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Mark Edward Borsuk

Mark Edward Borsuk

James L. and Elizabeth M. Vincent Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Civil and Environmental Engineering
mark.borsuk@duke.edu
Box 90287, 166 Hudson Hall, Durham, NC 27708
166 Hudson Hall, Box 90287, Durham, NC 27708

Selected Publications

Ecosystem technology (ecotech): Harnessing natural processes to address global challenges.

Journal Article Science advances · May 2026 Over the past 80 years, biotechnology has advanced agriculture, health care, and economic development by harnessing biological processes from the organism inward, i.e., from the organ system to the molecular scale. Today's global challenges, including biod ... Full text Cite

A Standardized Definition of Rapid Evidence Assessment for Environmental Applications

Journal Article Conservation Letters · January 1, 2026 Evidence assessment—identifying, evaluating, and synthesizing data and findings from previous studies—is important to inform environmental decision-making but can be slow and resource intensive. Users seeking efficiency have developed multiple definitions ... Full text Cite

Local land-use decisions drive losses in river biological integrity to 2099: Using machine learning to disentangle interacting drivers of ecological change in policy forecasts

Journal Article Meteorological Applications · January 1, 2025 Climate and land-use/land-cover (LULC) change each threaten the health of rivers. Rising temperatures, changes in rainfall and runoff, and other perturbations, will all impact rivers' physical, biological, and chemical characteristics over the next century ... Full text Cite

Multi-Risk Governance of Solar Radiation Modification

Journal Article European Journal of Risk Regulation · 2025 Link to item Cite

Causal inference to scope environmental impact assessment of renewable energy projects and test competing mental models of decarbonization

Journal Article Environmental Research Infrastructure and Sustainability · December 1, 2024 Environmental impact assessment (EIA), life cycle analysis (LCA), and cost benefit analysis (CBA) embed crucial but subjective judgments over the extent of system boundaries and the range of impacts to consider as causally connected to an intervention, dec ... Full text Cite

Remotely sensed above-ground storage tank dataset for object detection and infrastructure assessment.

Journal Article Scientific data · January 2024 Remotely sensed imagery has increased dramatically in quantity and public availability. However, automated, large-scale analysis of such imagery is hindered by a lack of the annotations necessary to train and test machine learning algorithms. In this study ... Full text Cite

Patterns of Co-contamination in Freshwater and Marine Fish of the Northeastern USA

Journal Article Environmental Modeling and Assessment · December 1, 2023 Many bioaccumulative and toxic contaminants are known to co-occur in fish tissue, yet this covariance has not been explicitly incorporated into model-based risk assessments that inform fish consumption advisories. We utilize available U.S. EPA datasets to ... Full text Cite

Total Social Costs and Benefits of Long-Distance Hydropower Transmission.

Journal Article Environmental science & technology · December 2022 Increasing amounts of hydropower are being exported from Canada to the northern United States. Recently proposed projects would increase transmission capacity to U.S. population centers without increasing generation. This avoids generation-side impacts fro ... Full text Cite

A Differentiable Hydrology Approach for Modeling With Time-Varying Parameters

Journal Article Water Resources Research · September 1, 2022 In the analysis of observational data with mathematical models, it is often desirable to let one or more model parameters vary with time to account for changing environmental conditions or to offer more flexibility. A standard approach for dynamic models i ... Full text Cite

Emerald ash borer intensifies harvest regimes on private land.

Journal Article Ecological applications : a publication of the Ecological Society of America · March 2022 Invasive forest insects have significant direct impacts on forest ecosystems and they are also generating new risks, uncertainties, and opportunities for forest landowners. The growing prevalence and inexorable spread of invasive insects across the United ... Full text Cite

A methodological framework for understanding shared social values in deliberative valuation

Journal Article Ecological Economics · December 1, 2021 Deliberative methods elicit social values and provide a framework for explicit representation of value dimensions that go beyond narrow self-interest; these dimensions are obscured by methods that focus on monetary value. The primary objective of this pape ... Full text Cite

Using the Theory of Planned Behavior to Understand Family Forest Owners’ Intended Responses to Invasive Forest Insects

Journal Article Society and Natural Resources · January 1, 2021 Private landowner participation in management initiatives can be encouraged by interventions, which must resonate with the underlying subjective motivations of the landowners. In this study, we use the Theory of Planned Behavior to gauge the relative influ ... Full text Cite

Using Zillow data to value green space amenities at the neighborhood scale

Journal Article Urban Forestry and Urban Greening · December 1, 2020 It is important to quantify the value of green space amenities in order to justify the cost of their creation and maintenance; furthermore, advances in available data and methods have produced exciting ways to measure the economic values of green infrastru ... Full text Cite

Graphical models and the challenge of evidence-based practice in development and sustainability

