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At least 595 records · Page 33

Quantitative DNA Stable Isotope Probing Identifies Active Microorganisms Assimilating Volatile Fatty Acids in Full-Scale Enhanced Biological Phosphorus Removal Processes

Enhanced biological phosphorus removal (EBPR) systems often rely on exogenous carbon sources, such as volatile fatty acids (VFAs), to achieve higher P removal. Here, we employed DNA quantitative stable isotope probing (qSIP) using two VFAs, acetate and propionate, in cyclic anaerobic/aerobic incubations to assess their effects on P cycling and microbial activity with biomass from two full-scale EBPR water resource-recovery facilities that utilize VFA addition. We found that anaerobic VFA uptake preferences differed within known groups of PAOs, such as Candidatus Accumulibacter and Tetrasphaera-affiliated members (e.g., Ca. Phosphoribacter), between the two biomasses. The combination of qSIP with metagenomics identified isotopically labeled phages that were linked to active PAOs, highlighting their potential roles in modulating EBPR community composition and activity. The highest levels of anaerobic labeling from acetate were in genomes belonging to Saccharimonadales and Rickettsiales, which are generally host-associated with bacteria and eukaryotes, respectively. Furthermore, this finding highlights the possibility of cross-feeding between PAO hosts and their parasites or predators, as well as the role of so-far uncharacterized organisms participating in carbon cycling under EBPR conditions. Collectively, these results expand our understanding of the ecological interactions involved in communities anaerobically uptaking VFAs and cycling P that are central to EBPR.

Polyphosphate accumulating organisms↗

Electrochemical Nutrient Recovery for the Food–Energy–Water Nexus at Municipal Wastewater Facilities: Multivariate Analyses of Seasonal Sampling and Reactor Performance

Digester-equipped municipal wastewater facilities generate recycle streams with high nutrient loads that increase energy consumption and can cause environmental pollution. The reduction of these loads through electrochemical nutrient recovery (ENR) could enhance the food–energy–water nexus by producing fertilizer (struvite). This study investigated the recovery process through a 1 year sampling of recycle streams and the implementation of nutrient recovery. Time series analyses showed that P (as orthophosphate) concentration was time-variant in digester effluent streams, while N (as ammonia) concentration was time-variant in only the aerobic system. Furthermore, these two nutrient concentrations did not correlate in any of the recycle streams. Subsequent multivariate screening analyses identified anode type, NH 4 + concentration, cathodic potential, P concentration, and temperature as most significant for ENR. Finally, the optimum conditions of cathodic potential, anode area-to-volume ratio, and temperature applied to a real recycle stream resulted in 95% P recovery with 0.03 kWh/kg P. This energy consumption is significantly lower than process energy for conventional P fertilizers (1.1 kWh/kg P) and chemical recovery processes at scale (1.7–12.9 kWh/kg P). Overall, this study recommended specific process controls for nutrient recovery, expanded the variables evaluated for ENR, and demonstrated the ability to significantly impact energy demand associated with P-based fertilizers.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Ligand-Functionalized Polymer Membranes for Selective Ion Separations

Selective ion separations are central to technologies spanning water purification, resource recovery, and clean energy. Conventional polymer membranes, which rely on steric hindrance or Donnan exclusion, struggle to discriminate between chemically similar ions in high-ionic-strength environments. Ligand-functionalized membranes offer a transformative strategy by embedding molecular recognition directly into polymer matrices, enabling selective complexation and transport. Here, this Viewpoint highlights the structure–function relationships underlying ligand-mediated ion separation, emphasizing the interplay of dehydration penalties, ligand coordination, and nanoscale confinement. We discuss design principles, denticity, donor identity, rigidity, and spatial organization, alongside the permeability–selectivity trade-off, multicomponent effects, and stability challenges. Finally, we outline emerging strategies, from bioinspired ligands to computationally guided design, that chart a path toward next-generation membranes for precise and energy-efficient ion separations.

ions↗

High-Resolution Measurement of Soil Thermal Properties and Moisture Content Using a Novel Heated Fiber Optics Approach

