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At least 163 records · Page 9

Quantifying the Value of Technology and Policy Innovation in Water Resource Portfolios

Abstract Recent water infrastructure planning models demonstrate that explicitly accounting for hydrological changes in long‐term water planning reduces costs and increases system robustness. However, current models do not consider the effects of other changes occurring in the system over long time horizons, namely technology and policy innovation. By leveraging state‐of‐the‐art dynamic control techniques, we propose a suite of tools that explicitly relate hydrologic change, technology innovation, and policy interventions to system‐level water costs. We design robust and cost‐optimal strategies for water supply expansion under hydrological variability and hundreds of plausible innovation states, for example, treatment cost and diversification improvements, deployment times, and demand reduction campaigns. Our approach circumvents the need to pre‐assign probabilities to innovation scenarios and, instead, directly calculates the effects of technology, policy, and hydrology variations on system cost and planning strategies to identify avenues of impactful innovation. These tools can support technology development hubs, urban, state, and federal water planners in anticipating cost implications of technology and policy innovation at the local level, and prioritizing high‐impact innovation goals based on quantitative targets. Results for the case study of Santa Barbara, California identify high‐value innovation attributes for the city as well as combinations of innovation attributes across technologies and policies, and quantify their potential utility cost reductions.

13 HYDRO ENERGY↗

The Third Assessment of the Effects of Climate Change on Federal Hydropower

Understanding the future changes in projected water supplies is a vital objective for federal hydropower facilities tasked with providing low-cost, reliable electricity across a large regional footprint that encompasses a growing customer base, alternative market structures for marketing the electricity, and a more diverse generation asset mix than was historically present when a majority of federal hydropower facilities were built. This study, The Third Assessment of the Effects of Climate Change on Federal Hydropower, directed by Section 9505 of the SECURE Water Act of 2009 (SWA), is the third quinquennial report on evaluating the effects of climate change on hydroelectric energy generated from 132 US federal hydropower plants marketed by four US Department of Energy (DOE) Power Marketing Administrations (PMAs). The technical assessment is conducted by DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and Texas A&M University under the guidance of DOE’s Water Power Technologies Office. This study is the result of extensive consultation with the four federal PMAs (Bonneville Power Administration [BPA], Western Area Power Administration [WAPA], Southwestern Power Administration [SWPA], and Southeastern Power Administration [SEPA]), as well as other agencies, including federal hydropower owners/operators (the US Army Corps of Engineers, US Bureau of Reclamation [Reclamation]), US Geological Survey, and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration). The main findings of this assessment, along with the PMA administrators’ recommendations, will be included in a subsequent DOE report to Congress. The assessment method and the technical findings are described in this report.

13 HYDRO ENERGY↗

Ultranano Titania: Selectively Ridding Water of Persistent Organic Pollutants

Persistent organic pollutants, including the EPA's “dirty dozen”, are difficult to remove from water supplies due to their chemical stability. Here, we report a stable oxide photocatalyst, ultranano titania (d < 2 nm) doped with iron, Fe•TiUNP, that efficiently mineralizes multiple persistent pollutants including aromatic compounds plus common troublesome, difficult-to-oxidize intermediates such as formaldehyde and acetone, netting mineralization of persistent pollutants. Efficiency stems from a direct charge-transfer pathway. The key role of iron doping is to lower the reduction potential of the photogenerated electron so that it is insufficient to reduce water, thus eliminating competition from the hydrogen evolution reaction. The reduction potential of the localized electron is similarly insufficient to reduce quinone, enabling breaking aromaticity. Specific results for degrading acetone, phenol, benzoic acid, and 1,4-benzoquinone are reported.

alcohols↗

Exploring the benefits of utilizing small modular device for sustainable and flexible shale gas water management