Journal Article Environmental Modelling and Software · August 1, 2020 Governments and social benefit organizations are expected to consider evidence in decision-making. In development and sustainability, evidence spans disciplines and methodological traditions and is often inconclusive. Graphical models are widely promoted t ... Full text Cite

A spatial community regression approach to exploratory analysis of ecological data

Journal Article Methods in Ecology and Evolution · May 1, 2020 Ecological datasets tabulating hundreds or thousands of species are now becoming available. Identifying and understanding the underlying clustering or communities of species which comprise these datasets is difficult with existing joint species distributio ... Full text Cite

Potential impacts of insect-induced harvests in the mixed forests of new England

Journal Article Forests · May 1, 2020 Forest insects and pathogens have significant impacts on U.S. forests, annually affecting an area nearly three times that of wildfires and timber harvesting combined. However, coupled with these direct effects of forest insects and pathogens are the indire ... Full text Cite

Landowner functional types to characterize response to invasive forest insects

Journal Article People and Nature · March 1, 2020 Invasive forest insects can induce tree mortality in two ways: (a) by directly harming trees; or (b) by influencing forest owners to pre-emptively harvest threatened trees. This study investigates forest owners’ intentions to harvest trees threatened by in ... Full text Cite

Compounding the Disturbance: Family Forest Owner Reactions to Invasive Forest Insects

Journal Article Ecological Economics · January 1, 2020 Invasive forest insect and pathogens (FIP) are having significant, direct, adverse impacts. Interactions between FIPs and forest owners have the potential to create ecosystem impacts that compound direct impacts. We assessed family forest owners' responses ... Full text Cite

Representing future generations in the deliberative valuation of ecosystem services

Journal Article Elementa · January 1, 2020 Even though decisions taken today about managing ecosystem services are likely to have an effect on future generations' well-being, decision making is based largely on current generations' values, including altruistic concern for posterity. Deliberative fo ... Full text Cite

Effects of temperature, salinity, and sediment organic carbon on methylmercury bioaccumulation in an estuarine amphipod.

Journal Article The Science of the total environment · October 2019 Mercury (Hg) is a global contaminant that poses a human health risk in its organic form, methylmercury (MeHg), through consumption of fish and fishery products. Bioaccumulation of Hg in the aquatic environment is controlled by a number of factors expected ... Full text Cite

Forecasting ecosystem services to guide coastal wetland rehabilitation decisions

Journal Article Ecosystem Services · October 1, 2019 Coastal wetlands provide diverse ecosystem services such as flood protection and recreational value. However, predicting changes in ecosystem service value fr0k from restoration or management is challenging because environmental systems are highly complex ... Full text Cite

Communicating Arsenic's Risks.

Journal Article International journal of environmental research and public health · September 2019 Arsenic is a naturally occurring toxic metalloid that has many human health implications. Its strong prevalence in the bedrock and thus much of the well water in New England puts many private well owners at risk. It is also found in food products, particul ... Full text Cite

Corrigendum to “Transparent and feasible uncertainty assessment adds value to applied ecosystem services modeling” [Ecosystem Services 33 (2018) 103–109](S2212041618303218)(10.1016/j.ecoser.2018.09.001)

Journal Article Ecosystem Services · August 1, 2019 The authors regret that the original article failed to accurately acknowledge funding sources to SESYNC, which were used to fund the workshop that motivated this special issue as well as the open access for this article, and for which we are grateful. The ... Full text Cite

Gradient-Based Inverse Estimation for a Rainfall-Runoff Model

Journal Article Water Resources Research · August 1, 2019 Recent advances in deep learning for neural networks with large numbers of parameters have been enabled by automatic differentiation, an algorithmic technique for calculating gradients of measures of model fit with respect to model parameters. Estimation o ... Full text Cite

Aligning evidence generation and use across health, development, and environment

Journal Article Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability · August 1, 2019 Although health, development, and environment challenges are interconnected, evidence remains fractured across sectors due to methodological and conceptual differences in research and practice. Aligned methods are needed to support Sustainable Development ... Full text Cite

Deliberative multiattribute valuation of ecosystem services across a range of regional land-use, socioeconomic, and climate scenarios for the upper merrimack river watershed, New Hampshire, USA

Journal Article Ecology and Society · July 1, 2019 We evaluate the relative desirability of alternative futures for the upper Merrimack River watershed in New Hampshire, USA based on the value of ecosystem services at the end of the 21st century as gauged by its present-day inhabitants. This evaluation is ... Full text Cite

Probabilistic programming: A review for environmental modellers

Journal Article Environmental Modelling and Software · April 1, 2019 The development process for an environmental model involves multiple iterations of a planning-implementation-assessment cycle. Probabilistic programming languages (PPLs) are designed to expedite this process with general-purpose methods for implementing mo ... Full text Cite

