published_or_final_version / Geography and Geology / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Urban Planning / Master / Master of Science in Urban Planning

The primary goal of this project is to develop a relative chronology of events in the geologic history of the Kentucky River, and to consider the geologic controls on those events. This study utilized published geologic and topographic data, as well as field observations and extensive compilation and comparison of digital data, to examine the fluvial record preserved in the Kentucky River valley in central Kentucky. Numerous fluvial features including abandoned paleovalleys, fluvial terraces and deposits, bedrock benches, and relict spillways between adjacent river valleys were identified during the course of the study. The morphology of the modern valley coincides with bedrock lithology and can be used to describe the distribution and preservation of modern and ancient fluvial deposits and features in the study area. Bedrock lithology is the dominant control on valley morphology and on the distribution and preservation of fluvial deposits and features in the study area. Some stream trends are inherited from the late Paleozoic drainage of the Alleghanian orogeny. More recent inheritance of valley morphology has resulted from the erosion of the river from one lithology down into another lithology with differing erosional susceptibility, thus superposing the meander patterns of the overlying valley style onto the underlying lithology. One major drainage reorganization related to a pre-Illinoisan glacial advance disrupted the northward flow of the Old Kentucky River toward the Teays River system and led to organization of the early Ohio River. This greatly reduced the distance to baselevel, and led to abrupt incision and a change in erosional style for the Kentucky River. The successful projection of valley morphologies on the basis of bedrock stratigraphy, the history of erosion suggested by fission track data and the results of this study, as well as soil thickness and development, all argue against the existence of a midto late-Tertiary, low-relief, regional erosional surface. This study instead hypothesizes that the apparent accordance of ridge-top elevations in the study area is a reflection of a fluvially downwasted late Paleozoic depositional surface.

Water management models have evolved through three basic stages. The earliest models dealt with the problem of getting water to where it was needed. Adequate supplies of sufficiently high cudlity were assumed to exist, and thus these models attempted to determine optimal distribution networks. In 1966 J.A. Dracup developed a model of this form to explore alternate sources of supply to meet industrial and municipal demands, agricultural demand, and demand for water to provide artificial recharge of groundwater aquifers. The next developments in water management were due to the emerging awareness of the environmental impacts of water use. These models were primarily concerned with maintaining certain quality levels within the natural water system (rivers, streams, estuaries). They tended to ignore the quantity of water within the system, being concerned with optimizing over the distribution system and quality control through the use of by-pass piping, on-site and regionalized treatment plants. The final category of models is one in which both quality and quantity considerations are allowed to enter as decision variables. The most general model of this type was developed by D.E. Pingry and T.L. Shaftel in 1979. This model allows for any configuration of sources, users, piping, disposal areas, and treatment plants. Thus the problem of distribution and quality control are both handled. This model also employs realistic nonlinear cost functions through economies of scale in treatment, and diseconomies of scale in treatment efficiency. The major limitation of their model, and others of the same type, is that they have been applied only to closed water systems which do not include rivers, streams, etc., and therefore ignore the environmental impacts of the water development on the complete natural water systems (e.g., a river basin). The Pingry-Shaftel model has been expanded to allow for the integration of a river system into an optimization model where the distribution system, quality control, source development, recycling of wastewater, and other management strategy alternatives are all allowed to enter as decision variables. At the same time the quantity requirements and quality standards are being monitored in order to analyze their impacts on cost. Decomposing the problem and making use of a large-scale transportation algorithm permit a solution to be obtained in an efficient manner. The model has sufficient flexibility to permit the comparison of impacts of various natural, technological, economic, and legal constraints. The model has been applied to the Colorado River Basin under varying assumptions in order to determine the economic and environmental implications of various water supply allocations and salinity treatment strategies.

