Sharif Digital Repository

Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) play a significant role in hydraulic modeling and flood risk management. This study initially investigated the effect of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) DEM resolutions, ranging from 1 m to 30 m, on flood characteristics, including the inundation area, mean flow depth, and mean flow velocity. Then, the errors of flood characteristics for global DEMs, comprising ALOS (30 m), ASTER (30 m), SRTM (30 m), and TDX (12 m) were quantified using UAV DEM measurements. For these purposes, the HEC-RAS 2D model in steady-state conditions was used to simulate the flood with return periods of 5- to 200 years along 20 km reach of Atrak River located in northeastern Iran.... 

Recently, remote sensing considered as important tool in studies of water quality issues. The Aras River flows across a transboundary basin in northern Iran. In this study, the aim is to model the water quality parameters (WQPs) using remote sensing and an artificial neural network (ANN), which is a new method proposed to find WQPs based on multivariate regression approaches. The relationship between WQPs and digital data from the Sentinel-2 satellite was determined to estimate and map the WQPs in this river. Using the field data and digital image data, the obtained results show that multivariate regression approaches and high-resolution remote sensing could monitor and predict the... 

Ion-exchange membrane-based reverse electrodialysis (RED) shows great potential for harvesting osmotic energy from seawater and converting it to electricity. However, their low energy conversion efficiency and huge ionic resistance hinder their application on large scales. The implementation of nanofluidic channels in RED devices can significantly improve the performance of osmotic power generators due to their selective and fast ion transport. However, technical challenges in scalable processing at the nanoscale and ion-selective membranes restrict their development in economically viable generators. Here, we report fibrous-based channels as positively and negatively charged MXene fibers... 

Accurate implementation of river interactions with subsurface water is critical in large-scale hydrologic models with a constant horizontal grid resolution when models apply kinematic wave approximation for both hillslope and river channel flow. The size of rivers can vary greatly in the model domain, and the implemented grid resolution is too coarse to accurately account for river interactions. Consequently, the flow velocity is underestimated when the width of the rivers is much narrower than the selected grid size. This leads to inaccuracy and uncertainties in calculations of water quantities. In addition, the rate of exfiltration and infiltration between the river and the subsurface may... 

This study evaluated the efficiency of different Digital Elevation Models (DEMs), including ALOS-12.5 m, SRTM-30 m, SRTM-90 m, and ASTER-30 m v3 when being applied for the hydraulic simulation of flood inundation areas. HEC-RAS-2D model was employed to simulate inundation extent of a 400-year flood (Mar 17, 2019, with peak discharge ~ 547.92 m3/s) along 70 km reach of low-gradient Gorganrood River, northeastern Iran. Fit percentage indicator (FI) and BIAS percentage indicator (BI) were used to evaluate the results in comparison with the remotely sensed inundated area data. The results revealed that the accuracy and capability of the ALOS and SRTM-30 m were higher in simulation of flood... 

Water allocation is a process of identifying the stakeholders, assessing the amount of water they need, and estimating the volume of renewable water resources. This study investigates the coalition possibilities among the riparian in the Aras River as a transboundary basin over-allocating the environmental flow share. To this end, first, the environmental flow is estimated downstream of the basin based on the annual potential runoff. Then, to estimate the agricultural production function in each country, the relationship between the agriculture value-added and the variables like annual potential runoff and capital in the agricultural sector is derived using the seemingly unrelated regression... 

This study presents a comprehensive review of the Land subsidence (LS) cases, as a worldwide environmental, geological, and global geohazard concern. Here, 290 case studies around the world mostly conducted in large metropolitan cities (e.g. Bangkok, Beijing, California, Houston, Mexico City, Shanghai, Jakarta, and Tokyo) in 41 countries were collected. The spatial distribution of LS characteristics (e.g. intensity, magnitude, and affected area), impacts, and influential factors are scrutinized. Worldwide attempts to remedy the crisis of LS were also investigated in this review. It is shown that the coastal plains and river deltaic regions are of high-frequent subsided areas around the world... 

Shallow aquifers in many Holocene alluvial basins around the world have in the last three decades been identified as arsenic pollution hotspots, in which the spatial variation of natural (or: geogenic) arsenic concentration is conditioned by the meandering-river geomorphology and the fluvial lithofacies distribution. Despite the large amount of publications on the specifics of the pollution, still many uncertainties remain as to the provenance and processes that lead to arsenic enrichment in aquifers. In this paper, arsenic in abandoned and sediment-filled meandering-river bends (or: clay-plugs) is highlighted as a primary source of aquifer pollution. The combination of high organic-carbon... 

In this study, a coupling of a hydrologic and hydraulic model was utilized to assess the impacts of river geometry data resolution on the flood inundation characteristics in a data-scarce environment. Hydrological modeling incorporates soil conservation service curve-number (SCS-CN) and the geomorphologic based instantaneous unit hydrograph model (GIUH) to compute the direct runoff hydrograph in Kashkan river basin located in western Iran. 1D HEC-Geo-RAS model was used and performed to simulate inundation extent of 100-yr floods (~1800 m3/s) along 40 km reach of Kashkan river with a ground survey of river cross-section (2000 cross-sections, each including 500 data-points). The effect of... 

Development of visual detection methods regarding water pollutants can effectively facilitate water resource monitoring programs. A wide color-varying ratiometric approach has been developed for sensitive determination of sulfide by mixing orange emissive glutathione stabilized gold nanoclusters (AuNCs) and blue emissive urea stabilized carbon dots (CDs) in an appropriate ratio. Under a single excitation wavelength of 365 nm, the ratiometric fluorescence (RF) probe exhibited two distinct emission bands at 452 and 607 nm corresponding to CDs and AuNCs, respectively. Owing to the high affinity of sulfide ions to AuNCs in alkaline medium, the fluorescence (FL) of AuNCs was turned-off while the... 