Hydrological parameters are scale dependent. Efficient monitoring techniques capable of measuring hydrological parameters, such as soil moisture content (θ), over a wide range of spatial scales are essential for understanding the complexity of water and energy movement across the landscape. Techniques to measure θ over spatial scales in the range from centimeters to thousands of meters, however, are sorely lacking. Recent improvements in the distributed temperature sensing (DTS) technology supported the development of novel techniques to fill that gap. However, improvements in the accuracy and applicability of DTS techniques are still needed. This study investigates the possibility of improving the accuracy of the fiber optics dual-probe heat-pulse (FO-DPHP) DTS technique by using a new design to maintain the spacing between the FO-DPHP probes and by introducing a novel data interpretation approach. The accuracy of the novel FO-DPHP design was tested at different θ in a sand column experiment. The FO-DPHP measurements obtained using traditional and novel data interpretation approaches were compared against independent measurements from several calibrated soil water content (EC5) sensors. Monte-Carlo analyses were also performed to assess the impact of DTS measurement errors on the accuracy achieved using the data interpretation approaches. The novel design and data interpretation approach allowed for accurate measurements of soil thermal properties and θ without the need to perform a hard-to-achieve soil-specific calibration. Measured θ had mean errors and standard deviations <0.03 and <0.01 m 3 m -3 , respectively, for moisture conditions ranging from dry to near saturation. The standard deviation in the measured heat capacity was <0.01 MJ m -3 K -1 .

42 ENGINEERING↗

Hyporheic Exchange Driven by Submerged Rigid Vegetation: A Modeling Study

Flow-vegetation interaction affects fluid flow hydraulics and associated material transport in river corridors. Concomitant changes in pressure within the flow field due to the presence of vegetation may act as a driver for the formation of hyporheic flow across the sediment-water interface. This potentially important process, however, has yet to be studied. In order to investigate vegetation-induced hyporheic exchange, a series of numerical models of interlinked surface-subsurface flow modified by plant stems was conducted. Periodically staggered plant stem arrays on a flat sediment bed were considered within a coupled multiphysics computational fluid dynamics approach. Plants were idealized as rigid cylinders and arranged in different streamwise and spanwise spacing distances. Each vegetation array was then subjected to a broad range of flow Reynolds Numbers (Re). The results showed that hyporheic flow occurs in all conditions with the presence of vegetation. The vegetation-induced hyporheic flux is found to be a function of Re via a power law. The flux increases with interstem space until the space reaches the distance that rigid stems no longer affect the flow structures in the vicinity of each other. Larger intervegetation distances lead to a larger hyporheic zone. A direct comparison with bedforminduced hyporheic flow showed that vegetation can induce higher hyporheic flux through relatively shallower exchange zones. The results of all the simulations were synthesized into predictive models for hyporheic flux, bulk residence time and exchange depth based on drag coefficient, vegetation density, and Reynolds Number.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Enhancing Streamflow Forecast and Extracting Insights Using Long-Short Term Memory Networks With Data Integration at Continental Scales

Recent observations with varied schedules and types (moving average, snapshot, or regularly spaced) can help to improve streamflow forecasts, but it is challenging to integrate them effectively. Based on a long short-term memory (LSTM) streamflow model, we tested multiple versions of a flexible procedure we call data integration (DI) to leverage recent discharge measurements to improve forecasts. DI accepts lagged inputs either directly or through a convolutional neural network unit. DI ubiquitously elevated streamflow forecast performance to unseen levels, reaching a record continental-scale median Nash-Sutcliffe Efficiency coefficient value of 0.86. Integrating moving-average discharge, discharge from the last few days, or even average discharge from the previous calendar month could all improve daily forecasts. Directly using lagged observations as inputs was comparable in performance to using the convolutional neural network unit. Importantly, we obtained valuable insights regarding hydrologic processes impacting LSTM and DI performance. Before applying DI, the base LSTM model worked well in mountainous or snow-dominated regions, but less well in regions with low discharge volumes (due to either low precipitation or high precipitation-energy synchronicity) and large interannual storage variability. DI was most beneficial in regions with high flow autocorrelation: it greatly reduced baseflow bias in groundwater-dominated western basins and also improved peak prediction for basins with dynamical surface water storage, such as the Prairie Potholes or Great Lakes regions. However, even DI cannot elevate performance in high-aridity basins with 1-day flash peaks. Despite this limitation, there is much promise for a deep-learning-based forecast paradigm due to its performance, automation, efficiency, and flexibility.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Coupled Time-Lapse Full-Waveform Inversion for Subsurface Flow Problems Using Intrusive Automatic Differentiation

