Terrestrial Surface Processes (TSP) - Research News and Notes Carla Penders awarded NASA NC Space Grant 2008 Graduate Fellowship NSF grant for the S-STEM project awarded! Our lab was well represented at the 2008 ASU Celebration of Research and Creative Endeavors (Research Day) New computational platform is up and running JGR-Oceans paper in print Provost bolsters the Water Resources captial expenditure - more stream monitoring is coming!... Ginn Corp. agrees to Summer internship support $22K available for development of robotics platform Another peer-reviewed paper by a former TSP lab graduate student Charlotte Schlesinger heads to Iowa State for Summer internship

Carla Penders awarded NASA NC Space Grant 2008 Graduate Fellowship Carla Penders, a new graduate student in our TSP lab, is one of two ASU students to be awarded the 2008 NC Space Grant graduate fellowship. Carla's work focusses on automating the normally laborious process of determining the grain size distribution in a stream (needed in supoport of hydrodynamic modeling). Her method, an application of and modification to work by Dave Rubin, uses digital image processing via autocorrelation and eigenvalue decompostion to determine the statistics of grain size distributions - this can be applied to any distributed scalar field of interest, such as LandSat image processing and Martian surface characterization, for example. Congratulations to Carla! NSF grant for the SSTEM project awarded! The S-STEM project, a follow-on to the CSEMS project, has been awarded funding by NSF. The main purpose of the program is to attract students to major in the sciences and to help them succeed in these majors by providing up to 8 semesters of funding, including up to 4 semesters of graduate study at Appalachian. The program provides a nurturing atmosphere that encourages excellence and builds collaborations between students, faculty, and the community. Physics and Astronomy and the TSP lab are now proud to be part of this community. Many thanks to Rahman Tashakkori for his outstanding leadership as the primary PI for this work. Our lab was well represented at the 2008 ASU Celebration of Research and Creative Endeavors (Research Day) We had 5 student presenters of posters and 1 oral presenation at the ASU 2008 Research Day. They included: Carla Penders (Grad student - oral): Automated Grainsize Distribution Method for High Gradient Streams James Kelly (Grad student - poster): Point source stormwater thermal mitigation using commin construction aggregates Andy Madison (Grad student - poster): Cellular automaton simulating pattern formation in size dependent sediment transport Naomi Eckerd (Undergraduate - poster): A Survey of Bridge Structural and Functional Conditions in Watauga County, NC Robert Duke & Blake Clark (Undergraduate - poster): Mountain stream thermal and chemical model support: field data acquisition New computational platform is up and running Our group now has a new dual-quadcore Xeon based MacPro for serious on-site number crunching. The system will supplement resources already in use by collaborators at the Navy Research Labs and the ERDC (US Army Corp of Engineers). A new suite of numerical simulations for the development of an entropic theory of granular bed dynamics is now underway. JGR-Oceans paper in print Calantoni, J., and C. S. Thaxton (2008), Simple power law for transport ratio with bimodal distributions of coarse sediments under waves, J. Geophys. Res., 113, C03003, doi:10.1029/2007JC004237. Provost bolsters the Water Resources captial expenditure - more stream monitoring is coming!... Great news for the TSP lab and the PIRMS initiative - the Water Resource Planning Committee (WRPC), has obtained an additional $50K which has been used to purchase 6 new fully instrumented In-Situ Trolls, a number of temperature data loggers, and additional chemical monitoring equipment. This means that the initial Kraut Creek monitoring project will be expanded to include other streams - top on this list is the New River at the Greenway in Boone (where remediation is planned). Grab your waders, we'll be doing a lot more installation and data acquisition in the coming years. Ginn Corp. agrees to Summer internship support Ginn at Laurelmor has agreed to terms for support of 1 undergraduate and 1 graduate student via a one-time corporate grant. James Kelly and Joe Moebus will be working this Summer to assist the NCSU advanced soil erosion control research team, headed by Rich McLaughlin, in researching the effectiveness of polyachrylomide (PAM) in reducing erosion from construction sites. $22K available for development of robotics platform The TSP lab takes a leading role in the continued development of the department's lab automation, remote sensing, and instrumentation efforts. To this end, we have pursued and obtained $22K to acquire 3 LabVolt robots - this includes a manufacturing line setup, full 3-D robotic simulation software, and support for control electronics for embedded applications. Joe Moebus, a new graduate student in the TSP lab, will be working this Summer to develop the robotics platforms for teaching purposes next Spring. In addition, we now have funding to develop a new microprocessors and interfacing suite of labs that will bring us up to date with current interfacing technologies. Another peer-reviewed paper by a former TSP lab graduate student The Integrated Neasrshore Wave and Amplitude Model (IN-WAM) was presented at the SoutheastCon2008 in Huntsville, AL as an IEEE peer-reviewed paper. This was the Master's Thesis by Adam Jones, the original member of the TSP lab. The model runs on a Dell Axim handheld PDA and uses the REDIF model (Kirby and Dalrymple) to compute and graphically display the top 10 surfing areas for a given beach (here, the Outer Banks of NC). The citation is: Jones, A.F. and C.S. Thaxton. 