The Caloosahatchee River, located in Southern Florida, was originally a meandering and relatively shallow river. During the 1920s, the Caloosahatchee River was channelized and became the C-43 canal. The channelization has significantly impacted the river ecosystem, particularly the oxbows. The oxbows are the U-shaped water bodies on each side of the river channel, which are the remnant bends of the original river. To understand how anthropogenic influence affects hydrologic systems, the proposed case study was designed to assess the geomorphic changes of the oxbows of the Caloosahatchee River, Florida. Understanding and documenting the evolution of river morphology is becoming increasingly important today with increasing river degradation due to anthropogenic activities. In fact, such monitoring will provide critical information regarding river conditions to support future management plans and restoration efforts. Monitoring is a key element of successful management. This study provided a baseline for future monitoring by assessing the current morphologic conditions of the thirty-seven oxbows of the Caloosahatchee River, coupled with GPS data. Bathymetric surveys were used to assess the morphology of the oxbows. The study also presented trends in the evolution of oxbow morphology by comparing the data collected from the survey in 2011 with a cross-sectional survey collected by the South Florida Water Management District in 1978. The study revealed that 21 of 37 oxbows are still open; however, 16 are already partially filled, either at one of the ends or somewhere in the interior. In both 1978 and 2011, oxbows in Lee County were significantly larger, wider and deeper than in Hendry County. Exterior limb cross-sections were significantly larger, wider and deeper than interior cross-sections in both 1978 and 2011. Finally, an attempt to determine trends in the evolution of the morphology of the oxbows demonstrated that the overall maximum depth is significantly decreasing but only in the interior of the oxbow and that the mean depth is significantly increasing but only in the exterior cross-sections. This analysis also showed that the width is significantly increasing throughout the oxbow. Factors responsible for such differences may include natural geomorphic processes, pattern changes due to channelization, land use and anthropogenic activities.

What drives species diversity across landscapes is one of the most fundamental questions in ecology. Further, understanding the mechanisms underlying species diversity patterns is important not only for forming and challenging ecological theories but also essential for appropriate landscape management and effective nature conservation. This thesis focuses on patterns of vascular plant, moss and liverwort species richness and composition in relation to water flow in boreal-forest catchments, focusing mostly on riparian zones (RZs), that is terrestrial areas bordering streams and rivers. I addressed some of the most essential questions related to the ecology of riparian vegetation including the role of stream network position, groundwater (GW) flow paths, substrate availability, upland perturbations, and stream restoration. I also investigated how riparian soil processes and habitat properties relate to these factors in order to provide a holistic understanding of riparian dynamics. The results showed that the species richness and composition of riparian vascular plants, mosses and liverworts are strongly influenced by position along the stream network, GW discharge, presence of variable substrates in RZs, and by stream restoration. Generally, more species were found downstream in the network, at sites with inputs of upland GW, sites with high diversity of substrates (e.g., open mineral soil, rocks, stones, wood and bark), and along streams restored after channelization. This thesis also describes how riparian habitat properties responded to position in the landscape and human impacts, thus providing mechanistic links between plant species diversity and riparian processes across spatial scales. These ecological insights are further implemented into numerous recommendations for freshwater and upland management in boreal Sweden. Given that streams and rivers connect landscape elements both longitudinally and laterally I argue that management plans should be designed for entire catchments instead of individual river segments. Ignoring the connectivity of streams as well as the high connectivity of riparian areas to uplands via GW flows may result in failure of restoration, mitigation and/or protection actions. Further, during forestry operations more emphasis should be placed on GW discharge areas along streams and rivers, because they represent important ecological and biogeochemical hotspots in the landscape. The riparian buffers left along streams in boreal catchments affected by forestry are presently insufficiently wide and often uniform in width. This threatens the assemblages of species in GW discharge hotspots and the ecosystem services they provide. Overall, this thesis describes a holistic picture of riparian diversity patterns and riparian processes in boreal landscapes, acknowledges and elaborates on current ecological theories, presenting new patterns in biodiversity, and offers management guidelines.