Transparent and feasible uncertainty assessment adds value to applied ecosystem services modeling

Journal Article Ecosystem Services · October 1, 2018 We introduce a special issue that aims to simultaneously motivate interest in uncertainty assessment (UA) and reduce the barriers practitioners face in conducting it. The issue, “Demonstrating transparent, feasible, and useful uncertainty assessment in eco ... Full text Cite

Identifying Wetland Consolidation Using Remote Sensing in the North Dakota Prairie Pothole Region

Journal Article Water Resources Research · October 1, 2018 Artificial drainage of wetlands in the Great Plains has been linked to increased runoff, erosion, and the consolidation of small, seasonal wetlands into larger, more permanent bodies of water. We analyzed hydrologic changes to over 1.2 million water bodies ... Full text Cite

A coupled terrestrial and aquatic biogeophysical model of the Upper Merrimack River watershed, New Hampshire, to inform ecosystem services evaluation and management under climate and land-cover change

Journal Article Ecology and Society · December 1, 2017 Accurate quantification of ecosystem services (ES) at regional scales is increasingly important for making informed decisions in the face of environmental change. We linked terrestrial and aquatic ecosystem process models to simulate the spatial and tempor ... Full text Cite

Comparing group deliberation to other forms of preference aggregation in valuing ecosystem services

Journal Article Ecology and Society · December 1, 2017 Deliberative methods for valuing ecosystem services are hypothesized to yield group preferences that differ systematically from those that would be obtained through calculative aggregation of the preferences of participating individuals. We tested this hyp ... Full text Cite

A novel deliberative multicriteria evaluation approach to ecosystem service valuation

Journal Article Ecology and Society · June 1, 2017 Although efforts to address ecosystem services in decision making have advanced considerably in recent years, there remain challenges related to valuation. In particular, conventional economic approaches have been criticized for their inability to capture ... Full text Cite

Integration of ecological-biological thresholds in conservation decision making.

Journal Article Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology · December 2016 In the Anthropocene, coupled human and natural systems dominate and only a few natural systems remain relatively unaffected by human influence. On the one hand, conservation criteria based on areas of minimal human impact are not relevant to much of the bi ... Full text Cite

Methods for translating narrative scenarios into quantitative assessments of land use change

Journal Article Environmental Modelling and Software · August 1, 2016 In the land use and land cover (LULC) literature, narrative scenarios are qualitative descriptions of plausible futures associated with a combination of socio-economic, policy, technological, and climate changes. LULC models are then often used to translat ... Full text Cite

Improving structure MCMC for Bayesian networks through Markov Blanket resampling

Journal Article Journal of Machine Learning Research · April 1, 2016 Algorithms for inferring the structure of Bayesian networks from data have become an increasingly popular method for uncovering the direct and indirect influences among variables in complex systems. A Bayesian approach to structure learning uses posterior ... Cite

Trade-offs between three forest ecosystem services across the state of New Hampshire, USA: timber, carbon, and albedo.

Journal Article Ecological applications : a publication of the Ecological Society of America · January 2016 Forests are more frequently being managed to store and sequester carbon for the purposes of climate change mitigation. Generally, this practice involves long-term conservation of intact mature forests and/or reductions in the frequency and intensity of tim ... Full text Cite

A Community-Driven Intervention in Tuftonboro, New Hampshire, Succeeds in Altering Water Testing Behavior.

Journal Article Journal of environmental health · December 2015 Maximum contaminant levels created by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under the Safe Drinking Water Act do not apply to private wells. Rather, the onus is on individual households to undertake regular water testing. Several barriers exist to testi ... Cite

An application of automated mediation to international climate treaty negotiation

Journal Article Group Decision and Negotiation · September 1, 2015 A generic framework for automated mediation of multi-attribute negotiation has recently been reported (Lai and Sycara in Group Decis Negot 18:169-187, 2009). This framework seeks to shorten time to agreement, achieve agreements that are closer to Pareto op ... Full text Cite

Genetic polymorphisms modify bladder cancer recurrence and survival in a USA population-based prognostic study.

Journal Article BJU international · February 2015 ObjectiveTo identify genetic variants that modify bladder cancer prognosis focusing on genes involved in major biological carcinogenesis processes (apoptosis, proliferation, DNA repair, hormone regulation, immune surveillance, and cellular metabol ... Full text Cite

Perceptions of Mercury Risk and Its Management

Journal Article Human and Ecological Risk Assessment · September 1, 2014 Anthropogenic activities, such as coal burning for electricity generation, release mercury (Hg), a toxic, bioaccumulative pollutant with potential health impacts primarily borne by specific population groups such as women of child-bearing age and subsisten ... Full text Cite

The effect of ambiguous prior knowledge on Bayesian model parameter inference and prediction

Journal Article Environmental Modelling and Software · January 1, 2014 Environmental modeling often requires combining prior knowledge with information obtained from data. The robust Bayesian approach makes it possible to consider ambiguity in this prior knowledge. Describing such ambiguity using sets of probability distribut ... Full text Cite

Incorporating prior expert knowledge in learning Bayesian networks from genetic epidemiological data

Conference 2014 IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Cibcb 2014 · January 1, 2014 We consider the applicability of Bayesian networks (BNs) for discovering relations between genes, environment, and disease. Most state-of-the-art BN structure learning algorithms are not capable of learning structures from data containing missing values, w ... Full text Cite

Benthic and pelagic pathways of methylmercury bioaccumulation in estuarine food webs of the northeast United States.

Journal Article PloS one · January 2014 Methylmercury (MeHg) is a contaminant of global concern that bioaccumulates and bioamagnifies in marine food webs. Lower trophic level fauna are important conduits of MeHg from sediment and water to estuarine and coastal fish harvested for human consumptio ... Full text Cite

Risk mitigation and the social cost of carbon

Journal Article Global Environmental Change · January 1, 2014 The social cost of carbon - i.e., the marginal present-value cost imposed by greenhouse gas emissions - is determined by a complex interaction between factual assumptions, modeling methods, and value judgments. Among the most crucial factors is society's w ... Full text Cite

Nuclear repulsion enables division autonomy in a single cytoplasm.

Journal Article Curr Biol · October 21, 2013 BACKGROUND: Current models of cell-cycle control, based on classic studies of fused cells, predict that nuclei in a shared cytoplasm respond to the same CDK activities to undergo synchronous cycling. However, synchrony is rarely observed in naturally occur ... Full text Link to item Cite

Selecting among five common modelling approaches for integrated environmental assessment and management

Journal Article Environmental Modelling and Software · September 1, 2013 The design and implementation of effective environmental policies need to be informed by a holistic understanding of the system processes (biophysical, social and economic), their complex interactions, and how they respond to various changes. Models, integ ... Full text Cite

Protein aggregation behavior regulates cyclin transcript localization and cell-cycle control.

Journal Article Dev Cell · June 24, 2013 Little is known about the active positioning of transcripts outside of embryogenesis or highly polarized cells. We show here that a specific G1 cyclin transcript is highly clustered in the cytoplasm of large multinucleate cells. This heterogeneous cyclin t ... Full text Link to item Cite

Innovative approaches to integrated global change modelling

Journal Article Environmental Modelling and Software · June 1, 2013 Integrated models are important tools to investigate the interactions between planetary processes and the growing impacts of human populations - in short: global change. Current models still have significant shortcomings, notably in their representation of ... Full text Cite

Discovering plausible energy and economic futures under global change using multidimensional scenario discovery

Journal Article Environmental Modelling and Software · June 1, 2013 The use of scenarios has proven valuable for global change analysis as a means for organizing and communicating information about uncertain future socioeconomic conditions. A small group of well-defined scenarios can provide a set of standard reference cas ... Full text Cite

Agent-based modeling of climate policy: An introduction to the ENGAGE multi-level model framework

Journal Article Environmental Modelling and Software · June 1, 2013 Model-based support of climate policy is scientifically challenging because climate change involves linked physical and social systems that operate on multiple levels: local, national, and international. As a result, models must employ some strongly simpli ... Full text Cite

Using Bayesian networks to discover relations between genes, environment, and disease.

Journal Article BioData mining · March 2013 We review the applicability of Bayesian networks (BNs) for discovering relations between genes, environment, and disease. By translating probabilistic dependencies among variables into graphical models and vice versa, BNs provide a comprehensible and modul ... Full text Cite

The interplay between risk attitudes and low probability, high cost outcomes in climate policy analysis

Journal Article Environmental Modelling and Software · March 1, 2013 Assessing the value of climate change mitigation requires an analysis framework that can account for society's attitude toward the risk of uncertain outcomes, especially those with low probability and high cost. For largely historical and computational rea ... Full text Cite

Interannual variability in the timing of New England shellfish toxicity and relationships to environmental forcing.

Journal Article The Science of the total environment · March 2013 Routine monitoring along the coast of the Gulf of Maine (GoM) reveals shellfish toxicity nearly every summer, but at varying times, locations, and magnitudes. The responsible toxin is known to be produced by the dinoflagellate Alexandrium fundyense, yet th ... Full text Cite

Exploring energy and economic futures using agent-based modeling and scenario discovery

Journal Article Understanding Complex Systems · January 1, 2013 By illuminating a range of possible futures, scenario analysis has proven valuable as a means for organizing and communicating the many uncertainties associated with predicting the development of the linked energy, economic, and climate systems. Thus far, ... Full text Cite

Integrated assessment of mitigation strategies using an agent-based model of the linked energy, economic, and climate system

Conference Iemss 2012 Managing Resources of A Limited Planet Proceedings of the 6th Biennial Meeting of the International Environmental Modelling and Software Society · December 1, 2012 An alternative to the typical application of rational choice models to climate policy is the coupling of agent-based modeling and exploratory approaches. Agent-based models (ABMs) represent the world as made up of heterogeneous, boundedly-rational agents w ... Cite

A possible integration of multiple paradigms used in integrated assessment modelling of climate change

Conference Iemss 2012 Managing Resources of A Limited Planet Proceedings of the 6th Biennial Meeting of the International Environmental Modelling and Software Society · December 1, 2012 Most of the models used to analyze international climate policy treat the problem as if it operates on only a single level. This is the result of a reliance on integrated assessment models (IAMs) that, for reasons of analytical tractability, typically empl ... Cite

Rare disasters and risk attitudes: international differences and implications for integrated assessment modeling.

Journal Article Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis · November 2012 Evaluation of public policies with uncertain economic outcomes should consider society's preferences regarding risk. However, the preference models used in most integrated assessment models, including those commonly used to inform climate policy, do not ad ... Full text Cite

Bridging uncertain and ambiguous knowledge with imprecise probabilities

Journal Article Environmental Modelling and Software · October 1, 2012 Model-based environmental decision support requires that uncertainty be rigorously evaluated. Whether uncertainty is aleatory or epistemic, we argue that probability is the natural mathematical construct for describing uncertainty in predictions used for d ... Full text Cite

A Bayesian network model for integrative river rehabilitation planning and management.

Journal Article Integrated environmental assessment and management · July 2012 As rehabilitation of previously channelized rivers becomes more common worldwide, flexible integrative modeling tools are needed to help predict the morphological, hydraulic, economic, and ecological consequences of the rehabilitation activities. Such pred ... Full text Cite

Bayesian networks in environmental and resource management.

Journal Article Integrated environmental assessment and management · July 2012 This overview article for the special series, "Bayesian Networks in Environmental and Resource Management," reviews 7 case study articles with the aim to compare Bayesian network (BN) applications to different environmental and resource management problems ... Full text Cite

Weighted multiple testing procedures for genomic studies

Journal Article Biodata Mining · June 11, 2012 With the rapid development of biological technology, measurement of thousands of genes or SNPs can be carried out simultaneously. Improved procedures for multiple hypothesis testing when the number of tests is very large are critical for interpreting genom ... Full text Cite

Best Paper Awards for 2010

Journal Article Environmental Modelling and Software · December 1, 2011 Full text Cite

Eliciting density ratio classes

Journal Article International Journal of Approximate Reasoning · September 1, 2011 The probability distributions of uncertain quantities needed for predictive modelling and decision support are frequently elicited from subject matter experts. However, experts are often uncertain about quantifying their beliefs using precise probability d ... Full text Cite

Parameter optimization and Bayesian inference in an estuarine eutrophication model of intermediate complexity

Conference Modelling for Environment S Sake Proceedings of the 5th Biennial Conference of the International Environmental Modelling and Software Society Iemss 2010 · December 1, 2010 The Neuse River Estuary, North Carolina, has been experiencing severe consequences of eutrophication in recent years including excessive algal blooms, low levels of dissolved oxygen, declining shellfish populations, large fishkills, and outbreaks of toxic ... Cite

Uncertainty and risk in climate projections for the 21st century: Comparing mitigation to non-intervention scenarios

Journal Article Climatic Change · December 1, 2010 Probabilistic climate projections based on two SRES scenarios, an IMAGE reference scenario and five IMAGE mitigation scenarios (all of them multi-gas scenarios) using the Bern2. 5D climate model are calculated. Probability distributions of climate model pa ... Full text Cite

Improving water quality assessments through a hierarchical Bayesian analysis of variability.

Journal Article Environmental science & technology · October 2010 Water quality measurement error and variability, while well-documented in laboratory-scale studies, is rarely acknowledged or explicitly resolved in most model-based water body assessments, including those conducted in compliance with the United States Env ... Full text Cite

A conserved G₁ regulatory circuit promotes asynchronous behavior of nuclei sharing a common cytoplasm.

Journal Article Cell Cycle · September 15, 2010 Synthesis and accumulation of conserved cell cycle regulators such as cyclins are thought to promote G₁/S and G₂/M transitions in most eukaryotes. When cells at different stages of the cell cycle are fused to form heterokaryons, the shared complement of re ... Full text Link to item Cite

Bayesian experimental design of tracer studies to monitor wastewater leakage from sewer networks

Journal Article Water Resources Research · August 19, 2010 Despite more than a decade of research, the magnitude of wastewater leakage from defective sewer systems into groundwater supplies is still largely unknown, partly because reliable measurement methods are lacking. Although recently suggested in-sewer trace ... Full text Cite

Accounting for the risk of extreme outcomes in an integrated assessment of climate change

Journal Article Energy Policy · August 1, 2010 The potential for climate catastrophes, represented by 'fat-tailed' distributions on consequences, has attracted much attention recently. To date, however, most integrated assessment models have either been largely deterministic or deterministic with ex-po ... Full text Cite

Biomass production in switchgrass across the United States: Database description and determinants of yield

Journal Article Agronomy Journal · July 1, 2010 Fundamental to deriving a sustainable supply of cellulosic feedstock for an emerging biofuels industry is understanding how biomass yield varies as a function of crop management, climate, and soils. Here we focus on the perennial switchgrass (Panicum virga ... Full text Cite

Pro-environmental behavior: rational choice meets moral motivation.

Journal Article Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · January 2010 The determinants of individual behaviors that provide shared environmental benefits are a longstanding theme in social science research. Alternative behavioral models yield markedly different predictions and policy recommendations. This paper reviews and c ... Full text Cite

A smoothing algorithm for estimating stochastic, continuous time model parameters and its application to a simple climate model

Journal Article Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series C Applied Statistics · December 1, 2009 Even after careful calibration, the output of deterministic models of environmental systems usually still show systematic deviations from measured data. To analyse possible causes of these discrepancies, we make selected model parameters time variable by t ... Full text Cite

A software tool for translating deterministic model results into probabilistic assessments of water quality standard compliance

Journal Article Environmental Modelling and Software · October 1, 2009 Most assessments of whether a water body will comply with pollutant standards after modification of land use, loading, or climate change are based on the results of deterministic simulation models. These models, including those used to support the United S ... Full text Cite

Addressing stakeholder concerns using the Integrative River Rehabilitation Model (IRRM)

Conference Proc Iemss 4th Biennial Meeting Int Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software Integrating Sciences and Information Technology for Environmental Assessment and Decision Making Iemss 2008 · December 1, 2008 We have previously reported on a variety of modelling methods and decision support concepts that can assist with various aspects of river rehabilitation planning and management. Here, we bring all of these tools together into an Integrative River Rehabilit ... Cite

An assessment of fecal indicator bacteria-based water quality standards.

Journal Article Environmental science & technology · July 2008 Fecal indicator bacteria (FIB) are commonly used to assess the threat of pathogen contamination in coastal and inland waters. Unlike most measures of pollutant levels however, FIB concentration metrics, such as most probable number (MPN) and colony-forming ... Full text Cite

Identifying functional groups of phytoplankton using data from three lakes of different trophic state

Journal Article Aquatic Sciences · April 1, 2008 There is tremendous diversity in species of phytoplankton. Yet one may expect some degree of commonality in the response of similar species to similar conditions. Functional groups are those sets of species that respond similarly to environmental condition ... Full text Cite

Charting a path for innovative toilet technology using multicriteria decision analysis.

Journal Article Environmental science & technology · March 2008 Practical and theoretically sound methods for analyzing innovative environmental technologies are needed to inform public and private decisions regarding research and development, risk management, and stakeholder communication. By integrating scientific as ... Full text Cite

Estrogenic endocrine disruption in Switzerland: Assessment of fish exposure and effects

Journal Article Chimia · January 1, 2008 Estrogenic exposure has been reported to occur in Swiss rivers, and there is concern that reduced reproductive health, caused by disturbances of the endocrine system, may contribute to the observed decline in brown trout catch. Consequently, we aimed to de ... Full text Cite

Statistical Prediction

Chapter · January 1, 2008 Statistical models help ecologists use the patterns they find in their data to make predictions. Such predictions are needed to explore the implications of alternative hypotheses, anticipate the outcomes of possible experimental designs, and provide decisi ... Full text Cite

Bayesian Networks

Chapter · January 1, 2008 By succinctly and effectively translating causal assertions between variables into patterns of probabilistic dependence, Bayesian networks (BNs) facilitate logical and holistic reasoning under uncertainty in complex systems. Such reasoning is necessary for ... Full text Cite

Approaches to evaluate water quality model parameter uncertainty for adaptive TMDL implementation

Journal Article Journal of the American Water Resources Association · December 1, 2007 The National Research Council recommended Adaptive Total Maximum Daily Load implementation with the recognition that the predictive uncertainty of water quality models can be high. Quantifying predictive uncertainty provides important information for model ... Full text Cite

The economic impacts of river rehabilitation: A regional Input-Output analysis

Journal Article Ecological Economics · April 20, 2007 We developed a model to predict the impacts of river rehabilitation activities on the local economy. The model is based on the Input-Output analysis technique and was applied to the planned rehabilitation project for the River Thur in northern Switzerland, ... Full text Cite

Relating atrazine degradation rate in soil to environmental conditions: implications for global fate modeling.

Journal Article Environmental science & technology · April 2007 With the ready availability of georeferenced environmental data, regional and global chemical fate models have become increasingly spatially explicit. However, the description of how chemical fate properties such as degradation rate constants and partition ... Full text Cite

Robust Bayesian uncertainty analysis of climate system properties using Markov chain Monte Carlo methods

Journal Article Journal of Climate · April 1, 2007 A Bayesian uncertainty analysis of 12 parameters of the Bern2.5D climate model is presented. This includes an extensive sensitivity study with respect to the major statistical assumptions. Special attention is given to the parameter representing climate se ... Full text Cite

Predicting the morphological and hydraulic consequences of river rehabilitation

Journal Article River Research and Applications · March 1, 2007 Decisions about reach-scale river rehabilitation for the purposes of flood protection and ecological enhancement require prediction of the possible consequences of management alternatives. To provide such predictions, an integrative model is necessary that ... Full text Cite

Predicting joint frequency distributions of depth and velocity for instream habitat assessment

Journal Article River Research and Applications · March 1, 2007 Stream ecosystem structure and function are strongly influenced by patterns of velocity and depth. Simple methods for predicting the spatial distributions of these two variables, as functions of one-dimensional reach and discharge characteristics, have bee ... Full text Cite

Concepts of decision support for river rehabilitation

Journal Article Environmental Modelling and Software · February 1, 2007 River rehabilitation decisions, like other decisions in environmental management, are often taken by authorities without sufficient transparency about how different goals, predictions, and concerns were considered during the decision making process. This c ... Full text Cite

Assessing the decline of brown trout (Salmo trutta) in Swiss rivers using a Bayesian probability network

Journal Article Ecological Modelling · February 15, 2006 A Bayesian probability network has been developed to integrate the various scientific findings of an interdisciplinary research project on brown trout and their habitat in Switzerland. The network is based on a dynamic, age-structured population model, whi ... Full text Cite

Using decision analysis to determine optimal experimental design for monitoring sewer exfiltration with tracers.

Journal Article Water science and technology : a journal of the International Association on Water Pollution Research · January 2006 The tracer methods developed to assess exfiltration from sewers in the European project APUSS (assessment of the performance of sewer systems) have a high degree of freedom with regard to the choice of tracer and the dosing strategy. These can lead to very ... Full text Cite

Does high forecast uncertainty preclude effective decision support?

Journal Article Environmental Modelling and Software · August 1, 2005 The uncertainty in the predictions of models for the behaviour of environmental systems is usually very large. In many cases the widths of the predictive probability distributions for outcomes of interest are significantly larger than the differences betwe ... Full text Cite

A novel tracer method for estimating sewer exfiltration

Journal Article Water Resources Research · May 1, 2005 A novel method is presented to estimate exfiltration from sewer systems using artificial tracers. The method relies upon use of an upstream indicator signal and a downstream reference signal to eliminate the dependence of exfiltration estimates on the accu ... Full text Cite

Uncertainty, imprecision, and the precautionary principle in climate change assessment.

Journal Article Water science and technology : a journal of the International Association on Water Pollution Research · January 2005 Statistical decision theory can provide useful support for climate change decisions made under conditions of uncertainty. However, the probability distributions used to calculate expected costs in decision theory are themselves subject to uncertainty, disa ... Full text Cite

Confounding effect of flow on estuarine response to nitrogen loading

Journal Article Journal of Environmental Engineering · June 1, 2004 The total maximum daily load (TMDL) concept provides the basis for regulating pollution load from riverine sources to impaired water bodies. However, load is comprised of two components: flow and concentration. These two components may have confounding, or ... Full text Cite

Predictive assessment of fish health and fish kills in the Neuse River Estuary using elicited expert judgment

Journal Article Human and Ecological Risk Assessment · April 1, 2004 Declining fish health and the occurrence of large fish kills are some of the more publicly meaningful indicators of water quality in the impaired Neuse River Estuary, North Carolina. It is generally believed that such problems are caused by the widespread ... Full text Cite

A Bayesian network of eutrophication models for synthesis, prediction, and uncertainty analysis

Journal Article Ecological Modelling · April 1, 2004 A Bayesian network consists of a graphical structure and a probabilistic description of the relationships among variables in a system. The graphical structure explicitly represents cause-and-effect assumptions that allow a complex causal chain linking acti ... Full text Cite