Growing shale gas extraction in recent years has triggered wide discussions on the associated freshwater requirement and wastewater management. Many optimization approaches have been developed for shale gas water management; however, most of the studies assumed permanent utilization of wastewater treatment facilities with fixed capacities. Considering the rapidly declining characteristics of shale gas wastewater production, these treatment facilities could remain largely underutilized after the first few months/years of production, making them less economically attractive. To maximize the capacity utilization of treatment facilities and further improve the economic performance of shale gas development, this study develops a systematic optimization framework, where the capacity strategy of conventional treatment facilities and utilization of the recent concept of modular manufacturing are both considered for flexible shale gas water management. The proposed mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) model simultaneously optimizes the design and planning of integrated shale gas and water supply chain, with a focus on capacity planning for both large-scale conventional treatment facilities and small-scale modular devices. A series of Marcellus-based case studies are performed to illustrate the applicability of the proposed model and provide general insights into the trade-offs between the multiple types of treatment facilities. The optimization results reveal that the combinatorial utilization of conventional facilities and modular devices for wastewater treatment (66% by conventional facilities and 34% by modular devices) brings 9.3% more reused water for other well development and 6.2% savings in water-related costs, compared to flexible management of only conventional facilities. Furthermore, this work suggests that taking modular device as auxiliary equipment for shale gas water management is most beneficial to increase the capacity utilization of treatment facilities and achieve a more economic and sustainable shale gas production system.

04 OIL SHALES AND TAR SANDS↗

MSD CoP Webinar: Representing Climate Impacts in Scenaros

Context: This webinar was hosted by the MultiSector Dynamics Community of Practice (MSD CoP; https://multisectordynamics.org). Abstract: Scenarios of future emissions and land use have been most commonly produced without accounting for the effects that climate impacts linked to those emissions and land use changes may have. The questions of how important such impacts could be, at the regional or global scale, has become an increasingly cogent one. Using the Global Change Analysis Model (GCAM), we implement climate impacts on water supply, agricultural productivity, and energy demand driven by climatic impact drivers whose evolution over the 21st century is representative of a climate consistent with GCAM's reference scenario and compare the output to the reference at both regional and global scales. We show that the impacts from the version of GCAM that uses GDP as an exogenous input are not sufficient to bend emission pathways at the global scale. However, we see effects emerge at the regional scale in terms of emissions, among other metrics linked to water, land and energy. We expect the impacts to become more significant at an aggregate, global scale in a forthcoming version of the model with endogenous GDP. Meanwhile, we document the mechanisms that drive the difference at regional scales which could still be significant in their impacts for individual economies and populations. Presenters: Dr. Claudia Tebaldi (Joint Global Change Research Institute, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory) Moderator(s): Jennifer Morris (MSD CoP SSG member), Patrick Reed (MSD CoP Facilitation Team Member, Moderator and Organizer) This webinar was held on: November 5, 2024 from 1 PM - 2:15 PM ET

Climate Scenarios↗

Power Plant Water Risk and Adaptive Measures Database

Project objective was to understand water-related constraints affecting conventional powerplant operations, specifically coal-fired power plants. Of concern were threats related to drought and flood affecting both water supply and ability of plant to discharge wastewater. Also of interest were adaptive measures taken to mitigate identified threats. This spreadsheet contains the responses provided by the power plant operators and owners. Data have been "sanitized" (e.g., random plant ID, binned location and generation capacity information) to ensure anonymity of individual power plants.

Adaptive Measures↗

HERO WEC - Bills of Materials: WEC, RO System, and Submersible Pump

This submission includes detailed Bills of Materials for the NREL-designed and -built Hydraulic and Electric Reverse Osmosis Wave Energy Converter (HERO WEC), as well as the reverse osmosis assembly and submersible pump that are used in the HERO WEC. The WEC file is specific to the components and sub-components that are included on the in-water buoy portion of the WEC. The RO file is specific to the components and sub-components that are included on the reverse osmosis module that is used for both the hydraulic and electric configuration. The submersible pumps file is specific to the components and sub-components that are included on the submersible pump module that is used feed the reverse osmosis module when the HERO WEC is in the electric configuration. In addition to this submission, an additional submission available for the WEC model itself, including the power electronics enclosure, and reverse osmosis assembly that is needed to supply water in the electric submission. A link is provided below. More details on this project including data, CAD drawings, etc. can be found in the HERO-WEC main page link below. This data set has been developed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, operated by Alliance for Sustainable Energy, LLC, for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) under Contract No. DE-AC36-08GO28308. Funding provided U.S. Department of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Water Power Technologies Office.

