Publications

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Sandia National Laboratories is collaborating with the National Research Council (NRC) Canada and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) to develop a decision-support model that will evaluate the tradeoffs associated with high-latitude algae biofuel production co-located with wastewater, CO2, and waste heat. This project helps Canada meet its goal of diversifying fuel sources with algae-based biofuels. The biofuel production will provide a wide range of benefits including wastewater treatment, CO2 reuse and reduction of demand for fossil-based fuels. The higher energy density in algae-based fuels gives them an advantage over crop-based biofuels as the 'production' footprint required is much less, resulting in less water consumed and little, if any conversion of agricultural land from food to fuel production. Besides being a potential source for liquid fuel, algae have the potential to be used to generate electricity through the burning of dried biomass, or anaerobically digested to generate methane for electricity production. Co-locating algae production with waste streams may be crucial for making algae an economically valuable fuel source, and will certainly improve its overall ecological sustainability. The modeling process will address these questions, and others that are important to the use of water for energy production: What are the locations where all resources are co-located, and what volumes of algal biomass and oil can be produced there? In locations where co-location does not occur, what resources should be transported, and how far, while maintaining economic viability? This work is being funded through the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Biomass Program Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, and is part of a larger collaborative effort that includes sampling, strain isolation, strain characterization and cultivation being performed by the NREL and Canada's NRC. Results from the NREL / NRC collaboration including specific productivities of selected algal strains will eventually be incorporated into this model.

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Public mediated resource planning is quickly becoming the norm rather than the exception. Unfortunately, supporting tools are lacking that interactively engage the public in the decision-making process and integrate over the myriad values that influence water policy. In the pages of this report we document the first steps toward developing a specialized decision framework to meet this need; specifically, a modular and generic resource-planning ''toolbox''. The technical challenge lies in the integration of the disparate systems of hydrology, ecology, climate, demographics, economics, policy and law, each of which influence the supply and demand for water. Specifically, these systems, their associated processes, and most importantly the constitutive relations that link them must be identified, abstracted, and quantified. For this reason, the toolbox forms a collection of process modules and constitutive relations that the analyst can ''swap'' in and out to model the physical and social systems unique to their problem. This toolbox with all of its modules is developed within the common computational platform of system dynamics linked to a Geographical Information System (GIS). Development of this resource-planning toolbox represents an important foundational element of the proposed interagency center for Computer Aided Dispute Resolution (CADRe). The Center's mission is to manage water conflict through the application of computer-aided collaborative decision-making methods. The Center will promote the use of decision-support technologies within collaborative stakeholder processes to help stakeholders find common ground and create mutually beneficial water management solutions. The Center will also serve to develop new methods and technologies to help federal, state and local water managers find innovative and balanced solutions to the nation's most vexing water problems. The toolbox is an important step toward achieving the technology development goals of this center.

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Political borders are controversial and contested spaces. In an attempt to better understand movement along and through political borders, this project applied the metaphor of a membrane to look at how people, ideas, and things ''move'' through a border. More specifically, the research team employed this metaphor in a system dynamics framework to construct a computer model to assess legal and illegal migration on the US-Mexico border. Employing a metaphor can be helpful, as it was in this project, to gain different perspectives on a complex system. In addition to the metaphor, the multidisciplinary team utilized an array of methods to gather data including traditional literature searches, an experts workshop, a focus group, interviews, and culling expertise from the individuals on the research team. Results from the qualitative efforts revealed strong social as well as economic drivers that motivate individuals to cross the border legally. Based on the information gathered, the team concluded that legal migration dynamics were of a scope we did not want to consider hence, available demographic models sufficiently capture migration at the local level. Results from both the quantitative and qualitative data searches were used to modify a 1977 border model to demonstrate the dynamic nature of illegal migration. Model runs reveal that current US-policies based on neo-classic economic theory have proven ineffective in curbing illegal migration, and that proposed enforcement policies are also likely to be ineffective. We suggest, based on model results, that improvement in economic conditions within Mexico may have the biggest impact on illegal migration to the U.S. The modeling also supports the views expressed in the current literature suggesting that demographic and economic changes within Mexico are likely to slow illegal migration by 2060 with no special interventions made by either government.

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The Navruz Project is a cooperative, transboundary, river monitoring project involving rivers and institutions in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, and facilitated by Sandia National Laboratories in the U.S. The Navruz Project focuses on waterborne radionuclides and metals because of their importance to public health and nuclear materials proliferation concerns in the region. The Project also collects data on basic water quality parameters. Data obtained in this project are shared among all participating countries and the public through a world-wide web site (http://www.cmc.sandia.org/Central/centralasia.html), and are available for use in further studies and in regional transboundary water resource management efforts. This report includes graphs showing selected data from the Fall 2000 and Spring 2001 sampling seasons. These data include all parameters grouped into six regions, including main rivers and some tributaries in the Amu Darya and Syr Darya river systems. This report also assembles all data (in tabular form) generated by the project from Fall 2000 through Fall 2001. This report comes as the second part of a planned three-part reporting process. The first report is the Sampling and Analysis Plan and Operational Manual, SAND 2002-0484. This is the second report.

The transboundary nature of water resources demands a transboundary approach to their monitoring and management. However, transboundary water projects raise a challenging set of problems related to communication issues, and standardization of sampling, analysis and data management methods. This manual addresses those challenges and provides the information and guidance needed to perform the Navruz Project, a cooperative, transboundary, river monitoring project involving rivers and institutions in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan facilitated by Sandia National Laboratories in the U.S. The Navruz Project focuses on waterborne radionuclides and metals because of their importance to public health and nuclear materials proliferation concerns in the region. This manual provides guidelines for participants on sample and data collection, field equipment operations and procedures, sample handling, laboratory analysis, and data management. Also included are descriptions of rivers, sampling sites and parameters on which data are collected. Data obtained in this project are shared among all participating countries and the public through an internet web site, and are available for use in further studies and in regional transboundary water resource management efforts. Overall, the project addresses three main goals: to help increase capabilities in Central Asian nations for sustainable water resources management; to provide a scientific basis for supporting nuclear transparency and non-proliferation in the region; and to help reduce the threat of conflict in Central Asia over water resources, proliferation concerns, or other factors.