We describe a novel framework for estimating subsurface properties, such as rock permeability and porosity, from time-lapse observed seismic data by coupling full-waveform inversion (FWI), subsurface flow processes, and rock physics models. For the inverse modeling, we handle the back propagation of gradients by an intrusive automatic differentiation strategy that offers three levels of user control: (1) At the wave physics level, we adopted the discrete adjoint method in order to use our existing high-performance FWI code; (2) at the rock physics level, we used built-in automatic differentiation operators from the TensorFlow backend; (3) at the flow physics level, we implemented customized partial differential equation (PDE) operators for the multiphase flow equations. The three-level coupled inversion strategy strikes a good balance between computational efficiency and programming efforts, and when the gradients are chained together, it constitutes a coupled inverse system. Our numerical experiments demonstrate that the three-level coupled inverse problem is superior in terms of accuracy to a traditional decoupled inversion strategy. Additionally, our method is able to simultaneously invert for parameters in empirical relationships such as the rock physics models. Our proposed inverted model can be used for reservoir performance prediction and reservoir management/optimization purposes.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Evaluation of Methods for Causal Discovery in Hydrometeorological Systems

Understanding causal relations is of utmost importance in hydrology and climate research for systems identification, prediction, and understanding systems behavior in a changing climate. Traditionally, researchers in hydrometeorology attempted to study causal questions by conducting controlled experiments using numerical models. This approach, however, in most cases of interest provides uncertain results because the models are approximate representation of the natural system. An alternative approach that has recently drawn significant attention in several fields is to infer causal relations from purely observational data. It possesses several traits to its utility particularly in hydrometeorology due to the rapid accumulation of in situ and remotely sensed data records. The first objective of this study is to present a brief description of four causal discovery methods (Granger causality, Transfer Entropy, graph-based algorithms, and Convergent Cross Mapping) with special emphasis on the assumptions on which they are built. Second, using synthetic data generated from a hydrological model, we assess their performance in retrieving causal information taking into account sensitivity to sample size and presence of noise. Last, we use causal analysis to examine and formulate hypotheses on causal drivers of evapotranspiration in a shrubland region during summer and winter seasons. An interpretation of the hypotheses based on canopy seasonal dynamics and evapotranspiration processes is presented. It is hoped that the results presented here can be useful in guiding researchers studying hydrometeorological systems as to which causal method is most appropriate to the characteristics of the system under study.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Characterizing Physical Properties of Streambed Interface Sediments Using In Situ Complex Electrical Conductivity Measurements

Streambed sediment physical properties such as surface area, are difficult to quantify in situ but exert a high-level control on a wide range of biogeochemical processes and sorption of contaminants. We introduce the use of complex electrical conductivity (CC) methods (also known as spectral-induced polarization (SIP)) that measure both real and imaginary conductivity to noninvasively and efficiently characterize shallow streambed sediments. We explore the method through synthetic modeling, laboratory, and field measurements to demonstrate the sensitivity of imaginary conductivity to sediment surface area, controlled in part by fine-grained iron oxides produced by anoxic groundwater discharge. Laboratory measurements verify expected relationships between CC parameters and sediment properties. Synthetic modeling using a 1D analytical model illustrates the influence of water layer depth and conductivity on the field CC measurements made at the streambed-stream water interface. Specifically, the inverted sediment imaginary conductivity is less impacted by uncertainty in the water layer depth and conductivity relative to the real conductivity and phase shift. Field CC measurements along a landfill-impacted river reveal discrete streambed zones with enhanced bulk surface area generally corresponding to anoxic groundwater discharge zones with high concentrations of fine-grained iron oxide precipitates.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Influences on Discharge Partitioning on a Large River Delta: Case Study of the Mississippi-Atchafalaya Diversion, 1926-1950