16 TIDAL AND WAVE POWER↗

Universal correlation for falling film evaporation heat transfer coefficients of water and seawater

Horizontal falling film evaporators are widely utilized in desalination industries to increase fresh water supply. However, universal correlations for seawater falling film evaporation under varied operational and geometrical conditions are simply unavailable in open literature. Thus, this study aims to develop such a universal correlation for both plain and enhanced tubes. The detailed heat transfer mechanisms are reviewed, and rational parameters are incorporated to develop the universal correlation. A dataset of 994 data points from 9 sources covering a wide range of conditions was compiled. These conditions include Reynolds numbers from 10 to 7235, heat fluxes from 7.7 to 208 kW/m -2 , saturation temperatures from 278 to 401 K, salinities from 0 to 60 gsalt kg -1 water, tube diameters from 15.8 to 50.8 mm, and liquid feeder height to diameter ratios from 1 to 2.25. Upon analysis, it was found that most of the recommended existing correlations exhibited poor predictive accuracy, as evidenced by larger MADs. The developed correlation in this study demonstrated the best predictive accuracy for the entire dataset, yielding a MAD of 16.8 % and an R 2 of 0.82. Furthermore, the performance of the new correlation was individually assessed across a broader spectrum of operational and design conditions, reflecting the individual conditions’ influences with an overall MAD of 20 %.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Hysteresis area at the canopy level during and after a drought event in the Central Amazon

Understanding forest water limitation during droughts within a warming climate is essential for accurate predictions of forest-climate interactions. In hyperdiverse ecosystems like the Amazon forest, the mechanisms shaping hysteresis patterns in transpiration relative to environmental factors are not well understood. From this perspective, we investigated these dynamics by conducting in situ leaf-level measurements throughout and after the 2015 El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) drought. Our findings indicate a substantial increase in the hysteresis area (H area ) among transpiration (E), vapor pressure deficit (VPD), and stomatal conductance (g s ) at canopy level during the ENSO peak, attributed to both temporal lag and differences in magnitude between g s and VPD peaks. Specifically, the canopy species Pouteria anomala exhibited an increased H area , due to earlier maximum g s rates leading to a greater temporal lag with VPD compared to the post-drought period. Additionally, leaf water potential (ψ L ) and canopy temperature (T canopy ) showed larger H area during the ENSO peak compared to post-drought conditions across all studied species, suggesting that stomatal closure, particularly during the afternoon, acts to minimize water loss and may explain the counterclockwise hysteresis observed between ψ L and T canopy . Here, the pronounced H area during the drought points to a potential imbalance between water supply and demand, underlining the role of stomatal behavior of isohydric species in response to drought.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Integrated Hydro-terrestrial Modeling 2.0: Progress and Path Forward on Building a National Capability

It is the role of the U.S. federal government and its supporting agencies, including academia and future scientists, to ensure that its people have sustained and equitable freshwater services, as well as the critical knowledge necessary to make decisions about the future as it relates to freshwater services. Clear and consistent information and guidance from federal agencies is critical. Integrated Hydro-Terrestrial Modeling (IHTM), as a United States (U.S.) national capability, focuses on understanding, quantifying, and managing the replenishment of water supply through hydrologic cycle processes and their governing forces. To provide that information, we need enhanced IHTM capabilities that capitalize on the strengths of each U.S. governmental agency and its core mission. The first IHTM workshop was held in 2019, and its subsequent report was published in 2020. The U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) and member agencies held a second IHTM workshop (IHTM 2.0) from October 31 to November 2, 2023 in Reston, Virginia. The IHTM 2.0 workshop focused on the need to support a multiscale framework to accelerate research insights, better integrate operational and planning perspectives, and bridge national-to-regional capabilities to address major interdependent societal water challenges. The workshop was organized according to a “WHAT” and “HOW” framework, with the common underlying “WHY” being the integrated water resource challenges and the “WHO” defined through interagency and cooperating academic partners. The report provides a summary of plenary presentations and breakout discussions, and a road map that focuses on near-term activities.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗

Xanthos Output Dataset Under ISIMIP3b Selected CMIP6 Scenarios: 1850 - 2100 (Basin and Regional Scale)

Xanthos is an open-source hydrologic model, written in Python, designed to quantify and analyze global water availability. Xanthos simulates historical and future global water availability on a monthly time step at a spatial resolution of 0.5 geographic degrees. Xanthos was designed to be extensible and used by scientists that study global water supply and work with the Global Change Analysis Model (GCAM). Xanthos Output Dataset This dataset includes Xanthos outputs forced by the ISIMIP3b bias-adjusted CMIP6 climate forcing (1850 - 2100). There are 30 scenarios consists of 10 CMIP6 GCMs and 3 SSP-RCP scenarios. (1) 10 CMIP6 GCMs: GFDL-ESM4, IPSL-CM6A-LR, MPI-ESM1-2-HR, MRI-ESM2-0, UKESM1-0-LL, CanESM5, CNRM-CM6-1, CNRM-ESM2-1, EC-Earth3, and MIROC6 (2) 3 SSP-RCP Scenarios: SSP1-2.6, SSP3-7.0, and SSP5-8.5 The output variables in this dataset are aggregated to basin and regional scales. (1) Monthly runoff at basin scale (2) Annual accessible renewable water at basin scale (2) Annual actual hydropower production, hydropower potential, and exploitable hydropower potential at regional scale

Climate Change↗

Comparison of Deterministic and Statistical Models for Water Quality Compliance Forecasting in the San Joaquin River Basin, California

Model selection for water quality forecasting depends on many factors including analyst expertise and cost, stakeholder involvement and expected performance. Water quality forecasting in arid river basins is especially challenging given the importance of protecting beneficial uses in these environments and the livelihood of agricultural communities. In the agriculture-dominated San Joaquin River Basin of California, real-time salinity management (RTSM) is a state-sanctioned program that helps to maximize allowable salt export while protecting existing basin beneficial uses of water supply. The RTSM strategy supplants the federal total maximum daily load (TMDL) approach that could impose fines associated with exceedances of monthly and annual salt load allocations of up to $1 million per year based on average year hydrology and salt load export limits. The essential components of the current program include the establishment of telemetered sensor networks, a web-based information system for sharing data, a basin-scale salt load assimilative capacity forecasting model and institutional entities tasked with performing weekly forecasts of river salt assimilative capacity and scheduling west-side drainage export of salt loads. Web-based information portals have been developed to share model input data and salt assimilative capacity forecasts together with increasing stakeholder awareness and involvement in water quality resource management activities in the river basin. Two modeling approaches have been developed simultaneously. The first relies on a statistical analysis of the relationship between flow and salt concentration at three compliance monitoring sites and the use of these regression relationships for forecasting. The second salt load forecasting approach is a customized application of the Watershed Analysis Risk Management Framework (WARMF), a watershed water quality simulation model that has been configured to estimate daily river salt assimilative capacity and to provide decision support for real-time salinity management at the watershed level. Analysis of the results from both model-based forecasting approaches over a period of five years shows that the regression-based forecasting model, run daily Monday to Friday each week, provided marginally better performance. However, the regression-based forecasting model assumes the same general relationship between flow and salinity which breaks down during extreme weather events such as droughts when water allocation cutbacks among stakeholders are not evenly distributed across the basin. A recent test case shows the utility of both models in dealing with an exceedance event at one compliance monitoring site recently introduced in 2020.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Environmental life cycle of fentanyl: From the cradle to an unknown grave

