State Departments of Transportation are becoming more involved in providing Aquatic Organism Passage (AOP) at road-stream crossings. Department of Transportation (DOT) emphasis on AOP has been driven largely in response to endangered species listings, other agencies' initiatives, and the desire to restore ecosystem connectivity to watercourses. UDOT is currently responsible for approximately 47,000 culverts, but AOP is currently addressed only on an as-needed basis. Currently UDOT has no prioritization or assessment strategy procedure for AOP at UDOT road-stream crossings. Historical fish passage strategies have focused on federally listed adult anadromous salmon and trout. These are generally very large fish whose life cycle includes both fresh and salt water environs. These species have adapted to the wetter conditions prevalent in their Pacific Northwest habitat. However, Utah fish species have adapted to the arid conditions of the Great Basin, are generally much smaller, and complete their life cycle entirely within fresh water. For UDOT these differences represent a potential fundamental divergence in the approaches used for providing fish passage in Utah vs. those historically used in the Pacific Northwest. The purpose of this research was to develop a method of prioritizing culverts statewide and to modify existing culvert assessment procedures for UDOT within a Great Basin/Utah regional context. Developed as part of the research are tools to prioritize and assess culverts. A GIS database was developed to store fish passage assessment data as well as provide functions for prioritizing culverts on the state and regional level. A fish passage assessment protocol for assessing UDOT culverts was developed based on existing fish passage assessments. The culvert assessment was tailored to meet developed UDOT fish passage strategies. A training manual was also created to aid technicians on performing the several physical culvert assessments developed. Additionally, a mark and recapture study at six UDOT culverts was performed to field verify the developed culvert assessment procedure. A step by step methodology was then created to establish critical progression for prioritizing and assessing culverts for fish passage utilizing project results.

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<p>  </p> <p>Within the state of Indiana, there are roughly 9000 structures with unsupported span lengths that range from 4 ft to 20 ft that the Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) is responsible for maintaining. These structures are referred to as large culverts by INDOT. The agency recognized the need to improve culvert inspection procedures so that inspection data that is collected can provide essential information to asset engineers who make decisions regarding culvert management. The purpose of the project described in this thesis was to identify the best practices for inspection and management of these structures to develop guidelines to optimize the resources allocated for the maintenance and inspection of large culvert structures. The study found that standardizing the inspection process and evaluation criteria for inspection will positively impact the overall performance of the inventory of these structures. The findings of this research culminated in a proposed large culvert inspection manual that was provided to INDOT to serve as a detailed guide for large culvert inspection.</p>

This report details a physical modeling study to investigate the flow characteristics of circular corrugated structural plate (CSP) culverts with 10% embedment and projecting end inlets using a 0.62 m diameter corrugated metal pipe under a range of flows (0.064 m3/s to 0.254 m3/s) and slopes (0%, 0.5% and 1.0%). An automated sampling system was used to record detailed velocity measurements at cross-sections along the length of the model. The velocity data was then used to develop isovel plots and observations were made regarding the effect of water depth, average velocity, boundary roughness and inlet configuration on the velocity structure. Other key aspects examined include the distribution of shear velocity and equivalent sand roughness, Manning’s roughness, an evaluation of composite roughness calculation methods, secondary currents, area-velocity relationships, the effect of embedment on maximum discharge and a simulation of model results using HECRAS. Recommendations are presented to focus future research. / October 2007

Anthropogenic infrastructure such as roads, ditches and culverts have strong impacts on hydrological processes, particularly surface drainage patterns. Despite this, these structures are often not present in the digital elevation models (DEMs) used to provide surface drainage data to hydrological models, owing to the coarse spatial resolution of many available DEMs. Modelling drainage patterns in human-modified landscapes requires very accurate, high-resolution DEM data to capture these features. Light Detection And Ranging (LiDAR) is a remote sensing technique that is used for producing DEMs with fine resolutions that can represent anthropogenic landscapes features such as human modifications on the landscape such as roadside ditches. In these data, roads act as a barrier to flow and are treated as dams, where on the ground culverts and bridges exist. While possible to locate and manually enforce flow across these roads, there is currently no automated technique to identify these locations and perform flow enforcement. This research improves the modelling of surface drainage pathways in rural anthropogenic altered landscapes by utilizing a novel algorithm that identifies ditches and culverts in LiDAR DEMs and enforces flow through these features by way of breaching. This breaching algorithm was tested on LiDAR datasets for two rural test sites in Southern Ontario. These analyses showed that the technique is an effective tool for efficiently incorporating ditches and culverts into the hydrological analysis of a landscape that has both a gradient associated with it, as well as a lack of densely forested areas. The algorithm produced more accurate representations of both overland flow when compared to outputs that excluded these anthropogenic features all together.