Water quality analyses in Grand Canyon examined Colorado River and tributary baseline water quality status in relation to recreational float trip use of the river corridor. Float trip use of Grand Canyon has increased over recent years (since 1966) to levels which have caused concern for water quality-river running associations. River runners have traditionally used the Colorado River and tributaries as sources of drinking and cooking water, for swimming and bathing, and, at times, as a disposal for some refuse, e.g., dishwater and leftover food. Associated with float trip use of the river corridor water resources has been potential water quality hazards. During the 1972 and 1979 float trip seasons (May through September) outbreaks of gastroenteritis occurred among river runners in Grand Canyon, prompting investigation by the Center for Disease Control, Atlanta, Georgia; an enteric pathogen Shigella sonnei was isolated from some river-trip participants. Potentially, the Colorado River or a tributary served as a source or carrier of the pathogen, though this has not been confirmed. Enteric disease organisms excreted in feces by humans, wildlife or domestic animals can become potential sources of infection; water contaminated with fecal organisms can distribute diseases. Water quality analyses of the Colorado River corridor occurred during the 1978 and 1979 river running seasons. Examination of the extensive river corridor necessitated analyses in the field. Travel through the Grand Canyon was via research rafts in a series of six float trips, April through September, in 1978, and two float trips, July and August, in 1979; 82 field days in 1978 and 22 field days in 1979. A total of 497 water quality samples were collected over two seasons from the Colorado River along the 225-mile stretch from Lees Ferry to Diamond Creek, the launch and take-out points of the research trips. The confluent reaches (within approximately 200 yards of the Colorado River) of 26 side creeks in the river corridor were also sampled in 1978; nine tributaries were sampled in 1979. Additional samples collected from upstream locations on some side creeks increased the tributary sample site total to 33 in 1978 and to 13 in 1979 for a two season total of 165 individual tributary samples. Selected microbial, physical, and chemical parameters were measured to determine baseline water quality status in the Colorado River corridor of Grand Canyon. Research emphasis was on microbial water quality; physical and chemical parameters were measured to facilitate evaluation of the microbial profiles. Microbial parameters included fecal coliform bacteria and fecal streptococcus bacteria densities; physical parameters included turbidity and water and air temperature; chemical determinations included alkalinity, hardness, phosphate, nitrate, chloride, total dissolved solids, and pH. Data from 1978 and 1979 show that the Colorado River and tributaries have similar bacterial water quality profiles. Surface waters show predominantly low FC densities, indicating high quality waters for recreational activities, based on established federal and state water quality standards. Treatment of river and tributary surface water is necessary to assure drinking water quality standards. Bottom sediment analyses modify considerably the water quality status represented by surface water analyses alone. Significant densities of enteric organisms are present in the river and tributary environments, representing an important water quality hazard. Associated with resuspension of bottom sediments is the probability of surface water contamination by enteric organisms. Recreational activities, particularly water play in confined tributary pools, can bring river runners in direct contact with concentrated sediment suspension in surface waters.

Traditional flood-frequency techniques are based on the assumption that the observed flood record represents a sample that has been drawn from a single climatically homogeneous population of floods. A hydroclimatic approach was used to evaluate this assumption by identifying the circulation patterns and atmospheric flood-generating mechanisms which control the temporal and spatial variability of flooding. Mean monthly discharges and instantaneous peak flows of the partial duration series were analyzed for thirty gaging stations in the climatically sensitive, semiarid, Gila River basin for the period 1950 to 1980. Correlation fields and composite maps were constructed to define the relationship between 700 mb height circulation anomalies and mean monthly streamflow. Individual flood events were linked to climate by analyzing daily synoptic weather maps and classifying each flood event into one of eight hydroclimatic categories on the basis of the atmospheric mechanisms which generated each flow. The analysis demonstrated that floods and anomalously high streamflow in the Gila River basin originate from a variety of atmospheric processes which vary spatially, seasonally, and from year-to-year. The mechanisms most important for generating floods included winter fronts, cutoff lows, tropical storms, snowmelt, and widespread and localized summer monsoon-related circulation patterns. When flood discharges were grouped into hydroclimatically homogeneous categories, histogram plots of their frequency distributions exhibited means and variances that differed from those of the overall frequency distribution of the entire flood series. The means of the discharges generated by frontal precipitation and tropical storms tended to plot above the mean of the overall series, while the means of floods generated by snowmelt tended to plot below the overall mean. Flood estimates computed from a series containing mixed distributions were not the same as flood estimates computed from climatically homogeneous subsets of the same series. These results have implications for traditional flood-frequency analysis and other stochastic methods of analyzing hydrologic time series. The hydroclimatically-defined subgroups in the flood series of the Gila River basin indicate that nonhomogeneity and nonstationarity can be imparted to a hydrologic time series by differing atmospheric mechanisms alone.

A study was conducted to test for the presence of heavy metals (Cu, Mn, and Zn) in surface sediments of the Puerco River channel in the aftermath of a toxic spill in 1979 near Church Rock, New Mexico. Analysis of samples from five sites downstream from the spill showed that these substances were not present in unusually large amounts, though an increasing gradient of metal concentration with distance downstream was revealed. Statistical analysis revealed the Cu, Mn, and Zn were associated with clay and silt, soil organic matter, organic carbon, and carbonates, all of which existed as extraneous, uncontrolled variables. Adjusted metal concentrations, obtained with covariate analyses, confirmed the increasing gradient downstream. Clay and silt also increased downstream. Some toxic substances may have leached into the riverbed; possible mechanisms for this process are also discussed and further study to substantiate or disprove this hypothesis is recommended.

