A One-Equation Turbulence Model for Geophysical Applications: Comparison with Data and the k−ε Model

A one-equation turbulence model is presented, in which the turbulent kinetic energy k is calculated with a transport equation whereas the turbulent length scale l is calculated with an algebraic expression. The value of l depends on the local stratification and reduces to the classical |z| scaling for unstratified flows near a wall, where |z| is the distance to the wall. The length scale decreases during stable stratification, and increases for unstable stratification compared to the neutral case. In the limit of strong stable stratification, the so-called buoyancy length scale proportional to k ^1/2 N ^–1 is obtained, where N is the buoyancy frequency. The length scale formulation introduces a single model parameter which is calibrated against experimental data. The model is verified extensively against laboratory measurements and oceanic data, and comparisons are made with the two-equation k- model. It is shown that the performance of the proposed k model is almost identical to that of the k- model. In addition, the stability functions of Launder are revisited and adjusted to obtain better agreement with recent data.     

Statistics: an essential technology in environmental research and management

Statistical methods as developed and used in decision making and scientific research are of recent origin. The logical foundations of statistics are still under discussion and some care is needed in applying the existing methodology and interpreting results. Some pitfalls in statistical data analysis are discussed and the importance of cross examination of data (or exploratory data analysis) before using specific statistical techniques are emphasized. Comments are made on the treatment of outliers, choice of stochastic models, use of multivariate techniques and the choice of software (expert systems) in statistical analysis. The need for developing new methodology with particular relevance to environmental research and policy is stressed.Dr Rao is Eberly Professor of Statistics and Director of the Penn State Center for Multivariate Analysis. He has received PhD and ScD degrees from Cambridge University, and has been awarded numerous honorary doctorates from universities around the world. He is a Fellow of Royal Society, UK; Fellow of Indian National Science Academy; Foreign Honorary Member of American Academy of Arts and Science; Life Fellow of King's College, Cambridge; and Founder Fellow of the Third World Academy of Sciences. He is Honorary Fellow and President of International Statistical Institute, Biometric Society and elected Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics. He has made outstanding contributions to virtually all important topics of theoretical and applied statistics, and many results bear his name. He has been Editor of Sankhya and theJournal of Multivariate Analysis, and serves on international advisory boards of several professional journals, includingEnvironmetrics and theJournal of Environmental Statistics. This paper is based on the keynote address to the Seventh Annual Conference on Statistics of the United States Environmental Protection Agency.     

不同水位期汉丰湖和高阳湖上覆水时空分异特征

为研究三峡库区不同水位条件下澎溪河流域永久性回水区高阳湖与城市内湖汉丰湖的水环境差异,确定影响湖库水环境变化的水质指标,于2018年11月~2019年10月,对两湖库上覆水进行逐月样品采集.以水质监测数据为基础,参照三峡水库调度的时间周期,将采样时间划分为蓄水期,消落期和泄水期3个时段,运用多元统计方法,分析了2个湖库的水环境时空分异特征.单因子水质评价结果显示,湖库水质等级具有时空分异性,浮游植物大量生长发育的3,4,5月及雨量充足的7,8月,2个湖大部分处于劣Ⅳ~劣Ⅴ类,而一年中其他时段主要达到地表水Ⅲ类标准.判别分析表明,透明度,溶氧,电导率,pH值,水温,水深（depth）,总有机碳,总氮和氨氮均为两湖库水环境时空显著性差异的指示因子,泄水期,2个湖库水环境差异不大,但蓄水期和消落期,2个湖水环境具有明显的差异性.主成分分析显示,不同水位条件下,引起湖库水环境变化的主导因子不同,消落期水环境主要影响因子为TN,NH₃-N,水深和pH值;泄水期主要是TN,TP和EC;蓄水期主要影响因子为水深,TOC,TN,TP和NH₃-N.水体污染程度来看,汉丰湖：蓄水期 > 消落期 > 泄水期;空间表现为：HF3 < HF1 < HF2 < HF4 < HF5 < HF8 < HF7 < HF6.高阳湖：泄水期 > 消落期 > 蓄水期;空间表现为GY2 < GY3 < GY1 < GY5 < GY6 < GY4.     