Here, a three dimensional nickel–based metal organic framework (MOF) was synthesized via solvothermal and room temperature protocols. In order to study the effects of the synthesis conditions on the physical properties such as pore sizes and shapes of the prepared MOFs, their extraction capabilities were examined. Both MOFs were characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, powder X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, Brunauer–Emmett–Teller and thermogravimetric analyses. Brilliant properties such as porous structure, high surface area and considerable thermal stability make them reasonable candidates to be employed as efficient extractive phases. The efficiency of the... 

Lake Urmia, which was once the second-largest saline lake in the world, has been shrinking dramatically. Moreover, Lake Urmia has become supersaturated with total salinity averaging more than 350 g/l. Salt precipitation and dissolved materials brought by inflowing rivers have formed a layer of sediment with low hydraulic conductivity on the lakebed. Considering the flat bathymetry of Lake Urmia, we conducted a series of numerical simulation scenarios to study the groundwater flow pattern in the vicinity of the hypersaline Lake Urmia using COMSOL Multiphysics®. In the first step, we performed the simulations in steady-state conditions. Secondly, we simulated the lake level fall in 10 years at... 

The global demand for renewable energy sources has arisen significant research interests in marine hydrokinetic energy harvesting from flow induced vibrations. The current study deals with the hydrokinetic energy harvesting potentials of diamond and square oscillators at various inline configurations. Both the sharp edge sections and the wake induced vibrations in tandem arrangement can lead to galloping type of instability with high energy efficiency ratios. The present in-water towing tank experiments comprise 1DoF vibrating systems at Re ranging from 2 × 103 to 4.8 × 104. The results show that the upstream wake generally enhances the system efficiency and the mechanical work done by the... 

Non-point source pollution of phosphorus (P) is a primary cause of eutrophication of aquatic ecosystems, and poses a persistent management challenge due to the dynamic and poorly understood processes controlling the transport and transformation of P at the watershed scale. We examined phosphorus inputs, retention, and riverine losses in 62 diverse watersheds that included a wide range of land cover and use (minimally disturbed to human dominated) and human P inputs in Minnesota, USA. Fertilizer inputs from row crop cultivation were the dominant source of P to agricultural watersheds. A large majority of P inputs was retained in watershed soils or removed in agricultural products. However,... 

Understanding controls of P movement through watersheds are essential for improved landscape management in intensively managed regions. Here, we analyze observational data from 104 gaged river sites and 176 nongaged river sites within agriculturally dominated watersheds of Minnesota, USA, to understand the role of landscape features, land use practices, climate variability, and biogeochemical processes in total, dissolved and particulate P dynamics at daily to annual scales. Our analyses demonstrate that factors mediating P concentration-discharge relationships varied greatly across watersheds and included near-channel sediment sources, lake and wetland interception, assimilation by algal P,... 

Dam construction in arid and semiarid regions is generally related to the risk of increased salinity, due to water passage in contact with salty formations. Hence, it is important to take reservoir thermal and salinity stratification into account in operational rules. In the present study, a simulation–optimization model was developed to determine the amount of water release from various outlets to discharge the brine from hypolimnion layer considering the downstream water quality limitations. The most appropriate time, rate, and concentration to release brine were determined based on water consumption conditions and downstream water demand and river ecology characteristics. The proposed... 

This study proposes a novel socio-hydrological modeling framework for assessing the performance of complex water resources systems. It employs and integrates agent-based modeling (ABM) and the theory of planned behavior (TPB) into the socio-hydrological modeling framework to account for agents’ behaviors. Due to farmers’ major role in anthropogenic droughts, this paper mainly focuses on farmers’ behavior. The TPB framework and the agents’ behavioral rules in ABM are structured based on the data obtained from field questionnaires and interviews by the farmers in the Zarrineh River Basin as the main river feeding the Urmia Lake. The proposed modeling framework, including the TPB and ABM... 

The accuracy of five soft computing techniques was assessed for the prediction of monthly streamflow of the Gilgit river basin by a cross-validation method. The five techniques assessed were the feed-forward neural network (FFNN), the radial basis neural network (RBNN), the generalised regression neural network (GRNN), the adaptive neuro fuzzy inference system with grid partition (Anfis-GP) and the adaptive neuro fuzzy inference system with subtractive clustering (Anfis-SC). The interaction between temperature and streamflow was considered in the study. Two statistical indexes, mean square error (MSE) and coefficient of determination (R2), were used to evaluate the performances of the... 

Observatory-scale data collection efforts allow unprecedented opportunities for integrative, multidisciplinary investigations in large, complex watersheds, which can affect management decisions and policy. Through the National Science Foundation-funded REACH (REsilience under Accelerated CHange) project, in collaboration with the Intensively Managed Landscapes-Critical Zone Observatory, we have collected a series of multidisciplinary data sets throughout the Minnesota River Basin in south-central Minnesota, USA, a 43,400-km2 tributary to the Upper Mississippi River. Postglacial incision within the Minnesota River valley created an erosional landscape highly responsive to hydrologic change,... 

Various urban, industrial, and agricultural pollutions discharge more than river self-purification potential damages river ecosystem and increases water treatment costs. As different decision-makers and stakeholders are involved in the water quality management in river systems, a new bankruptcy form of the game theory is used to resolve the existing conflict of interests related to waste load allocation in downstream river. The river restoration potential can allocate to the conflicting parties with respect to their claims, by using bankruptcy solution methods. In this research, dischargeable pollution loads to Karun River are determined by pollution sources in various scenarios using...