The lack of available information on the presence and persistence of fentanyl in the environment is a significant gap in the technical literature. Although the origins of the opioid in the environment are well-known because they follow the same pathways of other drug-related environmental contaminants, the downstream effects of fentanyl in the water supply and its retention in soil are less understood. The characterization of fentanyl and its potential degradation products in complex environmental samples such as soil is severely understudied. Very few articles are available that work to identify fentanyl and its degradation products in complex samples or name the possible hazards that may result from environmental exposure and degradation. Therefore, the objectives were to identify available articles focused on environmental fentanyl and its pathways and highlight quantifiable research or results that included specific degradation products or downstream effects. Research articles focused on fentanyl between 2000 and 2024 were identified and reviewed and then filtered using Boolean search terms for environmental parameters. Various studies have determined that trace levels of fentanyl can be found in a variety of environments, and additional data suggest preferential partitioning into soils from water and long-term persistence. Despite this knowledge, very little data exists on the long-term downstream effects of fentanyl or its analogs. As the chronic effects from low-level fentanyl exposure are currently unknown, this lack of insight brings to the forefront the need for further research to improve our understanding of fentanyl persistence, degradation, and toxicity within the environment.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Integrated energy-water-land nexus planning in the Colorado River Basin (Argentina)

Integrated energy-water-land (EWL) planning promotes synergies and avoids conflicts in ways that sector-specific planning approaches cannot. Many important decisions that influence emerging EWL nexus issues are implemented at regional (e.g., large river basin, electricity grid) and sub-regional (e.g., small river basin, irrigation district) scales. However, actual implementation of integrated planning at these scales has been limited. Simply collecting and visualizing data and interconnections across multiple sectors and sub-regions in a single modeling platform is a unique endeavor in many regions. This study introduces and applies a novel approach to linking together multiple sub-regions in a single platform to characterize and visualize EWL resource use, EWL system linkages within and among sub-regions, and the EWL nexus implications of future policies and investments. This integrated planning methodology is applied in the water-stressed Colorado River Basin in Argentina, which is facing increasing demands for agricultural and fossil fuel commodities. Guided by stakeholders, this study seeks to inform basin planning activities by characterizing and visualizing (1) the basin’s current state of EWL resources, (2) the linkages between sectors within and among basin sub-regions, and (3) the EWL nexus implications of planned future agricultural development activities. Results show that water scarcity, driven in part by human demands that have historically reached 60% of total surface water supply, poses a substantial constraint to economic development in the basin. The Colorado basin has the potential to serve as a testbed for crafting novel and generalizable sub-regional EWL planning approaches capable of informing the EWL planning dialogue globally.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Editorial: Advances in observations and modeling of snow, forest-snow processes and snow hydrology

Seasonal snowpack plays a pivotal role in the regional water cycle. In Western mountainous regions, where precipitation predominantly occurs as snow during winter and is limited in the summer months when water demand peaks, snowpack serves as a critical water source essential for sustaining water supply, ecosystems, agriculture, and industries. Additionally, snowpack dynamically influences extreme events, such as floods, droughts, and wildfires, through intricate land-atmosphere feedback. Nevertheless, significant knowledge gaps persist within this field due to data limitations and the complexity of the physics involved in modeling snow and snow hydrology (i.e., snow acts as a critical upstream hydrological process). Here, this research topic presents a collection of manuscripts that address some of these important research gaps.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

An Assessment of Technical Hydropower Potential at Non-Powered Dams in the United States

Historically, dams have been constructed for a variety of purposes, such as providing a more secure and reliable water supply, mitigating impacts from variations in river flow, allowing continuous navigability, and harnessing mechanical power. A relatively small portion of dams have been designed to store or regulate flows for the purpose of generating electricity (roughly 3% of nationally inventoried dams in the US and 17% of the dams included in the World Register of Dams). The remaining population of existing non-powered dams (NPDs) presents both an opportunity to generate renewable energy and a need to modernize aging infrastructure. This report describes an assessment of more than 2,600 NPDs in the US that have a collective potential of nearly 4 GW in new power capacity. Previous national-scale assessments were aimed at evaluating the theoretical maximum power potential at existing dams in the United States. These estimates were based on the best available information at the time for water availability, hydraulic head, and representative regional capacity factors. This study revisits a subset of 3,299 dams identified in the most recent theoretical resource assessment and uses more detailed and updated hydrologic data to produce estimates of technical potential. These improvements in data enable estimates that more realistically reflect what is physically possible given simple assumptions about the existing structure and constraints on flow and head (Figure 1).

