MODELING THE IMPACT OF MULTICOMPONENT VOCs ON GROUND WATER USING THE STEFAN‐MAXWELL EQUATION1

ABSTRACT: Computer programs that model the fate and transport of organic contaminants through porous media typically use Fick's first law to calculate vapor phase diffusion. Fick's first law, however, is limited to the case of a single, dilute species diffusing into a stagnant, high concentration, bulk vapor phase. When dealing with more than one diffusing species and at higher concentrations, the multicomponent coupling effects on vapor phase diffusion and advection of the various constituents become significant. VLEACH, a one‐dimensional finite difference model developed for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA), is typical of the models using Fick's first law to model vapor‐phase diffusion. The VLEACH model was modified to accommodate up to 10 components and to calculate the binary diffusion coefficients for each of the components based on molecular weight, molecular volume, temperature and pressure, and to address the coupling effects on multiple component vapor phase diffusion and its impact on ground water. The resulting model was renamed MC‐CHEMSOIL. At low vapor phase concentrations, MC‐CHEMSOIL predicts identical ground water impacts (dissolved phase loading) to those from VLEACH 2.2a. At higher vapor phase concentrations, however, the relative difference between the models exceeded 20 percent.     

TEMPORAL CHANGES IN THE YADKIN RIVER FLOW VERSUS SUSPENDED SEDIMENT CONCENTRATION RELATIONSHIP1

ABSTRACT: Dynamic linear models (DLM) and seasonal trend decomposition (STL) using local regression, or LOESS, were used to analyze the 50‐year time series of suspended sediment concentrations for the Yadkin River, measured at the U.S. Geological Survey station at Yadkin College, North Carolina. A DLM with constant trend, seasonality, and a log₁₀ streamflow regressor provided the best model to predict monthly mean log₁₀ suspended sediment concentrations, based on the forecast log likelihood. Using DLM, there was evidence (odds approximately 69:1) that the log₁₀ streamflow versus log₁₀ suspended sediment concentration relationship has changed, with an approximate 20 percent increase in the log₁₀ streamflow coefficient over the period 1981 to 1996. However, sediment concentrations in the Yadkin River have decreased during the decade of the 1990s, which has been accompanied by a concomitant increase in streamflow variability. Although STL has been shown to be a versatile trend analysis technique, DLM is shown to be more suitable for discovery and inference of structural changes (trends) in the model coefficient describing the relationship between flow and sediment concentration.     

TRANSIENT RESPONSE FUNCTIONS FOR CONJUNCTIVE WATER MANAGEMENT IN THE SNAKE RIVER PLAIN,IDAHO1

ABSTRACT: Increasing demands on western water are causing a mounting need for the conjunctive management of surface water and ground water resources. Under western water law, the senior water rights holder has priority over the junior water rights holder in times of water shortage. Water managers have been reluctant to conjunctively manage surface water and ground water resources because of the difficulty of quantification of the impacts to surface water resources from ground water stresses. Impacts from ground water use can take years to propagate through an aquifer system. Prediction of the degree of impact to surface water resources over time and the spatial distribution of impacts is very difficult. Response functions mathematically describe the relationship between a unit ground water stress applied at a specific location and stream depletion or aquifer water level change elsewhere in the system. Response functions can be used to help quantify the spatial and temporal impacts to surface water resources caused by ground water pumping. This paper describes the theory of response functions and presents an application of transient response functions in the Snake River Plain, Idaho. Transient response functions can be used to facilitate the conjunctive management of surface and ground water not only in the eastern Snake River Plain basin, but also in similar basins throughout the western United States.     

The effects of parental altruism on the governance of family‐managed firms

We draw on the economic, corporate governance, and family business literatures to explain why the effects of family on family firms makes this governance form theoretically distinct from those of public and private non‐family firms. Our thesis is that parental altruism, when combined with private ownership and owner‐management, influences the ability of the firm's owner‐manager to exercise self‐control, which, in turn, can expose some family firms to conflicts rooted in the agency threats of moral hazard, hold‐up, and adverse selection. We then discuss why some other family firms are able to minimize these dark side threats and thereby attain altruism's brighter side. Finally, we discuss how altruism's influence changes over time as ownership becomes dispersed among family members and across generations. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The case for the ability‐based model of emotional intelligence in organizational behavior