2008. Integrated Nearshore Wave Amplitude Model for Use on Portable Devices, IEEE SouthestCON 2008, Peer-reviewed conference proceedings, IEEE, Hutnsville, AL. Charlotte Schlesinger heads to Iowa State for Summer internship Charlotte Schlesinger will be working this Summer with Brian Hornbuckle at Iowa State on the use of microwave remote sensing to determine the liquid water content of soil and vegetation. Her work could be very applicable to our efforts in resolving groundwater influence on stream flows in our models. Good luck Charlotte! Old and Ongoing TSP News Physics majors Carla Penders, Adam Smith, and Heather Nemetz attended the State of North Carolina Undergraduate Research & Creativity Symposium (SNCURCS) in November, 2006. Shown here, Carla presents our work on the monitoring of Kraut Creek. She was offered several graduate research positions throughout the day but she has chosen to stay with our team and continue graduate work on remote sensing and geomorphology. Jason Davis, a graduate student in Applied Physics, is working on a telemtry system that automatically transmits data from our in-stream monitoring device (Troll 9500) to a server. This allows anyone to download real-time data, updated every 15 minutes. Jason's thesis documents the timing and control circuit the he designed & built and how it interfaces to the trasnceivers and his Perl scripts. Jason also is working to write the necessary code to service data requests on the web. Cellulose acetate beads are used in our Surface Processes Lab for granular flow experiments. Here, a surface image obtained by Tonya Coffey using an SEM shows surface anomalies that imfluence the friction parameterizations used on our computational models. Work with the High Temperature Materials Lab is planned to refine our model coefficients. Our Discrete Particle Model (DPM) simulates individual grains (0.2-2.0mm) with the material properties of quartz by solving Newton's 2nd Law (translational and rotational) for each grain every 1us. The grains and fluid are fully integrated. We have run a suite of 243 simulations with a bimodal distribution (2 grain sizes) and have seen that the grains tend to sort - the large grains end up on top (e.g. the "Brazil Nut Effect"). We have devised a new power law that predicts the relative transport rates of each grain size based on their relative masses and diameter ratios. More coming soon. The Kraut Creek monitoring project is still going strong. Naomi Eckerd, Carla Penders, and Jason Davis are on board, along with Bill Anderson (Geology) and Carol Babyak (Chemistry) and their students. Our project website continues to get mutiple daily hits from around the world. Keep your eye on the local newspapers for more pictures and stories of our team's progress! Seniors and graduate students in the new Advanced Microprocessors, Interfacing, and Robotics class are learning the details of Pentium-based hardware design including bus architecture and timing, memory devices, peripheral I/O, and internal CPU structure. Labs exercises using the WinASM-based 80x86 assembler include the design, interfacing, and programming of sensors and output devides like displays, lights, and alarms. Shown is graduate student Ty Nelson (Top-Left) working on his temperature controller project. Skills learned in this and other classes here at ASU (e.g. analog, digital, transducers, microcontrollers, etc) enable students to independently design, construct, test, and install a wide range of embedded applications such as those needed for remote sensing in environmental systems (e.g. Jason Davis' Master's thesis, discussed above). Granular beds under lateral shear stresses will experience bedload transport - the rate of lateral transport is dependent upon the vertical depth into the bed. As a result, the transport rate for each grain size in the bed is dependent upon the amount and rate of vertical sorting by size during disturbance. Graduate student James Kelly is beginning work on quanitfying the granular temperature within a bed of coarse grains under shear based on DPM simulations. Lab work is planned to begin this Summer (2007) to validate the DPM results. Our plan is to restate our proposed power law for transport of bimodal distribution of coarse grains under shear (Calantoni & Thaxton, 2007) in terms of granular temperature - the goal is to identify the key physical mechanisms resposible for vertical sorting and quantify their relative contributions.