A study of the Salt River Indian Reservation in central Arizona evaluated pre-development hydrologic conditions with an emphasis on simulating ground-water flow conditions within the reservation, where data was scarce before extensive aquifer pumping began in 1940 in adjoining portions of the East Salt River Valley. Water-resource development began in the valley with the completion of the Tempe Canal in 1871. Additional canals and irrigated agriculture spread quickly in areas along the Salt River, which has a mean annual flow of about 1.25 million acre-feet. Pre-development ground-water flow was horizontal and steady-state. The simulation indicated that the available water-level data, though corrupted in areas adjacent to the river, more properly described the virgin system than flow estimates. Sensitivity analyses indicated that simulated heads on the reservation were sensitive to all processes except evapotranspiration. Recharge through the riverbed, evapotranspiration, and subsurface outflow were all co-dependent.

An important process of economic reform in China has been to promote the inflow of foreign direct investment (FDI). After more than thirty years of economic reform, China has become one of the most important destinations for cross-border direct investment. Since Taiwan has become one of the major source countries of FDI in China, Taiwanese investment has experienced changes in spatial patterns and industrial composition since the 1990s. As a result of active government promotion through various policy measures, FDI in China has grown rapidly since 1978, especially in the 1990s. Taiwanese authorities released the investment strategy, “Be patient, No hurry”in 2001, and since then China has become the biggest target of Taiwanese investment outside of Taiwan; money from Taiwan forms a significant portion of foreign capital in China. Due to coastal and other geographical advantages of the three major economic regions possessing good investment environments (that is, the Pearl River Delta, Yangtze River Delta (YRD) and Bohai Bay economic region), the landscape of Taiwanese direct investment (TDI) in recent years has been moving Northward and Westward significantly. Initially, the Taiwanese investment in labor-intensive industries mainly concentrated in southern China, including Guangdong and Fujian, because of the cheap labor and geographic proximity. Since the mid-1990s, the industries of Yangtze Rive Delta region has become a new investment hotspot for Taiwanese enterprises while their industrial nature is changing to be more technology-intensive and domestic market-oriented.

Bakalauro baigiamojo darbo tikslas – ištirti Pakruojo miesto įtaką Kruojos upės vandens kokybei. Darbe analizuojama mokslinė literatūra, paviršinio vandens apsaugos klausimais. Aprašytas hidrocheminis upių įvertinimas. Pateiktos žinios apie Kruojos upės būklę. Išanalizuoti Kruojos upės tyrimų duomenys. Aprašyti vandens kokybės cheminių parametrų kiekybinės analizės tyrimo metodai. Atliktas Kruojos upės centrinės dalies, lietaus nuotekų sutekančių į upę ir išvalytų buitinių nuotekų, išleidžiamų į Mūšą, Kruojos upės žiotyse, tyrimas. Paimtuose vandens mėginiuose ištirta: skendinčių medžiagų koncentracija, vandens temperatūra, aktyvi vandens reakcija (pH), ištirpusio deguonies kiekis, ištirpusių medžiagų kiekis, elektrinis laidis, nitritų, nitratų ir chloridų koncentracijos. Ištirtuose vandens mėginiuose daugelių atveju vanduo neužterštas, išskyrus nitritų, nitratų koncentracijas, kurios viršija didžiausią leistiną koncentraciją centrinės miesto dalies vandenyje. Lietaus nuotekų vandenyje tik nitratų koncentracija viršija DLK, o išvalytame buitinių nuotekų vandenyje – nitritai viršija didžiausią leistiną koncentracija. Siekiant pagerinti Kruojos upės vandens kokybę, darbe siūloma lietaus vandenį nuvesti į požeminius tinklus ir išvalytą nuo teršalų išleisti į atvirą Kruojos upę, įrengti paviršinių nuotekų biologinius valymo tvenkinius, užtikrinti normalų transporto eismą miesto teritorijoje esant stipriam lietui ar pavasario polaidžiams. / Environmental and professional safety bachelor subject is relevant, because water pollution is one of the most cause of concern for environmental issues. The river water is the main object of Lithuania, which connects the internal waters of the Lithuanian population is an important part of the water cycle. In order to maintain a good ecological status of river water, it is necessary to protect and conserve the rivers from pollution by harmful substances that impair the chemical and microbiological quality of river water. Therefore analysis of one of the Lithuanian city of influence - urban of Pakruojis influence of pollution in the river. One of the reasons for the contamination is precipitation, rain water, which blows directly into the river. To avoid this pollution there is need to rain water to get underground networks, and purified from contaminants released into the open river of Kruoja, installation of surface water biological treatment ponds on the river, to ensure normal traffic within the city by the strong rain. Purpose of the research. Influence of Pakruojis urban river of Kruoja pollution. Research methodology. In this work the scientific literature, surface water protection. Described hydrochemical assessment of rivers. Provided knowledge about the state of the river of Kruoja. Analyze river of Kruoja surveys. Describe the chemical water quality parameters for the quantitative analysis methods waste management regulatory documents. Final results of the reseach... [to full text]