In this second counterpoint article, we refute the claims of Landy, Locke, and Conte, and make the more specific case for our perspective, which is that ability‐based models of emotional intelligence have value to add in the domain of organizational psychology. In this article, we address remaining issues, such as general concerns about the tenor and tone of the debates on this topic, a tendency for detractors to collapse across emotional intelligence models when reviewing the evidence and making judgments, and subsequent penchant to thereby discount all models, including the ability‐based one, as lacking validity. We specifically refute the following three claims from our critics with the most recent empirically based evidence: (1) emotional intelligence is dominated by opportunistic ‘academics‐turned‐consultants’ who have amassed much fame and fortune based on a concept that is shabby science at best; (2) the measurement of emotional intelligence is grounded in unstable, psychometrically flawed instruments, which have not demonstrated appropriate discriminant and predictive validity to warrant/justify their use; and (3) there is weak empirical evidence that emotional intelligence is related to anything of importance in organizations. We thus end with an overview of the empirical evidence supporting the role of emotional intelligence in organizational and social behavior. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Toward a psychological and cultural model of downsizing

Organizational downsizing is often counterproductive and applied irrespective of past financial performance. The popularity of this tactic leads to the question of whether an executive's propensity to downsize is linked to characteristics such as uncertainty avoidance and risk tolerance, which can be examined at either an individual or societal level. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Pesticide Impact Rating Index – A Pesticide Risk Indicator for Water Quality

Pesticide users, natural resource managers, regulators, government agencies and many others are concerned about the off-site impact of pesticides on the environment. Systematic methods of the assessment of potential risk of pesticides to environmental components can serve as valuable tools in decision making and policy formulation. Simple risk indicators have been developed which cover a range of scenarios such as toxicity to organisms, health of farm workers, consumer health, and residues in harvested produce. The authors have developed a software package named Pesticide Impact Rating Index (PIRI) that outputs an improved pesticide risk indicator for water quality. PIRI is a standalone, user-friendly, platform-independent program. It can be used to (i) rank pesticides in terms of their relative pollution potential to groundwater or surface water, and (ii) to compare different land uses in a catchment or at a regional scale in terms of their relative impact on water quality. It is based on pesticides use; the pathway through which the pesticides are released to the water resources (drift, runoff, erosion, leaching) and the value of the water resources threatened. Each component is quantified using pesticide characteristics (including toxicity to organisms at different trophic levels, i.e. fish, daphnia, algae, etc.), environmental and site conditions (e.g. organic carbon content of soil, water input, slope of land, soil loss, recharge rate, depth of water table, etc.). This paper describes two case studies of the application of PIRI in Australia. The comparison of the risk assessment by PIRI on these revealed that PIRI correctly estimated the pollution potential of pesticides in greater than 80% of cases. A GIS version of PIRI is described in a companion paper in this volume. An erratum to this article is available at .     

Linking field experiments to long-term simulation of impacts of nitrogen deposition on heathlands and moorlands

The results from three long-term field manipulation studies of the impacts of increased nitrogen deposition (0–120 kg N ha^?1 yr^?1) on lowland and upland heathlands in the UK were compared, to test if common responses are observed. Consistent increases in Calluna foliar N content and decreases in litter C:N ratios were found across all sites, while increases in N leaching were not observed at any site over the range 0–80 kg ha^?1 yr^?1. However, the response of Calluna biomass did vary between sites, possibly reflecting site differences in nutrient status and management histories. Five versions of a simulation model of heathland responses to N were developed, each reflecting different assumptions about the fate and turnover of soil N. Model outputs supported the deduction from mass balance calculations at two of the field sites that N additions have resulted in an increase in immobilisation; the latter was needed to prevent the model overestimating measured N leaching. However, this version of the model significantly underestimated Calluna biomass. Model versions, which included uptake of organic N by Callunaand re-mobilisation of N from the soil organic store provided some improvement in the fit between modelled and field biomass data, but re-mobilisation also led to an overestimation of N leaching. Quantification of these processes and their response to increased N deposition are therefore critical to interpreting experimental data and predicting the long-term impacts of atmospheric deposition on heathlands and moorlands.     

Detecting the signal of atmospheric N deposition in recent national-scale vegetation change across Britain

Model estimates of NO_y and NH_x deposition across Britain for 1996 (5 km square resolution) were applied as explanatory variables to account for national-scale, fine-grained changes in plant species composition between 1990 and 1998. Plant species data were recorded from up to 27 fixed plots located within a stratified random sample of 596 1 km². The response variable was a cover-weighted Ellenberg fertility score for each plot. Analyses were carried out separately for woodlands, semi-natural grasslands and heaths/bogs. Most of the variation in the botanical response variable occurred between plots within squares and so could not be explained by the model deposition data. NH_x deposition estimates accounted for significant, but small components of between 1 km² variation in the change in Ellenberg score in grasslands (5.6%) and heath/bogs (9.8%) but not woodlands. NO_y deposition estimates were not significantly associated with vegetation change. Linear models provided the best fit and the slope of the relationship was lower for heath/bogs than grasslands. Further signal attribution at sub-kilometre square scales requires the development of fine-grained models of N deposition that can be generalised across regional sampling domains.