Discriminant Analysis As a Decision-Making Tool for Geochemically Fingerprinting Sources of Groundwater Salinity and Other Work
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Syracuse University SURFACE Theses - ALL May 2018 Discriminant analysis as a decision-making tool for geochemically fingerprinting sources of groundwater salinity and other work Nathaniel Chien Syracuse University Follow this and additional works at: https://surface.syr.edu/thesis Part of the Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons Recommended Citation Chien, Nathaniel, "Discriminant analysis as a decision-making tool for geochemically fingerprinting sources of groundwater salinity and other work" (2018). Theses - ALL. 203. https://surface.syr.edu/thesis/203 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by SURFACE. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses - ALL by an authorized administrator of SURFACE. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Abstract The thesis presented herein is a compilation of two different research projects I have been fortunate enough to work on during my graduate career at Syracuse University. The first and most complete project is a data analysis study using linear discriminant analysis to differentiate between sources of groundwater salinity in water samples from shallow groundwater wells. It is a model validation study that builds on previous work spearheaded by the Earth Sciences Department at Syracuse University. It represents some of my best work performed at Syracuse and should be considered the bulk of my thesis submission. Due to successful publication of that research early into my graduate career I had the opportunity to work on another project. The Technical Supplement is a review of the work I have done in collaboration with The Nature Conservancy. The main project goal was to study the hydrologic effects that beaver dam analogues may have on an incised stream system and to understand the utility of drone-derived imagery for hydrologic modeling. During my time working on this project, a lot was learned about best practices and avenues of future research. To make sure that this knowledge is not lost, it is recorded here. DISCRIMINANT ANALYSIS AS A DECISION-MAKING TOOL FOR GEOCHEMICALLY FINGERPRINTING SOURCES OF GROUNDWATER SALINITY AND OTHER WORK by Nathaniel Patrick Chien B.S. College of William and Mary, 2016 THESIS Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Earth Sciences Syracuse University May 2018 Copyright © Nathaniel Patrick Chien 2018 All Rights Reserved Acknowledgments I am incredibly grateful to Syracuse University, The Department of Earth Sciences, and the EMPOWER Graduate Research Traineeship Program for providing me the opportunities that led to the included work. I want to thank my advisor, Dr. Laura Lautz, for her research guidance and career mentorship during my time in Syracuse. I want to thank my research group, Emily Baker, Amanda Schulz, and Robin Glas for their encouragement and shared commiseration. I want to thank Deanna McCay for her organization and career guidance. Lastly, to everyone else who helped me during my time in graduate school: sources of wisdom (Dr. Kelleher and Dr. Condon), the great professors (Dr. Kroll and Professor Wilson), sources of encouragement, the graduate student body, and my family. I will end with a favorite quote attributed to Borges as encouragement to future students, “My father showed me his library, which was very large, and told me to read whatever I wanted, but that if something bored me, I should immediately put it down.” iv Table of Contents Abstract.............................................................................................................................................i Title Page.........................................................................................................................................ii Acknowledgements.........................................................................................................................iv Table of Contents.............................................................................................................................v List of Figures................................................................................................................................vii List of Tables................................................................................................................................viii Main Text. Discriminant analysis as a decision-making tool for geochemically fingerprinting sources of groundwater salinity...........................................................................1 Abstract............................................................................................................................................2 1. Introduction................................................................................................................................3 2. Methods......................................................................................................................................6 2.1. Model Framework..............................................................................................................6 2.2. Validation Dataset............................................................................................................10 2.3. Model Validation..............................................................................................................12 3. Results & Discussion...............................................................................................................13 3.1. Classification Accuracy....................................................................................................13 3.2. Posterior Probabilities.......................................................................................................16 3.3. Linear Discriminants........................................................................................................19 3.4. Chemical Fingerprinting Contaminated Groundwater.....................................................21 4. Conclusion...............................................................................................................................28 Acknowledgements........................................................................................................................30 References......................................................................................................................................35 v Supporting Information..................................................................................................................35 Technical Supplement. Stream Restoration with Beaver Dam Analogues: Methods, Progress, and Future Work........................................................................................................51 1. Introduction..............................................................................................................................52 2. Aerial Imagery.........................................................................................................................56 2.1. Digital Elevation Models using Photogrammetry............................................................58 2.2. Normalized Difference Vegetation Index.........................................................................69 3. Hydrologic Modeling...............................................................................................................72 3.1. Introduction.......................................................................................................................72 3.2. Reach Scale Modeling......................................................................................................73 3.3. Watershed Scale Modeling with GSFLOW.....................................................................79 3.4. Concluding Remarks........................................................................................................83 4. Project Synthesis......................................................................................................................83 References......................................................................................................................................85 Vita................................................................................................................................................92 vi List of Figures Main Text Figure 1. Cartoon of the fingerprinting model. Figure 2. Posterior probabilities of the validation data. Figure 3. Model misclassifications in discriminant-score space. Figure 4. Vectors of solute coefficients in discriminant-score space. Figure 5. Comparison of two fingerprinting methods. Supporting Information Figure S1. Boxplots of nitrogen concentrations for samples. Technical Supplement Figure 1. Site map of Red Canyon Figure 2. Drone survey areas. Figure 3. DEMs produced from drone imagery. Figure 4. Upper Red Canyon Creek DEMs. Figure 5. Comparison of the 2005 survey elevations. Figure 6. Interpolated residual maps. Figure 7. Water surface elevation profiles for the thalweg. Figure 8. Water surface elevation profiles filtered for noise. Figure 9. NDVI maps. Figure 10. NDVI, difference raster comparison. Figure 11. MODFLOW head values. Figure 12. HEC-RAS geometric data editor interface. Figure 13. Poorly delineated HEC-RAS cross-section. vii Figure 14. GSFLOW design workflow. List of Tables Main Text Table 1. Confusion matrix for the synthetic data. Table 2. Confusion matrix for the validation data. Table 3. Values of discriminant