The modern Mississippi River (M.R.) Delta is plumbed by the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers, setting water and sediment dispersal pathways for Earth’s fifth-largest river system. The Atchafalaya River’s (A.R.) partial annexation of discharge from the M.R., particularly between 1926 and 1950, prompted warnings of a rapid river avulsion and the construction of the Old River Control Structure to regulate flow. Natural and anthropogenic causes of this discharge annexation are difficult to disentangle. Here, we develop and validate a hydrodynamic model of flow partitioning through the historic channel network. We then isolate how several key changes to the system affected discharge partitioning and stage at the A.R.-M.R. diversion. Simulations show that erosion of the upper A.R. can account for 73% of the water discharge increase. Dredging in the lower A.R. between 1932 and 1950 can account for 35% of the water discharge increase, and was also an important control on shear stress distribution. The lower M.R. was slightly erosional during this period, and therefore hindered the A.R. discharge increase. Significant lacustrine delta deposition in A.R. had little effect on partitioning. These findings highlight the importance of A.R. enlargement processes on avulsion dynamics at this site. Given the essential nature of this river junction to the society, transportation, and commerce of the United States, improved attribution of discharge increases may lead to future management strategies that are broadly impactful.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Porosity-Permeability Evolution During Simultaneous Mineral Dissolution and Precipitation

Permeability in reactive porous media evolves in complex ways that are hard to predict. Macroscopic empirical equations are often used to estimate permeability evolution but fail to reflect the impact of pore scale reactions on permeability. This work aims to understand the evolution of permeability in systems where mineral dissolution and precipitation occur simultaneously. Pore network models are used for permeability simulation of a Paluxy sandstone using pore and pore-throat size distributions from the analysis of X-ray CT images. Pore and pore-throat radii are increased and decreased to reflect the effects of dissolution and precipitation reactions. Varying spatial distributions of reactions are simulated and the resulting porosity and permeability values compared with commonly used macroscopic equations. It is observed that when dissolution occurs at the inlet and precipitation at the outlet, porosity increases while permeability decreases. Similar results are also observed in the respective opposite scenario where precipitation occurs at the inlet and dissolution at the outlet. When dissolution and precipitation reactions are randomly distributed throughout the network, porosity increases with little change in permeability that is not captured by the empirical equations. When reactions are controlled by pore and pore-throat sizes, such as dissolution occurring in pores and pore-throats of small size and precipitation in pores and pore-throats of larger size, porosity and permeability decrease. When precipitation occurs in pores and pore-throats of smaller size and dissolution in pores and pore-throats of larger size, porosity and permeability increase and is described relatively well by the Verma-Pruess porosity-permeability equation.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Potential Chemical Impacts of Subsurface CO 2 : An Integrated Experimental and Numerical Assessment for a Case Study of the Ogallala Aquifer

Leakage from geologic CO 2 sequestration (GCS) reservoirs to overlying underground sources of drinking water (USDW) is a tangible risk. This study is an integrated assessment that combines column experiments and reactive transport simulations of sediments sampled from the Ogallala aquifer above an active commercial-scale GCS site (the Farnsworth Unit in northern Texas). Experimental and simulation results suggest that carbonate mineral (calcite and dolomite) dissolution is the most significant reaction following CO 2 intrusion, and is also the dominant source of trace metal release. Cation exchange is another key mechanism controlling trace metal release by cation interference. Most of the trace metals, including Ba, Sr, As, Pb, and Zn, show a short-term release and quickly drop to the baseline values, suggesting low risk to the overlying USDW quality. Other trace metals, such as Mn and U, exhibit a tangible increase of their concentrations in the beginning, and drop to a higher level compared to the baseline, which may become a potential concern of long-term USDW quality change with CO2introduction. This study provides a comprehensive example of combining laboratory experiments and simulations for assessment of CO 2 -sediment interactions with combined release mechanisms in shallow groundwater aquifers. Data presented here provides useful insights for quantitative risk assessment and effective public education regarding CO 2 geological sequestration, and trace metal reactive transport studies in shallow groundwater aquifers.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Hyporheic Oxygen Dynamics in the East River, Colorado: Insights From an In–Situ, High Frequency Time Series During Two Distinct Flow Seasons