Road mortality threatens the long-term viability of some wildlife populations, particularly herpetofauna. Wildlife road mortalities were recorded during regular bicycle-based surveys of the 1000 Islands Parkway in south eastern Ontario during 2010 and 2011. These data were grouped with similar data collected in 2008 and 2009 to determine when and where animals were killed along the Parkway to better inform mitigation options. Temporal and spatial clustering was significant for five taxonomic groups: snakes were found dead on the road primarily in September, turtles in June, frogs in July, and birds and mammals in June and July. The majority of turtles found on the Parkway were adult females, which may have implications for long-term population demographics and persistence. Regression tree analysis indicates day-of-year as the most important variable in explaining wildlife road mortality for all taxonomic groups, with higher road mortalities coinciding with higher minimum daily temperature. Precipitation and traffic accounted for little variation in snake road mortality, and had no effect on turtle, frog, bird or mammal road kills. Spatial clustering was found for all taxonomic groups with overlapping areas of significant clustering between years identified as hot spots. In addition, the potential for drainage culverts to reduce wildlife road mortality was tested with two experimental treatments in 2010: (1) blocked culverts to prevent wildlife use, and (2) drift fence installation adjacent to culverts to encourage wildlife use. Wildlife road mortalities at these locations as well as control culverts were compared with 2008 wildlife road mortalities when there were no culvert treatments. The number of road kills in the area of treatments was too low to measure changes for all taxa but frogs, which showed no significant changes in road kills for any culvert treatment. The results of the study are used to evaluate a list of potential options for mitigating wildlife road mortality along the Parkway, and a list of implementable actions is identified. / Thesis (Master, Environmental Studies) -- Queen's University, 2012-05-31 16:33:51.623

This report details a physical modeling study to investigate the flow characteristics of circular corrugated structural plate (CSP) culverts with 10% embedment and projecting end inlets using a 0.62 m diameter corrugated metal pipe under a range of flows (0.064 m3/s to 0.254 m3/s) and slopes (0%, 0.5% and 1.0%). An automated sampling system was used to record detailed velocity measurements at cross-sections along the length of the model. The velocity data was then used to develop isovel plots and observations were made regarding the effect of water depth, average velocity, boundary roughness and inlet configuration on the velocity structure. Other key aspects examined include the distribution of shear velocity and equivalent sand roughness, Manning’s roughness, an evaluation of composite roughness calculation methods, secondary currents, area-velocity relationships, the effect of embedment on maximum discharge and a simulation of model results using HECRAS. Recommendations are presented to focus future research.

This report details a physical modeling study to investigate the flow characteristics of circular corrugated structural plate (CSP) culverts with 10% embedment and projecting end inlets using a 0.62 m diameter corrugated metal pipe under a range of flows (0.064 m3/s to 0.254 m3/s) and slopes (0%, 0.5% and 1.0%). An automated sampling system was used to record detailed velocity measurements at cross-sections along the length of the model. The velocity data was then used to develop isovel plots and observations were made regarding the effect of water depth, average velocity, boundary roughness and inlet configuration on the velocity structure. Other key aspects examined include the distribution of shear velocity and equivalent sand roughness, Manning’s roughness, an evaluation of composite roughness calculation methods, secondary currents, area-velocity relationships, the effect of embedment on maximum discharge and a simulation of model results using HECRAS. Recommendations are presented to focus future research.

The Diploma thesis deals with segmentation of characteristic car damages, which arise during car crushes with ambient infrastructure of roads with concrete specialization to car crushes with trees and road culverts. According to chosen clash configurations there were characterized appropriate damages of front part of the car with usage of materials from real accidents. Level of damage is described according to location of the main point of impact and a speed during clash. The thesis provides summary of possible level of damage single parts of the car with focusing to front part and it gives opportunity comparison to detected damages during real car crushes with car damages made during manipulated harmful events.

Culverts can increase stream velocities as a result of reduced waterway areas and prevent upstream passage of small non-salmonid fish such as the Native Utah Leatherside chub (Gila copei) and Longnose dace (Rhinichthyscataractae). To mitigate this problem, current culvert design standards for fish passage match sustained fish swim speeds with average cross sectional velocity through the culvert. Such policies dictate relatively large barrels and do not recognize the role of reduced velocity zones near culvert boundaries. Obstacles and streambed substrate create turbulent regions with lower velocity zones that can increase upstream fish passage. A comparison of upstream passage success using native Utah fish in an experimental flume was conducted with three different conditions: (1) a smooth boundary, (2) a smooth boundary with strategically placed cylinders, and (3) a boundary consisting of natural substrate. The refuge provided by the cylinders and substrate allowed fish to expend less energy as they swam upstream. Energy expenditure was compared between the conditions by mapping the velocity field near the boundary and tracing fish swim paths. Substrate provided sufficient refuge for the fish to behave in a manner similar to their behavior in a natural environment and with significantly reduced energy expenditure. Cylinders provided limited refuge that allowed fish to rest periodically as they navigated the flume. The smooth boundary case required the highest energy expenditure as there was no refuge provided. Fish swimming capabilities in the form of prolonged and burst velocities have been recorded for most species. Streamwise velocity near the boundary can be compared to the prolonged and burst swim speeds to predict passage rates. Further field testing is necessary to fully substantiate the effectiveness of utilizing reduced velocity zones in non-salmonid fish passage prediction. If such a design approach can be used instead of using the conservative but overly simplistic average velocity to evaluate the retrofit of existing culverts and to design new culverts it will help minimize costs and result in fewer culvert replacements and smaller and simpler new designs. Other implications such as downstream effects on stream bed stability and scour remain an issue.