13 HYDRO ENERGY↗

Global transpiration data from sap flow measurements: the SAPFLUXNET database

Plant transpiration links physiological responses of vegetation to water supply and demand with hydrological, energy, and carbon budgets at the land–atmosphere interface. However, despite being the main land evaporative flux at the global scale, transpiration and its response to environmental drivers are currently not well constrained by observations. Here we introduce the first global compilation of whole-plant transpiration data from sap flow measurements (SAPFLUXNET, https://sapfluxnet.creaf.cat/, last access: 8 June 2021). We harmonized and quality-controlled individual datasets supplied by contributors worldwide in a semi-automatic data workflow implemented in the R programming language. Datasets include sub-daily time series of sap flow and hydrometeorological drivers for one or more growing seasons, as well as metadata on the stand characteristics, plant attributes, and technical details of the measurements. SAPFLUXNET contains 202 globally distributed datasets with sap flow time series for 2714 plants, mostly trees, of 174 species. SAPFLUXNET has a broad bioclimatic coverage, with woodland/shrubland and temperate forest biomes especially well represented (80 % of the datasets). The measurements cover a wide variety of stand structural characteristics and plant sizes. The datasets encompass the period between 1995 and 2018, with 50 % of the datasets being at least 3 years long. Accompanying radiation and vapour pressure deficit data are available for most of the datasets, while on-site soil water content is available for 56 % of the datasets. Many datasets contain data for species that make up 90 % or more of the total stand basal area, allowing the estimation of stand transpiration in diverse ecological settings. SAPFLUXNET adds to existing plant trait datasets, ecosystem flux networks, and remote sensing products to help increase our understanding of plant water use, plant responses to drought, and ecohydrological processes. SAPFLUXNET version 0.1.5 is freely available from the Zenodo repository (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3971689; Poyatos et al., 2020a). The “sapfluxnetr” R package – designed to access, visualize, and process SAPFLUXNET data – is available from CRAN.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

Emerging Contaminants: Identification, Life Cycle, and Key Challenges - 20415

The term 'emerging contaminants' and its multiple variants has come to refer to previously overlooked compounds discovered in the environment which represent a potential threat to human and ecological receptors. These compounds may be discovered in the environment as new analytical techniques are developed and/or as new monitoring programs for drinking water and groundwater are implemented, while the threat to receptors may be realized through advances in understanding of toxicology and pathways to receptors. Emerging contaminants present unique and considerable challenges as demands to address them can outpace the understanding of their toxicity, their need for regulation, their occurrence, and techniques for treating the environmental media they affect. With these challenges in mind, this paper serves as a primer for understanding emerging contaminants. The paper will lay a foundation for understanding emerging contaminants through three key topics: 1. Who identifies emerging contaminants? An overview of the various stakeholder groups around the world working on identifying potential emerging contaminants and developing systems for screening potential candidates, prioritizing, and ultimately generating regulations will be provided. 2. How Chemicals Rise into Awareness as Emerging Contaminants. The process by which contaminants emerge through a cycle of awareness, characterization, management and regulation will be discussed. Current emerging contaminants will be discussed in the context of the life cycle: emerging contaminants where impacts to drinking water supplies are driving public awareness (e.g. per and polyfuoroalkyl substances (PFASs) and 1,4-dioxane), emerging contaminants impacted by changing regulatory standards or development and debate on toxicity (e.g., hexavalent chromium, 1,2,3-trichloropropane, trichloroethylene in vapor intrusion), and those with evolving understanding of impacts and usage (e.g., microplastics). 3. Key Challenges. Unique challenges associated with emerging contaminants, including visibility and public sensitivity, uncertainty and vulnerability, will be discussed. (authors)

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