Dissolved oxygen (DO) is critical for aquatic ecosystems, however, few studies have focused on the long-term DO dynamics in hyporheic zones, which are a function of both transport (hydrologic exchange between river and hyporheic zone) and uptake by biogeochemical reactions or respiration. We explore the dynamics of temperature and DO at 10, 20, and 35 cm depth beneath the East River, Colorado, from July–October 2017 (relatively normal water year) and April to October 2018 (comparatively low flow year), enabled by distinctive, in-situ, high frequency (Δt = 5 min) sensors that provided continuous time-series from the undisturbed study site over 14 months. We expect that hyporheic DO, which has a regular daily fluctuation pattern, is supplied by the surface water (at all times we estimate downwelling) and that diurnal hyporheic DO temporal patterns should be aligned with diurnal hyporheic temperature patterns. However, this was not found to be the case. Hyporheic DO becomes depleted briefly at 20 and 35 cm depths in 2017, and at all three hyporheic depths for extended periods in 2018. Whereas diurnal temperature fluctuations have consistent timings of maxima and minima, hyporheic DO rarely has as regular a pattern, and daily ranges are inconsistent. Rainfall events caused some of these changes to diurnal hyporheic DO patterns without repeatable effects. Antecedent snowpack conditions influence streamflow dynamics and therefore hyporheic DO dynamics in this alpine river. These results also point to the strong and variable influence of hyporheic microbial communities regulating hyporheic DO.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Method of Distributions for Two‐Phase Flow in Heterogeneous Porous Media

Abstract Multiscale heterogeneity and insufficient characterization data for a specific subsurface formation of interest render predictions of multi‐phase fluid flow in geologic formations highly uncertain. Quantification of the uncertainty propagation from the geomodel to the fluid‐flow response is typically done within a probabilistic framework. This task is computationally demanding due to, for example, the slow convergence of Monte Carlo simulations (MCS), especially when computing the tails of a distribution that are necessary for risk assessment and decision‐making under uncertainty. The frozen streamlines method (FROST) accelerates probabilistic predictions of immiscible two‐phase fluid flow problems; however, FROST relies on MCS to compute the travel‐time distribution, which is then used to perform the transport (phase saturation) computations. To alleviate this computational bottleneck, we replace MCS with a deterministic equation for the cumulative distribution function (CDF) of travel time. The resulting CDF‐FROST approach yields the CDF of the saturation field without resorting to sampling‐based strategies. Our numerical experiments demonstrate the high accuracy of CDF‐FROST in computing the CDFs of both saturation and travel time. For the same accuracy, it is about 5 and 10 times faster than FROST and MCS, respectively.

Yang, Hyung Jun↗

Testing Hidden Assumptions of Representativeness in Reach-Scale Studies of Hyporheic Exchange

Field studies of hyporheic exchange in mountain systems are often conducted using short study reaches and a limited number of observations. It is common practice to assume these study reaches represent hyporheic exchange at larger scales or different sites and to infer general relationships among potential causal mechanisms from the limited number of observations. However, these assumptions of representativeness are rarely tested. In this study, we develop numerical models from four segments of mountain streams in different geomorphologic settings and extract shorter reaches to test how representative exchange metrics are in shorter reaches compared to their reference segments. We also map the locations of the representative reaches to determine if a pattern exists based on location. Finally, we compare variance of these shorter within-site reaches to 29 additional reaches across the same basin to understand the impacts of inferring causal mechanisms, for example, the expectation that wide and narrow valley bottoms will yield different hyporheic exchange patterns. Our results show that the location and length strategy of the study reach must be considered before assuming an exchange metric to be representative of anything other than the exact segment studied. Further, it is necessary to quantify within and between site variations before making causal inferences based on observable characteristics, such as valley width or stream morphology. Our findings have implications for future field practices and how those practices are translated into models.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Combining Remotely Sensed Evapotranspiration and an Agroecosystem Model to Estimate Center‐Pivot Irrigation Water Use at High Spatio‐Temporal Resolution

