Browsing by Author "Shortridge, Julie"

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    2020 Virginia Peanut Production Guide
    Balota, Maria; Jordan, David; Mehl, Hllary; Shortridge, Julie; Taylor, Sally V. (Virginia Cooperative Extension, 2020)
    Provides information on peanut varieties, including which kinds to choose for disease and insect resistance. Also discusses weed control, insect control, disease control, irrigation, fertilizers and equipment.
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    2021 Virginia Peanut Production Guide
    Balota, Maria; Jordan, David; Langston, David B.; Shortridge, Julie; Taylor, Sally V. (Virginia Cooperative Extension, 2021-02-09)
    This publication included a guide for peanut growers including agronomic, insect, disease management along with weed control, and irrigation and safety information. Archived Peanut Production Guides can be accessed from: http://www.sites.ext.vt.edu/newsletter-archive/peanut-production/index.html
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    Analysis of Human Influence on Drought Conditions in the Upper Colorado River Basin (Texas)
    Whittemore, Aaron Maitland (Virginia Tech, 2020-06-19)
    Globally, it is expected that arid and semi-arid areas will face increasing frequency of drought through the 21st century. Drought is normally attributed to climatic factors. However, humans constantly alter hydrologic systems through manipulating and consuming water, which can also cause drought. However, human influence on drought, outside of influences on warming-driven climate change, is rarely studied. Here, the upper Colorado River Basin (Texas) is studied to assess the human influence on drought conditions in a semi-arid basin. An observation-modeling framework is used to simulate naturalized runoff conditions which are compared to observed data in an undisturbed (little human influence) and disturbed (much human influence) period to elucidate human influences on drought. Further, public water storage and supply data are incorporated to analyze how human water management may be specifically affecting downstream hydrologic drought in the upper Colorado River Basin. Results show that according to observed data, drought occurred more often, persisted longer on average, and had a higher maximum duration during the disturbed period. Naturalized model output did not predict such increases, indicating that human influence is responsible. Water deliveries in the study area were found to significantly affect downstream flow and are connected to instances of human-influenced drought. Results suggest that in order to reduce downstream drought conditions, deliveries will likely have to be reduced and that reducing deliveries during periods of low rainfall, or during months in which deliveries constitute a large portion of human influenced drought severity could be especially helpful in alleviating downstream drought.
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    Anticipating and adapting to the future impacts of climate change on the health, security and welfare of low elevation coastal zone (LECZ) communities in Southeastern USA
    Allen, Thomas; Behr, Joshua; Bukvic, Anamaria; Calder, Ryan S. D.; Caruson, Kiki; Connor, Charles; D'Elia, Christopher; Dismukes, David; Ersing, Robin; Franklin, Rima; Goldstein, Jesse; Goodall, Jonathon; Hemmerling, Scott; Irish, Jennifer L.; Lazarus, Steven; Loftis, Derek; Luther, Mark; McCallister, Leigh; McGlathery, Karen; Mitchell, Molly; Moore, William B.; Nichols, C. Reid; Nunez, Karinna; Reidenbach, Matthew; Shortridge, Julie; Weisberg, Robert; Weiss, Robert; Donelson Wright, Lynn; Xia, Meng; Xu, Kehui; Young, Donald; Zarillo, Gary; Zinnert, Julie C. (MDPI, 2021-10-29)
    Low elevation coastal zones (LECZ) are extensive throughout the southeastern United States. LECZ communities are threatened by inundation from sea level rise, storm surge, wetland degradation, land subsidence, and hydrological flooding. Communication among scientists, stakeholders, policy makers and minority and poor residents must improve. We must predict processes spanning the ecological, physical, social, and health sciences. Communities need to address linkages of (1) human and socioeconomic vulnerabilities; (2) public health and safety; (3) economic concerns; (4) land loss; (5) wetland threats; and (6) coastal inundation. Essential capabilities must include a network to assemble and distribute data and model code to assess risk and its causes, support adaptive management, and improve the resiliency of communities. Better communication of information and understanding among residents and officials is essential. Here we review recent background literature on these matters and offer recommendations for integrating natural and social sciences. We advocate for a cyber-network of scientists, modelers, engineers, educators, and stakeholders from academia, federal state and local agencies, non-governmental organizations, residents, and the private sector. Our vision is to enhance future resilience of LECZ communities by offering approaches to mitigate hazards to human health, safety and welfare and reduce impacts to coastal residents and industries.
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    Consumptive Water Use: Refining State Water Supply Estimates with Discharge and Withdrawal Data
    McCarthy, Mary Morgan (Virginia Tech, 2019-06-11)
    Water scarcity has quickly become one of the most pressing issues in the 21st century. Knowledge of the stress consumption places on water supply is therefore necessary for improved resource management. This research leverages monthly facility level withdrawal and discharge data from two different sources to provide important observations of consumptive water use across several spatial scales and water use sectors in Virginia between 2010-2016. Consumptive water is defined as water which is withdrawn and not returned to a water resource system. Consumption was estimated on statewide, watershed, county, and facility levels. The agriculture/irrigation, aquaculture, commercial, industrial, energy, and municipal sectors were considered for analysis. Facilities were matched between the two data sources by narrowing potential matches by distance and then by facility name using an approximate string distance mechanism. This analysis revealed that inconsistent discharge reporting affects estimates of consumption through time and any errors at finer spatial scales are ultimately masked at coarser levels. Statewide energy consumption in Virginia was found to be between 4-20% considering all available data and 0.4-4% across matched facilities. Non-energy consumption was an estimated 37-51% considering all available data and only 28-33% across matched facilities. Inconsistent reporting of discharge made it difficult to determine if consumption trends truly exist in Virginia, but monthly consumption appears to be persistent through time and slightly increasing in non-energy sectors. Industrial consumption in Virginia was also found to be higher than literature values. Results from this study are beneficial for water supply modeling and planning by providing more refined estimates of the actual stress withdrawals place on water supply.
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    A Dam Conundrum: The Role of Impoundments in Stream Flow Alteration
    Brogan, Connor O'Beirne (Virginia Tech, 2018-09-12)
    Over the past century, the world's rivers have become increasingly impounded to combat water scarcity and fossil-fuel reliance. Large dams have faded from popularity due to their adverse environmental effects, but small ponds and reservoirs continue to be constructed at high rates. Due to limited data regarding their size and flow, it has been difficult to assess how these smaller impoundments impact rivers. This study combined rainfall runoff data from the Chesapeake Bay Model with the unique routing framework of VA Hydro to create a simplistic hydrologic model capable of analyzing impoundment-induced flow alteration. Using standard design techniques and satellite imagery, a methodology was developed to build realistic stage-storage-discharge relationships for small and large impoundments. Eleven impoundments of the Difficult Run watershed were modeled within VA Hydro to assess their cumulative impact on downstream flow. Multiple models were created with different active impoundments and run for the full model period, 1984 - 2005. Flow alteration increased significantly with additional impoundments. Peak flows were attenuated as water was stored behind outlets, but median flows were increased as this water was slowly released. Average storm duration increased due to extended rising and falling limbs caused by impoundment outlets. Headwater channels increasingly ran dry, decreasing extreme low flows due to impoundment evaporation. Large reservoirs had a greater impact on median flows, but smaller ponds dominated low flow alteration. These results suggest that traditional hydrologic assumptions and metrics may be incapable of analyzing a changing flow regime without explicitly considering small and large impoundments upstream.
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    Estimating Facility-Level Monthly Water Consumption of Commercial, Industrial, Municipal, and Thermoelectric Users in Virginia
    McCarthy, Morgan; Brogan, Connor; Shortridge, Julie; Burgholzer, Robert; Kleiner, Joseph; Scott, Durelle T. (American Water Resources Association, 2022-06-16)
    Understanding water consumption is an important component of water management. However, water consumption data are limited and consumption coefficients do not account for variability through time and across users. This study combines federally maintained discharge data with state-maintained withdrawal data at monthly time steps to estimate facility-level and spatially aggregated water consumption in Virginia between 2010 and 2016. We evaluate (1) the feasibility of using discharge and withdrawal datasets to estimate sub-annual water consumption, (2) how these consumption estimates vary depending on the level of spatial aggregation, and (3) what patterns of seasonality exist in consumption estimates. We find that a combined process of text matching and geospatial analysis is effective in matching facilities and yielding monthly time-series of water consumption. Our results suggest that median consumption in industrial (17%) and commercial (19%) facilities may be higher than median consumption coefficients in the literature (10%). Consumption estimates also demonstrated more variability across facilities and seasons than aggregate coefficients in the literature suggest. Combining this approach with institutional knowledge can assist in quantifying issues such as inter-basin transfers and infiltration that impact consumption estimates, ultimately allowing for more accurate accounts of water use and availability.
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    Estimating Financial Costs and Benefits of Supplemental Irrigation with the Irrigation Financial Estimator Tool (IFET)
    Paoletti, J. Mitchell; Shortridge, Julie (Virginia Cooperative Extension, 2018-11-30)
    Discusses irrigation of crops in terms of costs and benefits. Also notes how to use a financial estimator tool to help with financial planning.