This project was conducted in Vientiane, Laos where wetlands, channels and rivers play an important role for the water quality maintenance. Now, large landscape changes like backfilling of wetlands and channelization is affecting the condition of the urban waters which has become extremely polluted. For that reason this survey has focused on the past and present status of Houay Mak Hiao River, who receives basically all drainage water from the city. The purpose of this project is to find out how the condition of Houay Mak Hiao River has changed over time and to describe how historical and current landscape changes have affected the river. Group interviews were conducted in seven villages along the river to find out about the past and present status. The groups consisted of 3-6 respondents in each village. To get as relevant answers as possible, elders, fishermen, farmers and the head of village in each village were participating in the interviews. Water samples were collected at nine sampling sites to determine the water quality of today. The results show that the condition of the river started to significantly decrease about ten years ago and has since then become worse and worse. Today, the water is extremely polluted which has affected the fish population and the vegetation along the river in a very negative way. The deterioration can be connected to channelization and wetland area loss in Vientiane.The level of contamination decreases closer to the outflow into Mekong River which can be due to uptake by floating plants and dilution effects.

No description available.

Regulation of the Upper Tombigbee River and its incorporation into the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway has resulted in main-channel flows that differ from the pre-regulation condition. Flows differ in (1) magnitude: higher base flows, damped peak flows, and (2) variability: the river rises and falls faster and the number of reversals has increased. A shift in the trophic ecology of the resident fish assemblage corresponded with the altered hydrology. Assemblage-level trophic plasticity manifested through dietary shifts in species present during both time periods are coupled with changes to the taxonomic structure observed previously. Species representing the contemporary assemblage feed on fewer taxa regardless of respective trophic ecologies and include taxa that are not characteristic of diets under pre-regulation conditions. More basal resources contributing to production resulted in a greater number of trophic pathways flowing through a decreased dietary breadth. Reduced foraging efficiency is inferred for riverine specialists, possibly resulting in lower fitnesses. Tributaries are highlighted as important in maintaining biodiversity in the regulated main-channel because flows and associated trophic ecologies of resident fishes are relatively similar to those observed under pre-regulation conditions. Materials and taxa exhibit unique interactions at “zones of confluence” where unregulated tributaries merge with the main-channel. Quantifiable characteristics of trophic ecology and ecomorphology, along with connectance to free flowing major tributaries, emerge as potential indicators of the vulnerability of fishes to hydrologic alteration.

Software radios (SWR) have been proposed for wireless communication systems to enable them to operate according to incompatible wireless communication standards by implementing most analog functions in the digital section on software-reprogrammable hardware. However, this significantly increases the required computations for SWR functionality, mainly because of the digital front-end computationally intensive filtering functions, such as sample rate conversion (SRC), channelization, and equalization. For increasing the computational efficiency of SWR systems, two new SRC methods with better performance than conventional SRC methods are presented. In the first SRC method, we modify the conventional CIC filters to enable them to perform SRC on slightly oversampled signals efficiently. We also describe a SRC method with high efficiency for SRC by factors greater than unity at which SRC in SWR systems may be computationally demanding. This SRC method efficiently increases the sample rate of wideband signals, especially in SWR base station transmitters, by applying Lagrange interpolation for evaluating output samples hierarchically using a low-rate signal that is computed with low cost from the input signal. A new channelizer/synthesizer is also developed for extracting/combining frequency multiplexed channels in SWR transceivers. The efficiency of this channelizer/synthesizer, which uses modulated perfect reconstruction (PR) filter banks, is higher than polyphase filter banks (when applicable) for processing few channels, and significantly higher than discrete filter banks for processing any number of variable-bandwidth channels where polyphase filter banks are inapplicable. Because the available methods for designing modulated PR filter banks are inapplicable due to the required number of subchannels and stopband attenuation of the prototype filters, a new design method for these filter banks is introduced. This method is reliable and significantly faster than the existing methods. Modulated PR filter banks are also considered for implementing a frequency-domain block blind equalizer capable of equalizing SWR signals transmitted though channels with long impulse responses and severe intersymbol interference (ISI). This blind equalizer adapts by using separate sets of weights to correct for the magnitude and phase distortion of the channel. The adaptation of this blind equalizer is significantly more reliable and its computational requirements increase at a lower rate compared to conventional time-domain equalizers making it efficient for equalizing long channels that exhibit severe ISI.