Testing Decision Rules for Categorizing Species’ Extinction Risk to Help Develop Quantitative Listing Criteria for the U.S. Endangered Species Act

Lack of guidance for interpreting the definitions of endangered and threatened in the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA) has resulted in case‐by‐case decision making leaving the process vulnerable to being considered arbitrary or capricious. Adopting quantitative decision rules would remedy this but requires the agency to specify the relative urgency concerning extinction events over time, cutoff risk values corresponding to different levels of protection, and the importance given to different types of listing errors. We tested the performance of 3 sets of decision rules that use alternative functions for weighting the relative urgency of future extinction events: a threshold rule set, which uses a decision rule of x% probability of extinction over y years; a concave rule set, where the relative importance of future extinction events declines exponentially over time; and a shoulder rule set that uses a sigmoid shape function, where relative importance declines slowly at first and then more rapidly. We obtained decision cutoffs by interviewing several biologists and then emulated the listing process with simulations that covered a range of extinction risks typical of ESA listing decisions. We evaluated performance of the decision rules under different data quantities and qualities on the basis of the relative importance of misclassification errors. Although there was little difference between the performance of alternative decision rules for correct listings, the distribution of misclassifications differed depending on the function used. Misclassifications for the threshold and concave listing criteria resulted in more overprotection errors, particularly as uncertainty increased, whereas errors for the shoulder listing criteria were more symmetrical. We developed and tested the framework for quantitative decision rules for listing species under the U.S. ESA. If policy values can be agreed on, use of this framework would improve the implementation of the ESA by increasing transparency and consistency. Evaluando Reglas de Decisión para Categorizar el Riesgo de Extinción de Especies con el Fin de Desarrollar de Criterios Cuantitativos de Alistamiento en el Acta de Especies en Peligro de los EE. UU.     

Operational risk assessment: A case of the Bhopal disaster

Accidental releases of hazardous chemicals from process facilities can cause catastrophic consequences. The Bhopal disaster resulting from a combination of inherently unsafe designs and poorly managed operations is a well-known case. Effective risk modeling approaches that provide early warnings are helpful to prevent and control such rare but catastrophic events. Probability estimation of these events is a constant challenge due to the scarcity of directly relevant data. Therefore, precursor-based methods that adopt the Bayesian theorem to update prior judgments on event probabilities using empirical data have been proposed. The updated probabilities are then integrated with consequences of varying severity to produce the risk profile.This paper proposes an operational risk assessment framework, in which a precursor-based Bayesian network approach is used for probability estimation, and loss functions are applied for consequence assessment. The estimated risk profile can be updated continuously given real-time operational data. As process facilities operate, this method integrates a failure-updating mechanism with potential consequences to generate a real-time operational risk profile. The real time risk profile is valuable in activating accident prevention and control strategies. The approach is applied to the Bhopal accident to demonstrate its applicability and effectiveness.     

CULTURAL ASPECTS OF WATER RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT PAST,PRESENT, AND FUTURE1

ABSTRACT Attitudes toward the development of the American West have undergone important changes over the past century just as the nature of water resources as factors in development have changed. Viewing these changes processually, stages for water resources definition and use can be identified in the total process of western cultural development. The first stage involves the value of water resource development as a stimulus to population and economic growth in the West. The second stage, still in process', adopts a dominant cultural norm which sees water resource development as inevitable if not necessary to keep up with growth. A third stage to this evolutionary process is incipient. Future cultural values and thinking with respect to water resource development will be to look at development as a means for controlling or managing both the location and quantity of population and economic growth. To this end planners will have to become concerned with the questions of human adaptation. Concern will have to be given to the problems of getting a living which enables individuals to meet the subsistence needs of self and family, to establishing community which provides for cooperation among individuals and the management of conflict, to establishing improved communication which promotes interpersonal interaction, and for fostering innovation which provides the new ideas necessary to adapt to new environmental situations.,     

COMPLEMENTING OBJECTIVE PROCEDURES WITH SUBJECTIVE PRIORS IN WATER RESOURCE PLANNING1

A procedure is outlined which allows consideration of both objective and subjective indicators to establish priorities in plan implementation of water resource development. The objective procedure utilizes stepwise multiple discriminant analysis to predict community performance regarding planned project implementation, based on previous project implementation in the Northeast. The subjective procedure incorporates prior probabilities developed by the planner, based on observation and experience gained through the planning process. The proposed analysis could eliminate waste through better allocation of planning funds to implementation studies exhibiting higher probability of early implementation.     

