Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering, Cleveland State University, 2023, Washkewicz College of Engineering

Most of the rain that falls over land, falls over forests, which cover approximately one-third of global land surface. Significant immediate and wide-ranging impacts are exerted on hydrological, ecological, and societal systems due to canopy-rainfall interactions, altering rainwater supply to the surface. All storm-related hydrological processes are impacted by the relative rates that canopy surfaces retain, evaporate, and redistribute rain. Many forest canopies host a community of plants called epiphytes that are generally capable of storing and evaporating substantial water. Epiphytes are comparatively under-researched regarding their role in rainfall partitioning compared to bark and leaves. Skidaway Island in Savannah, Georgia, has a forest canopy that hosts an epiphyte community consisting primarily of these three groups on a single host tree species, Quercus virginiana (southern live oak). The objective of this research was to determine the amount of time the study epiphytes were saturated, the amount of rainfall evaporated by the epiphytes, and the amount of condensation received by the epiphytes. It was found that saturation time had a positive relationship with Pleopeltis and detritus biomass, and decreased with Tillandsia. An indirect positive relationship between Pleopeltis and detritus biomass with evaporation and condensation amounts was observed.

Committee: John Van Stan (Advisor); Yong Tao (Committee Chair); Michael Gallagher (Committee Member) Subjects: Environmental Science; Mechanical Engineering

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2023, Environmental Science

The dissertation investigates how policies on trade and sustainability affect regional food, water, and energy systems in the Midwest region of the United States. Crop production activities in this region have significant environmental impacts, including greenhouse gas emissions and eutrophication. To evaluate the impacts of policies on trade and sustainability on nutrient runoff, a regional watershed model was developed by training a random forest model with observed data and results from a Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model. The developed model was integrated with land use and economy models to assess whether five trade and sustainability scenarios could meet the phosphorus reduction target of the Maumee River Watershed. The findings suggest that consistent efforts to increase effective management practices have greater potential to decrease the harmful algae blooms compared to global trade impacts. Additionally, the dissertation evaluates GHG emissions of county-level corn farming in the Midwest of the United States with spatially explicit absolute environmental life cycle assessment. The results suggest further investigations of Utilities sector in Indiana to reduce GHG emissions from corn farming in the Midwest of the United States, and demonstrate needs of updating the framework and economy level models. When we consider the consequences of policies on both watershed and GHG emissions, it is essential to consider interactions and feedbacks to the economic and the land use models for more integrated approach. To meet this goal, future work is suggested. For instance, the regional watershed model and multi-regional hybrid life cycle assessment framework can be integrated to assess the temporal and spatial explicit life cycle impact of crop farming for global warming potential and eutrophication. Furthermore, the economy and land use model can provide temporal inputs and outputs for crop farming, which expands the study to dynamic LCA. Most importantly, (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Bhavik Bakshi (Advisor); Gil Bohrer (Committee Member); Jay Martin (Committee Member); Jeffrey Bielicki (Advisor) Subjects: Environmental Science

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2020, Chemical Engineering

Sustainability assessment has become one of the essential tools for process and supply chain design problems to ensure the well-being of future generations. Sustainability assessment methods such as life cycle assessment have been used to identify opportunities for improvement of technologies and help the decision-making process. However, environmental impacts may result in ecological overshoot and shift across space, time, flows, and disciplines. To avoid unintended outcomes due to burden shifting, sustainability assessment methods need to account for ecosystem services, multiple spatial scales, temporal dynamics, multiple flows, and cross-disciplinary effects. This dissertation contributes to advance the methods for sustainability assessment, sustainable process design, and sustainable supply chain design by considering market constraints, climate change effects, and the nexus of multiple flows. Decisions made by approaches that only consider the environmental domain could result in unexpected outcomes due to burden shifting to economic and social domains. For example, the conventional sustainability assessment approaches assume advanced technologies can be adopted by the market due to technological advances. However, the market does not always choose the "best" technology because of market effects, such as market demand and economic resource availability. These unintended consequences could occur through the entire supply chain at multiple spatial scales. In this dissertation, a novel multiscale technology choice modeling framework is introduced to take account of market constraints as a consequential approach for designing engineering processes and supply chain networks. The case study focuses on the installation of new green urea production systems in a watershed where there are limited supplies of resources, such as water and land. This multiscale consequential framework is useful for modeling the substitution effects of emerging technologies while conside (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Bhavik Bakshi (Advisor); Jeffrey Bielicki (Committee Member); Sami Khanal (Committee Member); James Rathman (Committee Member) Subjects: Chemical Engineering

Master of Science (MS), Bowling Green State University, 2017, Biological Sciences

