Limnologists and stream ecologists acknowledge the fundamental importance of temperature for regulating many ecological, biological, chemical, and physical processes. I investigated how water temperatures were affected by hydrologic linkages between streams and lakes at various positions along surface water networks throughout several headwater basins in the Sawtooth and White Cloud Mountains of Idaho (USA). Temperatures of streams and lakes were measured for up to 27 months in seven 6 – 41 km2 watersheds, with a range of lake influence. When they were ice-free, warming in lakes resulted in dramatically warmer temperatures at lake outflows compared to inflow streams (midsummer average 6.4°C warming, but as much as 12.5°C). Temperatures cooled as water traveled downstream from lakes, as rapidly as 9°C km-1. Longitudinal stream cooling was usually not strong enough, however, to reduce temperatures to baseline conditions. In early spring, lakes had the opposite effect on streams, as they released water from beneath the ice at near 0°C. Early spring stream water warmed as it flowed downstream from lakes, influenced by additional groundwater inflows. In addition to lakes, other watershed characteristics influenced temperatures, though effects differed seasonally. Multiple regression analyses indicated that lake size, distance from nearest upstream lake, and stream shading were most important in explaining stream temperatures, but the relative importance of each variable changed seasonally.

Stormwater treatment is commonly performed with a combination of approaches including the utilization of natural systems and engineered devices. Before using a proprietary treatment instrument it is required to verify its performance and efficiency in reducing different pollution components including the TSS. Different states have developed strategies and regulations for accepting new instruments. In this thesis the stormwater management plan of the City of Portland, Oregon(2008), is analyzed in order to improve the current regulations. These rules apply to new technologies which are proposed by vendors to be used in Portland's stormwater treatment plans. Each requirement which should be met by the applying vendors is thoroughly analyzed followed by a comparison with the Stormwater management plan(2008)regulations of the state of Washington the so called Technology Assessment Plan-Ecology TAPE (Howie, 2011). Because of the similarities in the climate and land use between these two testing frameworks in order to evaluate the potential applicability of data submitted by vendors who had devices approved by Washington, to be utilized by Portland. The treatment of total suspended solids (TSS) is the focus of this thesis since it is central to the testing process and since most of the other pollutions are attached to TSS and will get treated if TSS is treated. The overall analysis shows that Portland adopts more restrictive requirements on the characterization of stormwater event samples to be treated by a technological instrument while Washington's restriction are more stringent on the efficiency of total suspended solid removal, in which it demands higher standards on the treatment of TSS compared to Portland's efficiency requirements. In order to study practical context in which regulations are administrated by Portland, rainfall data from 66 gauges covering the period of 1980-2011 was studied and the impacts of seasonality, land use, land form, periods of no rain before and after an event and Portland's Modified Performance line on the number of accepted rain events were analyzed. The results which were accepted by state of Washington were also compared with the results accepted by the city of Portland on Portland's Standard Performance line. Our seasonality study suggests that Portland's requirements are unnecessarily restrictive which results in the disqualification of many otherwise useful stormwater events, sometimes allowing no natural events to be available for testing in dry years. The analysis of land use showed that land use has no statistically significant impact on the concentration levels of TSS, thereby indicating that land use restrictions in the testing rules could be usefully relaxed. Decreasing the interevent no-rain period significantly increases the total number of events providing sufficient data to assess the performance of treatment facilities. We also showed that many more events become suitable for performance testing if events separated by one hours or less are considered a single, longer event. Finally we identified a statistical relationship between number of forecasted accepted stormwater events and the total average daily precipitation in a given year.

Focused groundwater discharge in endorheic basins provides opportunities to investigate mechanisms for closing hydrologic budgets in arid regions. The Salar de Atacama (SdA), a closed basin in northern Chile, has accumulated over 1800 km3 of halite and a lithium-rich brine since the late Miocene primarily through evapotranspiration of groundwater. The hydrologic balance of SdA and sources of water and solutes required to explain this deposit are not well constrained. An adapted chloride mass balance method drawing on a database of over 200 water sample sites is applied to a remotely-sensed precipitation dataset to estimate spatially-distributed modern groundwater recharge. Comparing groundwater recharge to evapotranspiration in a steady-state water budget constrains potential regional-scale watersheds on the Altiplano-Puna Plateau. The sodium mass balance of the deposit is used to predict long-term water discharge from the basin and place modern fluxes in a paleo-hydrologic context. A 2D groundwater model informed by published paleoclimate reconstructions evaluates whether draining groundwater storage contributes to the modern hydrologic system. Modern recharge from precipitation in the topographic watershed is extremely small compared to evapotranspiration. The missing water is sourced from precipitation in an area over 4 times larger than the topographic watershed, and groundwater recharged during wetter periods in the late Pleistocene is still actively draining and discharging from storage without a corresponding input into the system. These results have implications for lake-level based paleoclimate reconstructions, conceptualizations of watershed boundaries and water resource management.

Biochar has been shown to act as an effective sorbent for many organic and inorganic contaminants (including phosphate) and can help to improve the quality of our fresh water resources by preventing eutrophication. Most of the high efficiency biochar phosphate-adsorbent feedstocks are modified with chemical pretreatment, phytoremediation or anaerobic digestion to accumulate desired elements. The main objectives of this project were to first engineer magnesium (Mg) and calcium (Ca) altered biochar by chemical pretreatment followed by pyrolysis at either 350 or 550°C and evaluate their phosphate adsorption rate and potential as compared to their unaltered counterparts. Determination of surface physiochemical characteristics of the unaltered (U350 and U550), Mg-altered (Mg350 and Mg550), and Ca-altered (Ca350 and Ca550) hardwood biochars was also completed. The unaltered biochars did not adsorb any phosphate which was likely due to a lack of Mg or Ca and crystalline structures as confirmed by ICP-AES and XRD. Adsorption kinetics revealed that both the Ca-altered and Mg-altered biochars took about 10 days to reach equilibrium. The Langmuir isotherm model was the best fitting model for all altered biochars and Mg550 adsorbed the most phosphate with a Langmuir maximum capacity (Q) of 135.8 mg/g at pH 9. XRD spectra confirmed crystallinity for both the Ca-altered and Mg-altered biochars for calcite (CaCO3) on the Ca-altered biochar and both periclase (MgO) and brucite (Mg(OH)2)on the Mg-altered biochars. SEM images of Mg550 followed by EDS confirmed the presence of nano-sized flakes on the biochar surface and identified them as the primary phosphate adsorption sites. SEM images of Ca550 identified globular, rather than flakey structures on the biochar surface and EDS offered further confirmation that these were calcite minerals. Although Ca350 and Ca550 adsorbed phosphate from solution, Mg350 and Mg550 exhibited a much greater phosphate sorption potential with Q at 18.91, 16.34, 39.59 and 135.8 mg/g (pH 9), respectively. This may be attributed to the morphological differences between the highly crystalline flake-like structures of the Mg altered biochars and the globular structures on the surface of the Ca altered biochars. The mechanisms revealed for phosphate sorption include electrostatic interactions, precipitation, and ligand exchange.

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