Browsing by Author "He, Jianxun (Jennifer)"
Now showing 1 - 16 of 16
Results Per Page
Sort Options
Item Open Access Application of Lattice Boltzmann Method for Simulating Stably Stratified Flows past Cylinders(2023-09-17) Maddahi, Navid; Zhou, Qi; Zhou, Qi; He, Jianxun (Jennifer); Chu, AngusThis research looks into the intriguing subject of ambient density-stratified flows, which have long captivated researchers due to their representation of real-world physical phenomena such as diapycnal mixing in oceans driven by environmental influences. The study specifically focuses on the flow past a cylindrical object within such stratified flows, which introduces complexities involving buoyancy and viscous effects. A major focus of this research is the examination of the lattice Boltzmann method as a novel approach to model stratified flows around circular cylinders by solving coupled Navier-Stokes and advection-diffusion equations. The study investigates the impact of stratification on wake characteristics and various flow parameters for a single cylinder at six Reynolds numbers ranging from 10 to 600 and Froude numbers from 2.19 to 7.51. Additionally, the investigation includes the case of two cylinders arranged in tandem at a Reynolds number of 100, with similar Froude numbers. This research demonstrates the suitability and robustness of the lattice Boltzmann method in modeling stratified flows past cylinders. The findings reveal that even moderate levels of stratification can significantly influence the wake pattern, potentially leading to changes in the flow regime. Moreover, the study demonstrates that the introduction of stratification is associated with a reduction in the drag coefficient and shedding frequency, leading to altered flow behaviors. Furthermore, in the case of flow past two cylinders, the presence of stratification increases the critical spacing between the cylinders.Item Open Access Assessing Hydrologic and Policy Implications of Irrigation on the Canadian Prairies Under Climate Change(2023-02-21) Vonderbank, Lucas; Stadnyk, Tricia; Black, Kerry; Pietroniro, Alain; He, Jianxun (Jennifer)The Saskatchewan River Basin (SRB) covers a large portion of the Canadian Prairies. Agriculture represents a dominant land-use in the SRB, and since the early 1900s irrigation has evolved to become an important part of the sector, improving yields and enabling the production of high-value crops. With climate change projected to increase temperatures and alter precipitation patterns, uncertainty surrounding water security for irrigators and First Nations in the SRB is expected to increase. Given the impacts of climate change, the recent announcements from the Alberta and Saskatchewan Governments regarding irrigation expansion, and the risks faced by First Nations under changing streamflow conditions, a hydrologic analysis of the SRB that dynamically incorporates climate change and irrigation is required to assess future water security and the viability of current water governance (i.e., the Master Agreement on Apportionment). This study integrates Prairie-specific irrigation in the HYPE hydrologic model, and uses RCP8.5 NA-CORDEX climate simulations from 1976 to 2070 to estimate the effects of climate change. The results indicate that (1) drier summers are likely to put a strain on irrigation water supplies during the growing season; (2) that irrigation in the upstream reaches of the basin may cause reduced streamflow and a loss of seasonality in the downstream reaches, with implications for riparian ecosystems and the Saskatchewan River Delta; (3) that the system of prior allocation in Alberta puts disproportional water security risk on First Nations under low flow conditions; and (4) that compliance with the Master Agreement on Apportionment may become increasingly challenging on the South Saskatchewan River under future conditions.Item Open Access Assessment and Analysis of a Novel Intake for a Ramjet Engine(2017) Wilson, Steven James; Johansen, Craig; Wood, David; He, Jianxun (Jennifer); Ziadé, PaulThe Atlantis Intake System (AIS) is a novel intake design intended to supply a combustible fuel/air mixture to a ramjet engine without the use of any moving parts. The operation of the AIS is similar to an ejector pump, it operates via the continuous release of a gaseous fuel jet into a system of inlet stages open to the surrounding ambient air. Interactions between the fuel jet, the intake geometry and the surrounding air result in a relatively high velocity, high pressure, and high temperature combustible mixture entering the intake of a ramjet engine coupled with the intake. A control-volume analysis is used to develop a means of predicting the performance of an AIS coupled ramjet engine given a set of input conditions, to better understand the influence of the controlled variables. This control volume (CV) analysis is expanded to include a method for predicting the ratio of air entrained by the AIS based on the characteristics of the fuel inlet jet and the geometry of the AIS. This model is compared to a series of computational fluid dynamic (CFD) simulations, and shows strong agreement in terms of the ratio of air entrained. The potential for the use of the models as a tool for rapid assessment of multiple AIS designs is discussed. An exergetic analysis tool is developed and utilized on the results of the CFD simulations to quantify the dominant sources of exergy destruction. The results are to be used as a guide to better optimize the AIS.Item Open Access Characterization and Modelling of Stormwater for the City of Calgary(2017) Shrestha, Dhiraj; He, Jianxun (Jennifer); Chu, Angus; Wang, XinThe quantification of pollutant loading from nonpoint pollution sources is very challenging but crucial. Statistical analyses were performed for identifying differences of stormwater quality among different types of land use and among catchments of same land use in three types of flow (baseflow, snowmelt and stormwater runoff). Results indicate water quality