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    An evaluation of a data-driven approach to regional scale surface runoff modelling
    Zhang, Ruoyu (Virginia Tech, 2018-08-03)
    Modelling surface runoff can be beneficial to operations within many fields, such as agriculture planning, flood and drought risk assessment, and water resource management. In this study, we built a data-driven model that can reproduce monthly surface runoff at a 4-km grid network covering 13 watersheds in the Chesapeake Bay area. We used a random forest algorithm to build the model, where monthly precipitation, temperature, land cover, and topographic data were used as predictors, and monthly surface runoff generated by the SWAT hydrological model was used as the response. A sub-model was developed for each of 12 monthly surface runoff estimates, independent of one another. Accuracy statistics and variable importance measures from the random forest algorithm reveal that precipitation was the most important variable to the model, but including climatological data from multiple months as predictors significantly improves the model performance. Using 3-month climatological, land cover, and DEM derivatives from 40% of the 4-km grids as the training dataset, our model successfully predicted surface runoff for the remaining 60% of the grids (mean R2 (RMSE) for the 12 monthly models is 0.83 (6.60 mm)). The lowest R2 was associated with the model for August, when the surface runoff values are least in a year. In all studied watersheds, the highest predictive errors were found within the watershed with greatest topographic complexity, for which the model tended to underestimate surface runoff. For the other 12 watersheds studied, the data-driven model produced smaller and more spatially consistent predictive errors.
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    Filtration, Treatment, and Maintenance Considerations for Micro-Irrigation Systems
    Shortridge, Julie; Benham, Brian L. (Virginia Cooperative Extension, 2018-05-08)
    Describes micro-irrigation systems, how they work, and provide precise amounts of water directly to a plant's root system. Provides information on common water quality problems that can lead to emitter clogging and how to solve these problems.
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    The impact of nitrogen treatment and short-term weather forecast data in irrigation scheduling of corn and cotton on water and nutrient use efficiency in humid climates
    Sangha, Laljeet; Shortridge, Julie; Frame, William (Elsevier, 2023-06)
    Irrigation adoption is increasing in humid regions to offset short-term dry periods, especially at the peak of the growing season. Low soil moisture at the peak growth stage impacts yield and limits the plant's capacity to uptake nitrogen, resulting in low nutrient use efficiency (NUE). However, heavy rainfall on fields with supple-mental irrigation may result in waterlogging and surface runoff, leading to nutrient leaching and runoff. This ultimately can lead to lower NUE, poor water use efficiency (WUE), reduced yields, and water quality impacts. This makes irrigation management challenging in humid regions, as irrigators must avoid both limited and excess water conditions. This field study aimed to develop and test an irrigation management methodology using real-time soil water availability, crop physiological status, water needs, and short-term weather forecasts information from National Weather Service. A rule-based approach determined by soil moisture depletion and short-term weather forecasts was used to trigger irrigation to avoid both stress and excess water conditions. This method was tested in two years of field trials in Suffolk, Virginia to quantify its impacts on yield, NUE, WUE, and financial returns in corn and cotton under four nitrogen application treatments. The relative impact of irrigation and nitrogen treatment was quantified using mixed effects models. The yield, NUE and WUE were impacted by both precipitation and irrigation patterns. Significantly different yields were observed under Nrates treatments for both corn and cotton. The trends of economic returns were similar to yield and were significantly different between recent and historic prices. This study also discusses the impacts of reliability and practical challenges of using Weather Informed irrigation in a field study.
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    Irrigation Scheduling in Humid Climates Using the Checkbook Method
    Shortridge, Julie (Virginia Cooperative Extension, 2019-01-30)
    Discusses the importance of irrigation planning and scheduling when and how much water to apply to fields.
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    Managing Climate Risks and Extreme Weather in Agriculture
    Shortridge, Julie; Paoletti, J. Mitchell (Virginia Cooperative Extension, 2018-06-14)
    Summarizes weather-related risks to agricultural production and offers resources to help producers, extension and conservation personnel in managing these risks.
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    Meteorological Impacts on Streamflow: Analyzing Anthropogenic Climate Change's Effect on Runoff and Streamflow Magnitudes in Virginia's Chesapeake Bay Watershed
    Hildebrand, Daniel Steven (Virginia Tech, 2020-08-05)
    Anthropogenic climate change will impact Virginia's hydrologic processes in unforeseen ways in the coming decades. This research describes variability in meteorology (temperature and precipitation) and associated hydrologic processes (evapotranspiration) throughout an ensemble of 31 general circulation models (GCMs) used by the Chesapeake Bay Program (CBP). Trends are compared with surface runoff generation patterns for a variety of land uses to investigate climate's effect on runoff generation. Scenarios representing pairings of the tenth, fiftieth, and ninetieth percentiles of precipitation and temperature in the CBP 31-model ensemble were run through VADEQ's VA Hydro hydrologic model to investigate streamflow's response to climate. Temperature changes across the study area were minimized in the tenth percentile scenario (+1.02 to +1.24◦C) and maximized in the ninetieth (+2.20 to +3.02◦C), with evapotranspiration change following this trend (tenth: +2.84 to +3.81%; ninetieth: +6.53 to +10.2%). Precipitation change ranged from -10.9 to -7.30% in the tenth to +22.1 to +28.0% in the ninetieth. Runoff per unit area was largely dependent on land use, with the most extreme changes in runoff often seen in forested and natural land uses (-24% in tenth; +53% in ninetieth) and the least extreme seen in impervious and feeding space land(tenth: -11%; ninetieth: +30%). Both overall runoff per unit area and streamflow changed drastically from the base in the tenth (-20.4% to -25.9% change in median runoff; -19.8% to -27.1% change in median streamflow) and ninetieth (+30.4% to +53.7% change in median runoff; +33.0% to +77.8% change in median streamflow) percentile scenarios.
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    Statistically Evaluating Water Consumption Historically and Across Multiple Users in Virginia
    DiCarlo, Morgan (Virginia Tech, 2018-06-11)
    This study explores key aspects of water usage in Virginia via a broad-scale analysis of multiple water users through thirty years of time-series records from the Virginia Water Use Data System. A full spectrum of users is considered, including water used for energy, industrial, agricultural and municipal applications. The extent of the relationship between the volume of water used and drivers like economic and climatic conditions are not well defined in humid environments like Virginia. Mann-Kendall testing is applied to identify water use trends through time both statewide and at the county level. A panel regression is employed to identify relationships between water use and explanatory variables of climatic and economic conditions, both spatially and temporally. Key trends include that industrial and energy sector water withdrawals per facility are significantly decreasing over time. Water used for agricultural applications was found to increase on warmer than average years and decrease on wetter than average years, indicating the panel regression methodology successfully demonstrated and quantified intuitive trends. Interestingly, municipal and industrial water usage had a statistically significant relationship with the Gini coefficient, a measure of inequality in rainfall distribution, indicating intraseasonal variability may play an important role in water use trends that is not apparent using seasonal averages alone. Overall, this work contributes to the understanding of water use trends at the state level for Virginia, and better characterizes long-term trends and short-term variability in water withdrawal.
  • Supplemental Irrigation with the Irrigation Financial Estimator Tool (IFET)-Workbook
    Paoletti, J. Mitchell; Shortridge, Julie (Virginia Cooperative Extension, 2018-11-30)
    This document is an Excel file to use in calculating costs and benefits for supplemental irrigation of crops.
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    Sustainable provision of food and water using an interdisciplinary, system-of-systems framework
    Bosch, Darrell J.; Clark, Susan F.; Cobourn, Kelly M.; Easton, Zachary M.; Godrej, Adil N.; Hession, W. Cully; Hester, Erich T.; Hull, Robert Bruce IV; Little, John C.; Marathe, Achla; McGinnis, Sean; O'Rourke, Megan E.; Schmale, David G. III; Schoenholtz, Stephen H.; Shortridge, Julie; Swecker, Terry; Thomason, Wade E.; Vullikanti, Anil; White, Robin R. (Virginia Tech, 2017-05-15)
    Although sustainability is an essential concept to ensuring the future of humanity and integrity of the resources and ecosystems on which we depend, identification of a comprehensive approach to assess and enhance sustainability is another grand challenge. Fortuitously, in a groundbreaking re-conceptualization of the problem, we identified the collective limitations of the current suite of approaches used to assess sustainability and instead proposed a computational, system-of-systems framework that is causal, modular, tiered, and scalable. Our approach incorporates a comprehensive definition of sustainability as well as new educational structures to systematically and computationally connect across the disciplines. It also aspires to address the political, economic, and decision-making challenges that limit the applicability of science and technical solutions to wicked problems...
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    Using Groundwater for Agricultural Irrigation in Virginia
    Shortridge, Julie (Virginia Cooperative Extension, 2017-12-01)
    Discusses the use of groundwater in different regions of Virginia for irrigation of crops.
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    Virginia Peanut Production Guide, 2018
    Balota, Maria; Cahoon, Charlie; Mehl, H. L.; Shortridge, Julie; Taylor, Sally V. (Virginia Cooperative Extension, 2018-01-29)
    Provides information on peanut varieties, including which kinds to choose for disease and insect resistance. Also discusses weed control, insect control, disease control, irrigation, fertilizers and equipment.
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    Virginia Peanut Production Guide, 2019
    Balota, Maria; Jordan, David; Mehl, H. L.; Shortridge, Julie; Taylor, Sally V. (Virginia Cooperative Extension, 2018-11-26)
    Provides information on peanut varieties, including which kinds to choose for disease and insect resistance. Also discusses weed control, insect control, disease control, irrigation, fertilizers and equipment.