Incorporating Sustainability in NPDES Stormwater Permitting
Perform a sustainability evaluation of 3 to 5 recent NPDES stormwater permits in the State of California Develop metrics and a simple method to rank permits from a sutainability…
Investigating Water Quality BMPs by Native Plant Species Buffer Around Chesapeake Bay
Construction, operation, and maintenance of infrastructure changes land surface permeability and runoff rates. Roadside ditches carry invisible chemicals such as zinc and cadmium, nitrogen oxides, hydrocarbons, herbicides, and road salt.…
Research Toxicological Effects of Chloride Based Deicers in the Natural Environment
Recent toxicity data obtained through studies conducted by the State of Iowa and EPA Region 5 in 2009 showed that chloride was less toxic to aquatic organisms when accounting for…
A Comprehensive investigation of Total Maximum Daily Load Reports
The requirements outlined in TMDL reports and drafts are applied broadly to a number of land uses and are often based on assumptions. Quite often, the impacts related to transportation…
Application and Calibration of Confocal Microscopy with Fluorescent Tags to Monitor the Growth and Development of Freshwater Mussels and Fish Exposed to Metals Pesticides and Polyacrylamide (PAM) Flocculants in Highway Runoff
We propose to test existing live cell and whole organisms using physiological techniques, in particular fluorescent tags combined with confocal microscopy to image changes in physiology, growth and development caused…
Analysis of Deer Population Movement Patterns Before and After Construction of Wildlife Crossing Improvements in Central Oregon
The threats to human safety posed by high rates of large mammal road-kill are well reported in the literature, as well as the adverse effects of road-kill on mammal populations;…
Development of a Predictive Tool to Assess Fish Passage Conditions in an Entire Watershed System
An overall assessment of fish passage conditions from headwaters to estuaries requires the analysis of the entire channel network connecting those habitats. Such an analysis should not be performed in…
Transitioning to Sustainable Transportation Energy
The focus of the project is laying out a vision for sustainable energy for passenger vehicles. The project will: Identify the role of government policies on energy transitions in addressing…
Integration of Air Quality Models Used in Highway Air Quality Analysis
There are several types of models used in analyzing highway emission impacts to air quality for both regional analysis and project or hotspot analysis. These models include traffic operations, transportation…
Best Practices for Environmental Planning and Mitigation in Changing Landscapes
Transportation professionals, including planners and engineers, desire to avoid conflicts and reduce mitigation costs, thereby increasing the reliability and predictability of transportation design processes. Further, SAFETEA-LU requires involvement of participating agencies…