across the basin with particular chance of occurrence in the future. In a different analysis of the conditional CDF developed for the forecast season, the chance of a particular drought in the forecast period can be approximated given the drought status of earlier seasons. The forecast methodology developed in this study shows promising results in hydrologic forecasts and its particular probabilistic features are inspiring for future studies.

The Stephens Creek Watershed in southwest Portland, Oregon was chosen by the city as a pilot project for urban stream restoration efforts, and the infiltration of stormwater was identified as a potential restoration strategy. The Stephens Creek Watershed has historically been known to be unstable during high precipitation events (Burns, 1996), and the need to address the response of slope stability to anthropogenically-driven changing groundwater conditions is the focus of this study. Airborne light detection and ranging (LiDAR) and geotechnical data from the City of Portland were employed to create a high resolution (0.84 m2) physics-based probabilistic slope stability model for this watershed, using the map-based probabilistic infinite slope analysis program PISA-m (Haneberg, 2007). Best and worst case models were run using fully dry and fully saturated soil conditions, respectively. Model results indicate that 96.3% of the watershed area had a probability [less than or equal to] 0.25 that the slope factor of safety (FOS) was [less than or equal to] 1 for fully dry conditions, compared to 76.4% for fully saturated conditions. Areas that had a probability [greater than or equal to] 0.25 that the slope factor of safety (FOS) was [less than or equal to] 1 were found to occur mainly along cut/fill slopes as well as within the deeply incised canyons of Stephens Creek and its tributaries. An infiltration avoidance map was derived to define areas that appear to be unsuitable for infiltration. Based on these results, it is recommended that stormwater continues to be directed to existing sewer infrastructure and that the "storm water disconnect" restoration approach not be used by the city.

The North Florence Dunal Aquifer is the only feasible source for drinking water for the coastal city of Florence, Oregon and Florence's Urban Growth Boundary. High infiltration rates and a shallow groundwater table leave the aquifer highly susceptible to contamination from septic tank effluent, storm runoff, chemical fertilizers and recreational ATV use throughout the dunes. Public interest in the quality and quantity of the aquifer water has been sparked since the City of Florence received a grant from the Environmental Protection Agency for a watershed protection and restoration project. Delineation of the shallow groundwater surface and its relationship to the surface water bodies within the dunes is crucial in protecting this drinking water source from contamination. This thesis project created a GIS representation of the shallow groundwater elevation and associated prediction error map. Surface water bodies were confirmed as window lakes into the dunal aquifer and no signs of perched aquifer conditions were observed between Holocene and Pleistocene dunes. Ground Penetrating Radar, well data provided by the city of Florence and LiDAR were the primary sources for data collection.

It is important that students understand not only how their local watershed functions, but also how it is being impacted by impervious surfaces. Additionally, students need experience exploring the scientific and engineering practices that are necessary for a strong STEM background. With this knowledge students can be empowered to tackle this real and local problem using engineering design, a powerful practice gaining momentum and clarity through its prominence in the recent Framework for K-12 Science Education. Twenty classes of suburban sixth-graders participated in a new five-week Watershed Engineering Design Unit taught by their regular science teachers. Students engaged in scientific inquiry to learn about the structure, function, and health of their local watersheds, focusing on the effects of impervious surfaces. In small groups, students used the engineering design process to propose solutions to lessen the impact of runoff from their school campuses. The goal of this evaluation was to determine the effectiveness of the curriculum in terms of student gains in understanding of (1) watershed function, (2) the impact of impervious surfaces, and (3) the engineering design process. To determine the impact of this curriculum on their learning, students took multiple-choice pre- and post-assessments made up of items covering the three categories above. This data was analyzed for statistical significance using a lower-tailed paired sample t-test. All three objectives showed statistically significant learning gains and the results were used to recommend improvements to the curriculum and the assessment instrument for future iterations.

Map of Boone Reservoir Properties published in October 1959 by the Tennessee Valley Authority, Division of Reservoir Properties. The Boone Lake Property Map series is divided into 3 sheets, this is sheet 3 of 3. The legend denotes retained, surplus, or transferred land. Boxes on the top right quadrant include information such as approximate acreage of tracts and forecasted usage of retained lands. Property owners (as of 1959) are listed and are also included on the map itself. Physical copy resides in the Government Information, Law and Maps Department of East Tennessee State University’s Sherrod Library. Scale: 1" = 2000' / https://dc.etsu.edu/rare-maps/1020/thumbnail.jpg

Map of South Holston Reservoir Properties published in October 1960 by the Tennessee Valley Authority, Division of Reservoir Properties. Compiled from Maps and Surveys "C" stage reservation maps.The South Holston Reservoir Property Map series is divided into 3 sheets, this is sheet 1 of 3. The legend denotes retained, surplus, or transferred land. Boxes on the bottom right quadrant include information such as approximate acreage of tracts and forecasted usage of retained lands. Property owners are included on the map itself. Some items, hand written in black ink, were added at an indeterminate time post publication. Physical copy resides in the Government Information, Law and Maps Department of East Tennessee State University’s Sherrod Library. Scale: 1" = 2000' / https://dc.etsu.edu/rare-maps/1021/thumbnail.jpg