Ice nucleating particles (INP) are a neglected, but integral component of the water cycle. Preliminary evidence is presented showing that rivers possess high numbers of warm temperature biological INP and that these may become airborne. Whereas recent efforts characterizing marine INPs are beginning to inform circulation models to predict weather patterns, the contribution of freshwater INPs to the water cycle has been largely overlooked. Evidence is presented showing that rivers possess high numbers of warm temperature (= -10 °C) INP whose abundance may be several orders of magnitude higher than marine sources. Focusing on the Maumee River, situated in a predominantly agricultural watershed and which serves as the largest tributary to Lake Erie, a seasonal analysis of surface water INP revealed a strong positive relationship between INP abundance and river discharge with INP abundance varying by three orders of magnitude between low river discharge in summer and early fall and high discharge in winter and spring. Assessing the potential of INP to become aerosolized, INP abundance was consistently higher in air sampled near engineered features promoting turbulence compared to controls located away from direct influence of the river. The analysis also indicates that the vast majority of the INP in river surface waters are subcellular and so not attributable to known INP classes. Apart from seasonally-resolved surveys of the Maumee River, a small focused study was conducted at the University of Michigan Biological Station (UMBS) Stream Research Facility. This served as a way to engineer different turbulent river features on a smaller scale to determine aerosolization of warm temperature INP. Combined with recent surveys of other major US rivers, there is growing consensus that the presence of abundant warm temperature INP is a common, if not ubiquitous feature of fresh water systems.

Committee: Robert McKay Dr. (Advisor); George Bullerjahn Dr. (Committee Member); Paul Morris Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Aquatic Sciences; Biology; Cellular Biology; Environmental Science; Hydrologic Sciences; Limnology; Microbiology

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1971, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Hydrology

Doctor of Philosophy, University of Toledo, 0, Civil Engineering

Most of our drinking water and wastewater infrastructure are at the end of their useful life facing significant deterioration, causing leaks and water losses. These losses are a waste of both energy and water, considering both water and wastewater treatment systems are very energy intensive. In order to deal with the urban water infrastructure issues, EPA has listed out the following goals: asset management, water and energy efficiency, infrastructure financing, price of water services and alternative technologies assessment. This dissertation addresses two of EPA’s goals, water and energy efficiency and alternative technologies assessment. Three approaches were taken to address these goals. In the first approach, the life cycle energy demand for water and wastewater studies were reviewed from literature to understand the energy requirements of these systems and propose a benchmark energy demand. System boundaries, data collection and reporting, type of LCA used, were identified as the factors that influence the total energy use and energy use reporting. Energy use data of water and wastewater treatment systems have been compiled to obtain ranges of 2.8 x 10-06 - 4.8 x 10-03 kWh per L and 2.8 x 10-09 to 1.32 x 10-02 kWh per L respectively. From the details obtained from literature, energy use ranges for specific processes related to water and wastewater could not be obtained due to lack of appropriate data reporting. Development of an appropriate data reporting procedure for water and wastewater treatment life cycle assessments is required to be able to collect, use and analyze this data. In the second approach, alternative technologies were assessed to reduce the energy requirements of the water and wastewater treatment systems. The quality of drinking water cannot be compromised; however, the use of potable water flushing toilets can be avoided to conserve energy and resources. In approach 2A Standard sanitation technology (Scenario 1) was compared with the (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Defne Apul (Committee Chair); Ashok Kumar (Committee Member); Cyndee Gruden (Committee Member); Dong Shik Kim (Committee Member); Matthew Franchetti (Committee Member) Subjects: Environmental Engineering

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2004, Botany

Recognition is growing that social systems are not external to ecosystems, but are a significant part of an integrated social-ecological system. This research developed an integrated analytic approach by incorporating broadly-accepted theory and models of policy decision processes (Advocacy Coalition Framework and Adaptive Cycle Framework) and knowledge processes (Knowledge Cycle), with models of ecosystem functioning. The usefulness of the integrated framework and models was evaluated through application to a social-ecological policy process for the Mill Creek (Cincinnati,OH). In this case, there is a clear social goal with a measurable ecological endpoint (achieve an Index of Biotic Integrity value of 40, if attainable), and a mandated method to achieve the goal (by lowering pollutant loads into the stream). The question asked in this case is: (1) were the available data and knowledge adequate; (2) were the models and knowledge “used” by the decisionmaker adequate; and (3) was the policy process adequate to produce outputs sufficient to attain the social goal? The decisionmaker's data, when incorporated into an ecological model, were found adequate to predict the water quality response to various levels of pollutant reduction. The data supported a conclusion that attainment of the water quality standard (“attainment”) through the proposed TMDL elements was unlikely. Analysis of the knowledge and models “used” by the decisionmaker supported a conclusion that the knowledge search was not comprehensive and the decision support model does not predict water quality goals. However, the knowledge cited or included in policy documents was sufficient to know that attainment was unlikely through the pollutant loads proposed in the policy output. Predictions about the policy processes, use of knowledge and adequacy of outcomes were consistent with empirical findings derived from citation analysis and content analysis of relevant documents. The conclusion is that attainment i (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Orie Loucks (Advisor) Subjects: