22 Apr 2020

Corps’ Omaha District spotlights energy efficient, environmentally sustainable headquarters for 50th anniversary of Earth Day

Built in 1958, the original Zorinsky Building, home to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Omaha District’s headquarters, was erected before the modern world embraced the environmental movement. Since the first Earth Day in 1970, renovations to the 432,000 square-foot building managed by the Government Services Administration have been implemented based on the standards and criteria of the U.S. Green Council’s Sustainability Program to make the building more energy efficient and environmentally friendly.

22 Apr 2020

PUBLICATION NOTICE: The Forefront : A Review of ERDC Publications, Spring 2020

Abstract: The Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) is the premier civil works engineering and environmental sciences research and development arm of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE). As such, it partners with the Army, Department of Defense (DoD), federal agencies, and civilian organizations to help solve our Nation’s most challenging problems in civil and military engineering, geospatial sciences, water resources, and environmental sciences. A special government knowledge center, ERDC Information Technology Laboratory’s Information Science and Knowledge Management (ISKM) Branch is critical to ERDC’s mission, fulfilling research requirements by offering a variety of editing and library services to advance the creation, dissemination, and curation of ERDC and USACE research knowledge. Serving as the publishing authority for the ERDC, ISKM publishes all ERDC technical publications to the Digital Repository Knowledge Core, sends a copy to the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC) and creates a press release about each publication on the ERDC website. The Forefront seeks to provide an additional mechanism for highlighting some of our technical publications to the ERDC, USACE, Army, and DoD communities. This publication also encourages those outside ERDC to contact us about using ERDC editing services. For more information regarding the reports highlighted in this publications or others that ERDC researchers’ have created, please contact the ISKM virtual reference desk at erdclibrary@ask-a-librarian.info or visit the ISKM’s online repository, Knowledge Core, at https://erdc-library.erdc.dren.mil/ .

22 Apr 2020

Corps Encourages Responsible Recreation for Earth Day

Although the 50th anniversary of Earth Day is taking place during a worldwide pandemic, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Pittsburgh District recreation sites still provide visitors an opportunity to enjoy nature responsibly.

22 Apr 2020

Vicksburg District to keep boat ramps, nature trails open at Mississippi lakes and provides new boating requirements

VICKSBURG, Miss. – The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Vicksburg District will keep its boat ramps, nature trails and fishing areas at Arkabutla, Enid, Sardis and Grenada lakes open in north Mississippi. Arkabutla, Sardis, Grenada and Enid lakes are not included in the recreation areas that will be reopened through the governor’s April 17 order, which has allowed select state beaches, parks, reservoirs and other areas to reopen on a limited basis. The Vicksburg District’s visitor centers, interpretive centers, museums, field offices and select recreation site attractions, including campgrounds and beaches, across Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas have been closed to the public since March 20. These areas will remain closed until further notice.

22 Apr 2020

JJ Mayes Wildlife Trace closure at Wallisville Lake Project

WALLISVILLE, Texas – The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Galveston District will close the J.J. Mayes Wildlife Trace at the Wallisville Lake Project on April 23 in order to improve the west non-overflow dam road to increase public safety.

22 Apr 2020

PUBLICATION NOTICE: SPDAT Rainfall and Streamflow Analysis at Mobile, Alabama

ABSTRACT: This Dredging Operations and Environmental Research (DOER) program technical note (TN) seeks to explain how the Storm and Precipitation Dredging Analysis Tool (SPDAT) can be used to determine dredging response to varying rainfall levels at a given site. This TN will focus on the historical dredging records in the Mobile Bay Ship Channel and rainfall levels in that area. The analysis presented in this TN will form the basis for how the tool methodology can be used to and compare rainfall and dredging records to determine response trends at other sites. The results from the tool analysis can inform dredging managers about how much dredging may be expected under similar rainfall or tropical storm conditions for future cycles.

22 Apr 2020

PUBLICATION NOTICE: Analysis of Nearshore Placement of Sediments at Ogden Dunes, Indiana

ABSTRACT: The harbor structures/shoreline armoring on the southern Lake Michigan shoreline interrupt sand migration. Ogden Dunes, Indiana, and the nearby Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore observed shoreline erosion due to engineered structures associated with Burns Waterway Harbor (east of Ogden Dunes) impeding natural east-to-west sediment migration. To remedy this, USACE placed over 450,000 cubic meters (m3) of dredged material post-2006 in the nearshore of Ogden Dunes. However, the effectiveness of nearshore placements for shoreline protection and littoral nourishment is not fully established. To improve nearshore placement effectiveness, USACE monitored the June/July 2016 placement and subsequent movement of 107,000 m3 of dredged material in the nearshore region at Ogden Dunes. This involved an extensive monitoring scheme (three bathymetry surveys, and two acoustic Doppler current profiler deployments), a Coastal Modeling System (CMS) numerical model of the changes following placement, and a prediction of sediment transport direction using the Sediment Mobility Tool (SMT). The SMT-predicted sediment migration direction was compared to observations. Observations indicated that between 10/11/2016 and 11/15/2016 the centroid of the sediment above the pre-placement survey moved 17 m onshore. These observations agreed with SMT predictions — onshore migration under storm and typical wave conditions. CMS accurately reproduced the hydrodynamic features.

22 Apr 2020

PUBLICATION NOTICE: Nested Physics-Based Watershed Modeling at Seven Mile Creek: Minnesota River Integrated Watershed Study

ABSTRACT: The Minnesota River Basin (MRB) Integrated Study Team (IST) was tasked with assessing the condition of the MRB and recommending management options to reduce suspended sediments and improve the water quality in the basin. The Gridded Surface Subsurface Hydrologic Analysis (GSSHA) was chosen by the IST as the fine scale model for the Seven Mile Creek Watershed to help quantify the physical effects from best management practices within the MRB. The predominately agricultural Seven Mile Creek Watershed produces high total suspended solids and nutrients loads, contributing roughly 10% of the total load to the Minnesota River. GSSHA models were developed for a small experimental field research site called Red Top Farms, a Hydrologic Unit Code (HUC)-12 model for the entire Seven Mile Creek Watershed, a sub-basin of the Seven Mile Creek Watershed. After calibration, the resulting models were able to simulate measured tile drain flows, stream flow, suspended sediments, and to a lesser extent, nutrients. A selected suite of alternative land-use scenarios was simulated with the models to determine the watershed response to land-use changes at the small and medium scale and to test whether the type, size, and spatial distribution of land uses will influence the effectiveness of land management options.

22 Apr 2020

PUBLICATION NOTICE: Operation and Deployment Risk Assessment Report for the City of Cedar Rapids, Iowa: Alternative and Sequencing Optimization for Removable Flood Barriers

ABSTRACT: The City of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, partnered with engineering firms and the US Army Engineer District, Rock Island (MVR), to develop a Flood Control System (FCS). In 2011, the US Army Engineer Research and Development Center, Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory (ERDC-CHL), was tasked with completing a risk assessment of removable floodwalls on the eastern side of the Cedar River. In 2016, ERDC-CHL was asked to include the temporary flood closure barriers on both sides of the Cedar River. Phase 1 of the study consisted of seven alternatives to be considered for the final FCS design, with a goal of a 90% confidence of successful deployment. Phase 2, initiated by MVR, targeted a 95% confidence level. The method used for evaluation was RiskyProject® software. The software used a Monte Carlo method of analysis to determine a range of durations, manpower, and labor costs based on logical sequencing. The results showed that the “Master Plan Minus 400 ft” alternative to be the most efficient for Phase 1. The most efficient alternative for Phase 2 was Task 5.4, which achieved a 95% confidence level of completion within 48 hours. The Phase 1 and the Phase 2 descriptions are detailed within this report.

22 Apr 2020

PUBLICATION NOTICE: A Practical Two-Phase Approach to Improve the Reliability and Efficiency of Markov Chain Monte Carlo Directed Hydrologic Model Calibration

ABSTRACT: Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods are widely used in hydrology and other fields for posterior inference in a Bayesian framework. A properly constructed MCMC sampler is guaranteed to converge to the correct limiting distribution, but convergence can be very slow. While most research is focused on improving the proposal distribution used to generate trial moves in the Markov chain, this work instead focuses on efficiently finding an initial population for population-based MCMC samplers that will expedite convergence. Four case studies, including two hydrological models, are used to demonstrate that using multi-level single linkage implicit filtering stochastic global optimization to initialize the population both reduces the overall computational cost and significantly increases the chance of finding the correct limiting distribution within the constraint of a fixed computational budget.