Analysis of Sediment Retention in Western Riverine Wetlands: The Yampa River Watershed,Colorado, USA

We quantified annual sediment deposition, bank erosion, and sediment budgets in nine riverine wetlands that represented a watershed continuum for 1 year in the unregulated Yampa River drainage basin in Colorado. One site was studied for 2 years to compare responses to peak flow variability. Annual mean sediment deposition ranged from 0.01 kg/m² along a first-order subalpine stream to 21.8 kg/m² at a sixth-order alluvial forest. Annual mean riverbank erosion ranged from 3 kg/m-of-bank at the first-order site to 1000 kg/m at the 6^th-order site. Total sediment budgets were nearly balanced at six sites, while net export from bank erosion occurred at three sites. Both total sediment deposition (R² = 0.86, p < 0.01) and bank erosion (R² = 0.77, p < 0.01) were strongly related to bankfull height, and channel sinuosity and valley confinement helped to explain additional variability among sites. The texture and organic fraction of eroded and deposited sediment were relatively similar in most sites and varied among sites by watershed position. Our results indicate that bank erosion generally balances sediment deposition in riverine wetlands, and we found no distinct zones of sediment retention versus export on a watershed continuum. Zones of apparent disequilibrium can occur in unregulated rivers due to factors such as incised channels, beaver activity, and cattle grazing. A primary function of many western riverine wetlands is sediment exchange, not retention, which may operate by transforming materials and compounds in temporary sediment pools on floodplains. These results are considered in the context of the Hydrogeomorphic approach being implemented by the U.S. government for wetland resource management.     

EVALUATION OF PROBABILITY DENSITY FUNCTIONS IN PRECIPITATION MODELS FOR THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST1

ABSTRACT: Recent work has found that a one-parameter Weibull model of wet day precipitation amount based on the Weibull distribution provides a better fit to historical daily precipitation data for eastern U.S. sites than other one-parameter models. The general two-parameter Weibull distribution was compared in this study to other widely used distributions for describing the distribution of daily precipitation event sizes at 99 sites from the U.S. Pacific Northwest. Surprisingly little performance was sacrificed by reducing the two-parameter Weibull to a single-parameter distribution. Advantages of the single-parameter model included requiring only the mean wet day precipitation amount for calibration, invertibility for simulation purposes, and ease of analytical manipulation. The fit of the single-parameter Weibull to the 99 stations included in this study was significantly better than other single-parameter models tested, and performed as well as the widely endorsed, more cumbersome, two-parameter gamma model. Both the one-and two-parameter Weibull distributions are shown to have b-moments that are consistent with historical precipitation data, while the ratio of b-skew and b-variance in the gamma model is inconsistent with the historical recerd by this measure. In addition, it was found that the two-parameter gamma distribution was better fit using the method of moments estimators than maximum likelihood estimates. These findings suggested that the distribution in precipitation among sites in the Pacific Northwest with dramatically different settings are nearly identical if expressed in proportion to the mean site event size.     

MODELING FLOOD DAMAGE: CASE OF TOKAI FLOOD 20001

ABSTRACT: In conventional flood damage reduction studies, flood damage is usually estimated with a damage function according to the depth of inundation. However, this method may not reflect the conditions of each family residing in the floodplain because it ignores not only the distribution of flood damage but also the effect of building characteristics and residents' preparedness. This paper uses data from a questionnaire based survey (N= 3,036) conducted 17 months after the Tokai Flood of 2000 that caused disastrous losses to household properties. It provides a conceptual “doughnut structure” model of flood damage to houses and house contents and a mathematical basis for models to explore the determinants of flood damage. Besides the inundation depth, house type significantly affects both the house structural and content damage probabilities, while house ownership and house structure affect house damage probability but not house content damage probability at a given depth. Inundation depth, residing period, and household income significantly affect both house and content damage values. In addition, house ownership has a significant impact on the house damage value, while house structure has an impact on content damage value.