The Physics of Sediment Transport

Although fundamentally governed by well-known physics, sediment transport systems quickly become non-linear and statistical in nature. As a result, the pursuit of the governing dynamics of sediment transport is constrained to the improved understanding of somewhat dissimilar regimes of staistical behavior, highly dependent upon small variations in a number of environmental variables. The ongoing study of sediment transport is mainly driven by the desire to control the erosion and deposition of significant amounts of sediment that impacts biologically sensitive environments (e.g. downstream ecosystems), man-made structures (e.g. coastal development, naval ports and channels, mountain-side buildings, construction sites), and agricultural areas (e.g. soil loss and aggregation). Field measurements of sediment transport are either difficult or insufficient to adequately resolve theoretical arguments that, in many cases, are based on specialized laboratory conditions. Theoretical efforts via computational simulation are contiuously improving - increased processor speeds, memory availability, and interconectivity have enabled models of higher acuity than was possible just 5 to 10 years ago. Incorporating higher-order refinements such as grains size dependence, are now within our grasp. Although laboratory and field measurement technology, necessary for theory validation, continues to lag theoretical advancements, exciting new ideas of study have migrated from the "wishlists" of scientists to that of possibility and realization with the hopes that someday, field measurement capability will catch up and/or a critical mass of sufficiently accurate theoretical models will coallasce into a framework that consistently predicts available field data over a wide range of environmental conditions.

Cahow, K. 2007. (Non-peer reviewed). A Creek Runs Through It, In: Appalachian Explorations - Research and Creative Endeavors at Appalachian State University, Vol. 3(1): 5-9.

Treadwell, S. 2006. What's going into Kraut Creek? High Country Press, Boone, NC. March 16, 2006.

Mountain Times. March 16, 2006. Watauga Water Watchers, Mountain Times, POB 1815 Boone, NC. March 16, 2006.

Recent Publications

Jones, A.F. and C.S. Thaxton. 2008. Integrated Nearshore Wave Amplitude Model for Use on Portable Devices, IEEE SouthestCON 2008, Peer-reviewed conference proceedings, IEEE, Hutnsville, AL.

Thaxton, C.S., C.M. Babyak, W. Anderson. J. L. Anderson, W.P. Benner III, J.A. Davis, and C.A. Penders. 2007. Baseline monitoring case study of a high-gradient, urbanized stream - Boone Creek, Boone, NC, 2007 Low Impact Development Conference Proceedings, ASCE. (peer-reviewed - American Society of Civil Engineers, March, 2007)

Calantoni, J., and C. S. Thaxton (2008), Simple power law for transport ratio with bimodal distributions of coarse sediments under waves, J. Geophys. Res., 113, C03003, doi:10.1029/2007JC004237.

Thaxton, C.S., W.P. Anderson, C.M. Babyak. 2007 - Non-peer reviewed. Baseline monitoring, analysis, and modeling of the Boone Creek watershed, Final Report for the University Research Council Competitive Grants program, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC

Thaxton, C.S. and R.A. McLaughlin, 2005. Sediment Capture Effectiveness of Various Baffle Types in a Sediment Retention Pond, Trans. of the ASAE, 48(5): 1795-1802

Thaxton, C.S., Calantoni, J., McLaughlin, R.A. 2004. Hydrodynamic Assessment of Various Types of Baffles in a Sediment Detention Pond, Trans. of the ASAE, 47(3): 741-749

Recent Conference Proceedings

A universal method for setting up field problems in intermediate and advanced classical mechanics and electromagnetism. 2007. North Carolina Section of the American Association of Physics Teachers, High Point University, High Point, NC, October 20, 2007.