Abstract Estimating irrigation water use accurately is critical for sustainable irrigation and studying terrestrial water cycle in irrigated croplands. However, irrigation is not monitored in most places, and current estimations of irrigation water use has coarse spatial and/or temporal resolutions. This study aims to estimate irrigation water use at the daily and field scale through the proposed model‐data fusion framework, which is achieved by particle filtering with two configurations (concurrent, CON, and sequential, SEQ) by assimilating satellite‐based evapotranspiration (ET) observations into an advanced agroecosystem model, ecosys . Two types of experiments using synthetic and real ET observations were conducted to study the efficacy of the proposed framework for estimating irrigation water use at the irrigated fields in eastern and western Nebraska, United States. The experiments using synthetic ET observations indicated that, for two major sources of uncertainties of ET difference between observations and model simulations, which are bias and noise, noise had larger impacts on degrading the estimation performance of irrigation water use than bias. For the experiments using real ET observations, monthly and annual estimations of irrigation water use matched well with farmer irrigation records, with Pearson correlation coefficient ( r ) around 0.80 and 0.50, respectively. Although detecting daily irrigation records was very challenging, our method still gave a good performance with RMSE, BIAS, and r around 2.90, 0.03, and 0.4 mm/d, respectively. Our proposed model‐data fusion framework for estimating irrigation water use at high spatio‐temporal resolution could contribute to regional water management, sustainable irrigation, and better tracking terrestrial water cycle.

Environmental Sciences & Ecology↗

Automated Symbolic Upscaling: 1. Model Generation for Extended Applicability Regimes

Abstract In porous media theory, upscaling techniques are fundamental to deriving rigorous Darcy‐scale models for flow and reactive transport in subsurface systems. Due to limitations in classical techniques, a number of ad hoc approaches have been proposed to address physical regimes in which reactive time scales are similar to, or faster than, diffusive time scales. In Part 1 of this two part series, we present a strategy for expanding the applicability of classical homogenization theory by generalizing the assumed closure form. We detail the implementation of this strategy on two reactive mass transport problems with moderately reactive physics. The strategy produces nontrivial homogenized models with emergent terms and effective parameters that couple reactive, diffusive, and advective transport. The differences in equation forms between the macroscopic and pore‐scale descriptions advise caution to further studies where the forms of macroscopic equations are assumed, as opposed to rigorously derived. Numerical validation is provided for each problem to show that the error estimates of homogenization theory are satisfied, and to justify the implemented strategy. In Part 2, the presented strategy is automated using symbolic computing to expedite its implementation.

Pietrzyk, Kyle↗

Evaporation and Transpiration From Multiple Proximal Forests and Wetlands

Abstract Climate change is intensifying the hydrologic cycle and altering ecosystem function, including water flux to the atmosphere through evapotranspiration (ET). ET is made up of evaporation (E) via non‐stomatal surfaces, and transpiration (T) through plant stomata which are impacted by global changes in different ways. E and T are difficult to measure independently at the ecosystem scale, especially across multiple sites that represent different land use and land management strategies. To address this gap in understanding, we applied flux variance similarity (FVS) to quantify how E and T differ across 13 different ecosystems measured using eddy covariance in a 10 × 10 km area from the CHEESEHEAD19 experiment in northern Wisconsin, USA. The study sites included eight forests with a large deciduous broadleaf component, three evergreen needleleaf forests, and two wetlands. Average T/ET for the study period averaged nearly 52% in forested sites and 45% in wetlands, with larger values after excluding periods following rain events when evaporation from canopy interception may be expected. A dominance analysis revealed that environmental variables explained on average 69% of the variance of half‐hourly T, which decreased from summer to autumn. Deciduous and evergreen forests showed similar E trajectories over time despite differences in vegetation phenology, and vapor pressure deficit explained some 13% of the variance E in wetlands but only 5% or less in forests. Retrieval of E and T within a dense network of flux towers lends confidence that FVS is a promising approach for comparing ecosystem hydrology across multiple sites to improve our process‐based understanding of ecosystem water fluxes.

Environmental Sciences & Ecology↗