Functional programming is concerned with referential transparency, that is, given a certain function and its parameter, that the result will always be the same. However, it seems that this is violated in applications involving uncertainty, such as rolling a dice. This thesis defines the background of probabilistic programming and domain-specific...
Protein secondary structure prediction plays a pivotal role in predicting protein folding in three-dimensions. Its task is to assign each residue one of the three secondary structure classes helix, strand, or random coil. This is an instance of the problem of sequential supervised learning in machine learning. This thesis describes...
MIKE SHE is a fully distributed, physically-based hydrologic model that can simulate water movement over and under the Earth's surface. Evapotranspiration (ET) is one of the components of this model. MIKE SHE uses a modification of the Kristensen -Jensen (1975) method to calculate actual ET. This method is based on...
A relatively stable, persistent and historical problem with elevated NO₃⁻ concentrations in rural drinking wells in the southern Willamette Valley, Oregon is evident. What is the origin of NO₃⁻ in rural drinking water wells in this area? The answer to the question is not simple. Many non-point sources contribute to...
The U.S Pacific Northwest contains a wide variety of ecosystems, all subject to relatively dry summers and wet winters. As has been shown with paleoclimatic and paleoecological data, the region is vulnerable to changes in climate. We assessed the sensitivities of vegetation distributions, carbon stocks, and fire regimes to 21st...
The spatial and dynamic pattern of landscape changes has a profound effect on the supply of environmental services, including the provision of habitat for fish and wildlife. Spatial heterogeneity is a common feature of landscapes in the Pacific Northwest, most notably in areas important to the production of salmonid fish...
Low-permeability geologic units may offer significant chemical and hydraulic protection of adjacent aquifers, and are important for managing groundwater quality, especially in areas with significant non-point source contamination. Nitrate in the Willamette Valley is attenuated across the Willamette Silt, a semi-confining unit overlying a regionally important aquifer. To quantify the...
Salmonid populations in the Pacific Northwest are at historic lows and many
populations continue to decline. Previous studies have linked salmonid declines to land
use through degradation of in-stream physical habitat, but few of these studies have taken
geology into consideration. This study relates habitat parameters known to be important...
Environmental and regulatory concerns are causing confined animal feeding operations (CAFO's) to account for phosphorous content when applying wastewater to agricultural fields for disposal. In most cases this requires more land to spread the waste onto so that the phosphorous needs of the crop are not exceeded. A mobile process...
Reinforcement learning (RL) is the study of systems that learn from interaction with their environment. The current framework of Reinforcement Learning is based on receiving scalar rewards, which the agent aims to maximize. But in many real world situations, tradeoffs must be made among multiple objectives. This necessitates the use...