Algae are Good

The algae have a marketing problem. While the scientific community may appreciate the important roles algae play as the base of the food chain in aquatic ecosystems, their contributions to global CO2-O2 cycling and practical applications are less understood. The messages the general public receives about algae are in the...

Optimization and Machine Learning to Improve Water Resources Sustainability

Integrated water resources planning is an example of a large-scale, long-term infrastructure planning problem that is impacted by climate change and multiple potential design alternatives and goals. Traditionally, simulation models were used to evaluate a small number of alternatives in a benefit-cost analysis. Emerging studies of deep uncertainty, conditions where...

The role of science in municipal water supply operations and management

The City of Boulder is responsible for supplying reliable, high-quality treated water to 120,000 customers. The reliability and quality of the water supply result from short-term operational decisions, long-term planning efforts and policy development that are informed by a variety of factors including scientific research, data, hands-on experience, economic considerations...

Placing Hydrological Change in Context in the Yukon River Watershed: Community-Based Monitoring & Knowledge Co-Production

Profound changes in hydrology are occurring in Arctic and sub-Arctic regions. The Yukon River Watershed, covering 330,000 square miles in Alaska and western Canada, is no exception. Since 2006 the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the Yukon River Inter-Tribal Watershed Council (YRITWC) have collaboratively managed the Indigenous Observation Network (ION)...

Urbanization and climate trends in streamflow

Urban development leads to changes in stormflow and baseflow, although the magnitude of these changes varies by city. This presentation will examine trends in streamflow with urbanization at the national scale (across the United States) and in Denver, ÃÛÌÇÖ±²¥. Across the U.S., we will examine trends in the flow duration...

Snow Hydrology 2.0: A new generation of methods for observing and modeling the changing mountain snowpack

Over a billion people globally depend on snowmelt runoff to meet water demands, predominantly from snow that accumulates annually in mid-latitude mountains. Decades of observations show that this natural reservoir is at risk; snow water equivalent and snow extent are declining; even as growing populations rely more on snow water...

Patterns and Processes of Change Where Rivers Meet Oceans

Poised at the interface of rivers, ocean, atmosphere and dense human settlement, estuaries are driven by a large array of natural and anthropogenic forces. Long-term study of San Francisco Bay illustrates responses to five common agents of change where land and sea meet: water consumption and diversion, human modification of...

Buried lakes detected across the Greenland Ice Sheet

The Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) rapid mass loss is primarily driven by an increase in meltwater runoff, which highlights the importance of understanding the formation, evolution and impact of meltwater features on the ice sheet. Buried lakes are meltwater features that contain liquid water and exist under layers of snow,...

I am Once Again Asking You to Optimize Your Machine Learning Algorithms to More Than One Objective

Machine learning algorithms are gaining popularity in the hydrologic sciences. These algorithms often require tuning hyperparameters to tailor their performance to a specific purpose. Often these hyperparameters are selected based on prior assumptions or a single-objective optimization. However, these techniques fail to capture tradeoffs between type I (i.e., false positive)...

Impact of active layer dynamics on groundwater in the Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, Alaska

Much is still unknown about the current permafrost and hydrological conditions of the Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve. This study addresses the question of how thermal and hydrogeologic properties of the subsurface may affect active layer dynamics and groundwater flow in the Nutuvukti Lake watershed. Results from...

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