Thaxton, C.S., C. Penders, W. Anderson, J. Anderson, C. Babyak, W. Benner, III. 2007. Impacts of Urbanization on Headwater Streams of the New River: How Do We Bring Back the Trout?. 2007 New River Symposium, New River Biota II, May 31 - June 2, 2007, Radford University, Radford, VA.

Thaxton, C.S., C.M. Babyak, W. Anderson. J. L. Anderson, W.P. Benner III, J.A. Davis, and C.A. Penders. 2007. Baseline monitoring case study of a high-gradient, urbanized stream - Boone Creek, Boone, NC, 2007 Low Impact Development Conference Proceedings, ASCE. (peer-reviewed - American Society of Civil Engineers, March, 2007)

Anderson, J.L., W.P. Anderson, Jr., C.S. Thaxton, and C.M. Babyak. 2007. Dynamics of episodic temperature variations in an urbanized, high-gradient stream. Paper No. 9-1 in Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs, Vol. 39(2), p. 17. GSA Southeast Section Meeting, Savannah, GA.

Thaxton, C.S. 2006. Path sampling Monte Carlo method for watershed-scale terrain evolution in GRASS GIS. Invited lecture, Naval Research Laboratory, Stennis Space Center, MS. May 14, 2006.

Thaxton, C.S. & J. Calantoni. 2006. Vertical sorting and preferrential transport in sheet flow with bimodal size distributions of sediment, Coastal Engineering, 2006: Proceedings of the 30th International Conference on Coastal Engineering (ICCE 2006) 3-8 September, Ed. Jane McKee Smith, World Scientific Publishing, Hackensack, NJ. Vol. 3, pp. 3056-3065.

Penders, C., W. Benner, J. Anderson, C. Thaxton, C. Babyak, W. Anderson. 2006. Case Study: Boone Creek Monitoring Project - Boone, NC, State of North Carolina Undergraduate Research and Creativity Symposium, November 18, 2006, Raleigh, NC.

Thaxton, C.S. and J. Calantoni. 2006. Simple Power Law for Transport Ratio with Bimodal Distribution of Coarse Sediment, N8.00006, 2006 American Physical Society March Meeting, Baltimore, MD

Mitasova, H., C. Thaxton, J. Hofierka, R. McLaughlin, A. Moore, L. Mitas. 2005. Path sampling method for modeling overland water flow, sediment transport, and short term terrain evolution in Open Source GIS. In: C.T. Miller, M.W. Farthing, V.G. Gray, G.F. Pinder eds., Proceedings of the XVth International Conference on Computational Methods in Water Resources (CMWR-XV), June 13-17, 2004, Chapel Hill, NC, USA, Elsevier, pp. 1479-1490.

Thaxton, C.S. and R.A. McLaughlin. 2004. Hydrodynamic and Sediment Capture Assessment of Various Baffles in a Sediment Retention Pond, 2004 International Erosion Control Association (IECA), Charlotte, NC.

McLaughlin, R.A. and Thaxton, C.S. 2004. Optimal Hydraulic Permeability of Composite Geotextiles as Baffles in a Sedimentation Basin, Paper number 042233, 2004 ASAE/CSAE Annual International Meeting, Ottawa, ON, Canada

Thaxton, C.S., H. Mitasova, L. Mitas, R.McLaughlin. 2004. Simulations of distributed watershed evolution, deposition, and terrain evolution using a path sampling Monte Carlo method, paper number 042101, 2004 ASAE Annual Meeting, Ottawa, ON, Canada

Thaxton, C.S. 2004. Path Sampling Monte Carlo Method for Modeling Sediment Transport Processes Over Complex Terrain. 2004. N.C. Sectional Meeting of the American Association of Physics Teachers, Meredith College, Raleigh, NC, 2004.

Thaxton, C.S. and R.A. McLaughlin. 2003.Hydrodynamic Assessment of Various Types of Baffles in a Sediment Detention Pond, in Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) Environmental Regulations-II. Proceedings of the 8-12 November 2003 Conference (Albuquerque, NM, USA), pp. 557-557.

Thaxton, C.S., J. Calantoni, and T.G. Drake. 2001. Can a single grain size represent bedload transport in the surf zone?" EOS Trans. AGU, 82(47), Fall Meeting Supplement, F587 (Special session in honor of Dr. Thomas Kinder), AGU