Integrated approach to total maximum daily load development for Neuse River Estuary using Bayesian probability network model (Neu-BERN)

Journal Article Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management · July 1, 2003 We develop a probability network model to characterize eutrophication in the Neuse River Estuary, North Carolina, and support the estimation of a total maximum daily load (TMDL) for nitrogen. Unlike conventional simulation models, probability networks desc ... Full text Cite

Comparison of Estuarine water quality models for total maximum daily load development in Neuse River Estuary

Journal Article Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management · July 1, 2003 The North Carolina Division of Water Quality developed a total maximum daily load (TMDL) to reduce nitrogen inputs into the Neuse River Estuary to address the problem of repeated violations of the ambient chlorophyll a criterion. Three distinct water quali ... Full text Cite

Assessing TMDL effectiveness using flow-adjusted concentrations: a case study of the Neuse River, North Carolina.

Journal Article Environmental science & technology · May 2003 Integrated control of both point and nonpoint source water pollution using Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) assignments will be a major regulatory focus over the next decade. We propose the use of "flow-adjusted" pollutant concentrations to evaluate the eff ... Full text Cite

On Monte Carlo methods for Bayesian inference

Journal Article Ecological Modelling · January 15, 2003 Bayesian methods are experiencing increased use for probabilistic ecological modelling. Most Bayesian inference requires the numerical approximation of analytically intractable integrals. Two methods based on Monte Carlo simulation have appeared in the eco ... Full text Cite

Enhancing causal assessment of estuarine fishkills using graphical models

Journal Article Ecosystems · January 1, 2003 It is not possible to determine the causal relationship between fishkills and the toxic dinoflagellate Pfiesteria piscicida in the Neuse River Estuary, North Carolina, using observational data on these two variables alone. However, consideration of a third ... Full text Cite

Predicting the frequency of water quality standard violations: a probabilistic approach for TMDL development.

Journal Article Environmental science & technology · May 2002 To address the impaired condition of the water bodies listed under Section 303(d) of the Clean Water Act, over 40 000 total maximum daily loads (TMDLs) for pollutants must be developed during the next 10-15 years. Most of these will be based on the results ... Full text Cite

A survival model of the effects of bottom-water hypoxia on the population density of an estuarine clam (Macoma balthica)

Journal Article Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences · January 1, 2002 The effect of bottom-water hypoxia on the population density of the clam Macoma balthica is estimated using a survival-based approach. We used Bayesian parameter estimation to fit a survival model to times-to-death corresponding to multiple dissolved oxyge ... Full text Cite

Stakeholder Values and Scientific Modeling in the Neuse River Watershed

Journal Article Group Decision and Negotiation · December 1, 2001 In 1998, the North Carolina Legislature mandated a 30% reduction in the nitrogen loading in the Neuse River in an attempt to reduce undesirable environmental conditions in the lower river and estuary. Although sophisticated scientific models of the Neuse e ... Full text Cite

A Bayesian hierarchical model to predict benthic oxygen demand from organic matter loading in estuaries and coastal zones

Journal Article Ecological Modelling · September 15, 2001 Ecological models that have a theoretical basis and yet are mathematically simple enough to be parameterized using available data are likely to be the most useful for environmental management and decision-making. Mechanistic foundations improve confidence ... Full text Cite

Long-term changes in watershed nutrient inputs and riverine exports in the Neuse River, North Carolina.

Journal Article Water research · April 2001 We compared patterns of historical watershed nutrient inputs with in-river nutrient loads for the Neuse River, NC. Basin-wide sources of both nitrogen and phosphorus have increased substantially during the past century, marked by a sharp increase in the la ... Full text Cite

Modelling oxygen dynamics in an intermittently stratified estuary: Estimation of process rates using field data

Journal Article Estuarine Coastal and Shelf Science · January 1, 2001 The relationship between bottom water dissolved oxygen concentration, vertical stratification, and temperature was investigated for the Neuse River estuary, North Carolina, a shallow, intermittently-mixed estuary using approximately 10 years of weekly/biwe ... Full text Cite

Seasonal and long-term nutrient trend decomposition along a spatial gradient in the neuse river watershed

Journal Article Environmental Science and Technology · November 1, 2000 The Neuse River Estuary in North Carolina has recently received considerable public attention for severe algal blooms, large fish kills, and outbreaks of toxic microorganisms. To investigate the belief that nutrient enrichment has worsened in recent years, ... Full text Cite

Bayesian parameter estimation in a mixed-order model of BOD decay

Journal Article Water Research · April 1, 2000 We describe a generalized version of the BOD decay model in which the reaction is allowed to assume an order other than one. This is accomplished by making the exponent on BOD concentration a free parameter to be determined by the data. This 'mixed-order' ... Full text Cite