Abstract Streams and rivers have been extensively altered by humans. Channelization and land use have changed stream habitats and water quality with adverse effects on biota and ecosystem functions. Impacted streams have been targets for restoration, but there is considerable lack of understanding how streams should be restored in an ecologically effective way. In this doctoral thesis, I studied the impacts of channelization (for timber floating) and agricultural diffuse pollution on stream biota. I also studied the effectiveness of restorations of forestry impacted streams stressed by excessive sand sedimentation from catchment drainage. Finally, I also studied the effects of mosses, fine sediment and enhanced dispersal on stream macroinvertebrate communities and ecosystem functions. I found that channelization did not have effect on diatom, macrophyte, macroinvertebrate and fish assemblages, whereas diffuse pollution had strong effects, with no interactions between the two stressors. I showed that excessive sedimentation from forest drainage was harmful for stream biota but had no effect on leaf decomposition and algal accrual rate. Restoration with boulders reduced sand cover and was more beneficial for in-stream biodiversity, whereas restoration with wood tended to increase hydrological retention of stream channels, thereby altering riparian plant assemblages toward more natural composition. In a mesocosm experiment, I found mosses to have a strong impact on macroinvertebrate communities and ecosystem functions. Mosses increased organic matter retention and reduced algal accrual rate and leaf decomposition. The effect of mosses on macroinvertebrates was stronger than that of sand sedimentation, and mosses mitigated some of the negative effects of sand. Extensive dispersal had a distinct imprint on invertebrate community composition but did not blur the effect of mosses and sand on communities, suggesting strong local-scale environmental control of composition. My thesis emphasizes that priority in stream restoration should be in the mitigation of diffuse pollution rather than restoration of channel morphology, especially in streams where channel alteration has been fairly modest, as in the case of timber floating. Addition of both boulders and large wood likely yields the best biodiversity response in the restoration of forestry impacted streams. Mosses are a key component of boreal lotic ecosystems; therefore, the recovery of mosses may be a prerequisite for the full recovery of biodiversity and ecosystem integrity of boreal streams. / Tiivistelmä Ihmisen toiminta on laajasti muokannut virtavesiä. Uomien kanavointi ja maankäyttö ovat muuttaneet virtavesien elinympäristöjä ja veden laatua, millä on ollut haitallisia vaikutuksia virtavesien luonnon monimuotoisuuteen ja ekosysteemin toimintaan. Huonokuntoisia virtavesiä on kunnostettu paljon, mutta ymmärrys siitä, kuinka virtavesiä tulisi kunnostaa parhaan ekologisen lopputuloksen saavuttamiseksi, on edelleen vajaata. Tutkin tässä väitöskirjassa uittoperkausten ja maatalouden hajakuormituksen merkitystä ja yhteisvaikutusta virtavesien eliöyhteisöihin. Tutkin myös kunnostusten vaikutusta hiekasta kärsivissä metsätalouden muokkaamissa puroissa, sekä vesisammalten, hiekan ja eliöiden levittäytymisen merkitystä purojen pohjaeläinyhteisöjen ja ekosysteemin toimintojen muovautumisessa. Havaitsin, että uoman perkauksilla ei ollut vaikutusta virtavesien eliöyhteisöihin, mutta hajakuormituksen vaikutus oli voimakas. Perkauksella ja hajakuormituksella ei ollut yhteisvaikutuksia eliöyhteisöihin. Osoitin, että metsäojituksista aiheutuva ylimääräinen hiekan sedimentaatio on haitallista virtavesien eliöille, mutta sillä ei ollut vaikutusta lehtikarikkeen hajotukseen tai päällyslevien tuotantoon. Kunnostukset joissa käytettiin kiveä vähensivät hiekan peittävyyttä ja olivat hyödyllisempiä uoman eliöstölle kuin kunnostukset, joissa tehtiin puurakennelmia. Puukunnostukset kuitenkin lisäsivät uoman vedenpidätyskykyä ja siten muokkasivat rantavyöhykkeen kasvillisuutta luonnontilaisemmaksi. Havaitsin, että vesisammalilla on voimakas vaikutus pohjaeläinyhteisöjen