Date of Award:

5-1993

Document Type:

Dissertation

Degree Name:

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department:

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Committee Chair(s)

Upmanu Lall

Committee

Upmanu Lall

Committee

Renate Schaaf

Committee

L. Douglas James

Committee

Esmaiel Malek

Committee

David Bowles

Abstract

The time evolution of the Great Salt Lake hydro-climatic system is studied from the perspective of nonlinear dynamics. The dynamics are reconstructed in phase space using the Great Salt Lake volume time series. Important attributes for describing the system are then obtained from the reconstructed space. These include the minimum number of state variables required to describe the system inferred from a determination of the intrinsic dimension, and characterization of the system in terms of linear/nonlinear, and deterministic/stochastic. Other attributes obtained are the dominant modes of behavior of the system, as well as the limit of predictability or information loss, determined from the Lyapunov exponents. Regimes of behavior of the hydro-climatic system are also obtained, along with transitions between the regimes using the Great Salt Lake volume, precipitation, and temperature time series. Finally, a forecasting model for the Great Salt Lake volume time series is developed using nonparametric multivariate regression techniques, and the phase space reconstruction concept.

Download

Share

COinS

Copyright for this work is retained by the student. If you have any questions regarding the inclusion of this work in the Digital Commons, please email us at .