koostumukseen. Sammalet vaikuttivat ekosysteemin toimintoihin lisäämällä eloperäisen aineksen pidättymistä ja vähentämällä lehtikarikkeen hajotusta ja päällyslevien tuotantoa. Sammalten vaikutus pohjaeläimiin oli voimakkaampi kuin hiekan, ja sammalet kykenivät jopa lieventämään joitakin hiekan negatiivisia vaikutuksia. Eliöiden levittäytymisellä oli selvä vaikutus yhteisöjen koostumukseen, mutta se ei hävittänyt hiekan ja sammalen vaikutusta, mikä viittaa korkeaan ympäristötekijöiden merkitykseen yhteisöjen rakentumisessa. Tutkielmani korostaa, että maatalousjokien tilan parantamisessa hajakuormituksen hallinta tulisi olla ensisijainen kunnostustavoite uoman rakenteen kunnostamisen sijaan. Metsätalouden vaikutuksista kärsivissä puroissa kivi- ja puumateriaalin käyttö samanaikaisesti tuottaa luultavimmin laajimman vaikutuksen purojen monimuotoisuuteen. Sammalilla on merkittävä vaikutus muiden eliöiden yhteisökoostumukseen ja ekosysteemin toimintoihin, joten sammalten palautuminen on tärkeä kunnostustavoite virtavesissä, joissa on luonnostaan paljon sammalkasvustoa.

Fixed Broadband Wireless Access (FBWA) is a technology aimed at providing high-speed wireless Internet access, over a wide area, from devices such as personal computers and laptops. FBWA channels are defined in the range of 1-20 MHz which makes the RF front end (RFE) design extremely challenging. In its pursuit to standardize the Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) technologies, IEEE working group 802.16 for Broadband Wireless Access has released the fixed BWA standard IEEE 802.16 – 2004 in 2004. This standard is further backed by a consortium, of leading wireless vendors, chip manufacturers and service providers, officially known as Wireless Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX). In general, any wireless base station (BS), supporting a number of contiguous Frequency Division Multiplexed (FDM) channels has to incorporate an RF front end (RFE) for each RF channel. The precise job of the RFE is to filter the desired channel from a group of RF channels, digitize it and present it to the subsequent baseband system at the proper sampling rate. The system essentially has a bandpass filter (BPF) tuned to the channel of interest followed by a multiplier which brings the channel to a suitable intermediate frequency (IF). The IF output is digitized by an ADC and then brought to the baseband by an appropriate digital multiplier. The baseband samples, thus generated, are at the ADC sampling rate which is significantly higher than the target sampling rate, which is defined by the wireless protocol in use. As a result a sampling rate conversion (SRC) is performed on these baseband samples to bring the channel back to the target sampling rate. Since the input sampling rate need not be an integer multiple of the target sampling rate, Fractional SRC (FSRC) is required in most of the cases. Instead of using a separate ADC and IF section for each individual channels, most systems use a common IF section, followed by a wideband ADC, which operates over a wide frequency band containing a group of contiguous FDM channels. In this case a channelizer is employed to digitally extract the individual channels from the digital IF samples. We formally call this system a receiver channelizer. Such an implementation presents considerable challenge in terms of the computational requirement and of course the cost of the BS. The computational complexity further goes up for FBWA system where channel bandwidth is in the order of several MHz. Though such a system has been analyzed for narrow band wireless systems like GSM, to the best of our knowledge no analysis seems to have been carried out for a wideband system such as WiMAX. In this work, we focus on design of a receiver channelizer for WiMAX BS, which can simultaneously extract a group of contiguous FDM RF channels supported by the BS. The main goal is to obtain a simple, low cost channelizer architecture, which can be implemented in an FPGA. There are a number of techniques available in the literature, from Direct Digital Conversion to Polyphase FFT Filter Banks (PFFB), which can do the job of channelization. But each of them operates with certain constraints and, as a result, suits best to a particular application. Further all of these techniques are generic in nature, in the sense that their structure is independent of any particular standard. With regard to computational requirement of these techniques, PFFB is the best, with respect to the number of complex multiplications required for its implementation. But it needs two very stringent conditions to be satisfied, viz. the number of channels to be extracted is equal to the decimation factor and the sampling rate is a power of 2 times baseband bandwidth. Clearly these conditions may not be satisfied by different wireless communication standards, and in fact, this is not satisfied by the WiMAX standard. This gives us the motivation to analyze the receiver channelizer for WiMAX BS and to find an efficient and low cost architecture of the same. We demonstrate that even though the conditions required by PFFB are not satisfied by the WiMAX standard, we can modify the overall architecture to include the PFFB structure. This is achieved by dividing the receiver channelizer into two blocks. The first block uses the PFFB structure to separate the desired number of channels from the input samples. This process also achieves an integer SRC by a factor that is equal to the number of channels being extracted. This block generates baseband outputs whose sampling rates are related to their target sampling rate by a fractional multiplication factor. In order to bring the channels to their target sampling rate, each output from the PFFB block is fed to a FSRC block, whose job is to use an efficient FSRC algorithm to generate the samples at the target sampling rate. We show that the computational complexity, as compared to the direct implementation, is reduced by a factor, which is approximately equal to the square of the number of channels. After mathematically formulating the receiver channelizer for WiMAX BS, we perform the simulation of the system using a software tool. There are two basic motives behind the simulation of the system which has a mathematical model. Firstly, the software simulation will give an idea whether the designed system is physically realizable. Secondly, this will help in designing the logic for different blocks of the system. Once these individual blocks are simulated and tested, they can be smoothly ported onto an FPGA. For simulation purpose, we parameterize the receiver channelizer in such a way that it can be reconfigured for different ADC sampling rates and IF frequencies, by changing the input clock rate. The system is also reconfigurable in terms of the supported channel bandwidth. This is achieved by storing all the filter coefficients pertaining to each channel type, and loading the required coefficients into the computational engine. Using this methodology we simulate the system for three different IF frequencies (and the corresponding ADC sampling rates) and three different channel types, thus leading to nine different system configurations. The simulation results are in agreement with the mathematical model of the system. Further, we also discuss some important implementation issues for the reconfigurable receiver channelizer. We estimate the memory requirement for implementing the system in an FPGA. The implementation delay is estimated in terms of number of samples. The thesis is organized in five chapters. Chapter 1 gives a brief introduction about the WiMAX system and different existing channelization architecture followed by the outline of the proposed receiver channelizer. In chapter 2, we analyze the proposed receiver channelizer for WiMAX BS and evaluate its computational requirements. Chapter 3 outlines the procedure to generate the WiMAX test signal and specification of the all the filters used in the system. It also lists the simulation parameters and records the results of the simulation. Chapter 4 presents the details of a possible FPGA implementation. We present the concluding remarks and future research directions in the final chapter.

No description available.