parameters present variations among different types of land use and among catchments of same land use. In addition, Stormwater Management Model (SWMM) was calibrated and verified for industrial and residential land uses. The modeling results clearly demonstrate distinct coefficient values for pollutant build-up and wash-off. Rainfall, as the source of stormwater, in the city was also investigated to characterize the spatial and temporal distribution of rainfall. The identified differences in stormwater quality from statistical analysis and modeling suggest the need of quantifying and modeling pollutant loading from different types of land use.Item Open Access Controls of Organic Carbon Storage for Vegetation Along Valley Floors, Kananaskis, Canadian Rockies(2022-05) Gurung, Deepa; Martin, Yvonne; He, Jianxun (Jennifer); Freeman, Andrea K. L.The present study utilizes a field survey to investigate controls of organic carbon storage along valley floors in two steep, tributary drainage basins in a subalpine mountain environment, Kananaskis, Canadian Rockies. While terrestrial carbon remains one of the most uncertain components of the global carbon cycle, organic carbon storage along valley floors of small tributary basins has not been a focus of much previous research. Amounts of organic carbon storage in vegetation along valley floors is influenced by: (i) spatial organization of potential accommodation space associated with valley floors; and (ii) vegetation density. Field measurements show that valley floor widths are variable in the study basins, alternating between below-average, above-average and average values (in no particular order). Valley floor widths show an association with lithology and structural geology, such as folds and faults, in both study basins. Organic carbon density for vegetation is influenced by the availability of suitable substrate for vegetation growth. The availability of such substrate is controlled by deposition on valley floors resulting from mass wasting, debris flows, and floods. Together, the valley floor widths and organic carbon density result in significant variability in organic carbon storage along valley floors in the study basins. The 2013 flood in the Bow River drainage basin led to significant flood events and debris flow activity along tributary streams in Kananaskis. It is suggested that erosional and depositional activity along valley floors during this flood event may have killed significant amounts of vegetation and resulted in deposition of abundant, coarse-grained sediment (with the latter not being conducive to vegetation establishment). It is suggested that amounts of organic carbon storage associated with vegetation may have an underlying cyclicity that is driven by the episodic nature of geomorphic activity along valley floors resulting from recurring high magnitude hydroclimatic events.Item Open Access Determining the effectiveness of drought resilient bioretention bed in storm water management(2022-03-17) Truong, Phuc Thien Huynh; Chu, Angus; Huang, Wendy; He, Jianxun (Jennifer)Bioretention is a modern low-impact development (LID) technique that constitutes a vegetated depression filled with a permeable filtration medium, which can improve stormwater quality, reduce peak-flow runoff, and prevent groundwater drought in urbanized watersheds. This study investigates the performance of a full-scale bioretention system to capture, treat, and store retained stormwater runoff. A new feature of this bioretention system, treated retained water, is then used to irrigate four nearby vegetation beds. This bioretention system, and the use of treated retained water, is a novel drought resilience design for bioretention system. A full-scale bioretention system (88 m2) was constructed in the fall of 2019 near Meadow Ridge School, Okotoks, Alberta, and vegetation was planted during the spring/summer of 2020. Bioretention performance in capturing runoff and treating stormwater was monitored from winter 2019 to summer 2020. The drought resilience bioretention system retained approximately 30 m3 in its drainage layer and roughly 4 m3 in the media layer. The monitoring system inside the reservoir chambers showed that the bioretention bed captured over 90% of stormwater runoff in 10 out of 13 rain events, and the retained runoff was used for irrigation during the spring/summer of 2020. The stormwater runoff retention for the other 3 rain events ranged from 30% to 77% according to the water level monitoring system. Four nearby vegetation beds were irrigated approximately 1 cm depth/day from June 2020 until the end of July 2020. Further adjustments to the irrigation setup would allow the vegetation beds to be watered all year round without using potable water. The water that was captured during the spring/summer of 2020 was of better quality than the water captured during the winter of 2019; most of the water quality indicators’ concentration declined substantially and stabilized at low concentrations. In spring/summer 2020, average concentrations for each water quality indicators are: total nitrogen (TN): 2.38 mg/L; ammonia (NH3-N): 0.13 mg/L; nitrate (NO3—N): 1.39 mg/L; total phosphorus (TP): 0.37 mg/L; reactive phosphorus (PO4-P): 0.1 mg/L; chemical oxygen demand (COD): 484.15 mg/L; total suspended solid (TSS): 39.23 mg/L; volatile suspended solid (VSS): 20.56 mg/L. Although the drought resilience bioretention system did not treat stormwater as well as other techniques, especially in treating TP concentration, the system was only established for one season, and an extended research period is required because the media of the system need time to stabilize, and vegetation needs to extend its root network to obtain optimal bioretention system performance.Item Open Access Development of Alternative Medium to Sustain Methanotrophs in Methane Biofilters(2016-02-03) Goya Sanchez, Jesica; Hettiaratchi, Joseph Patrick A.; Chu, Angus; He, Jianxun (Jennifer); Nowicki, Edwin PeterMethane biofiltration is a cost-effective technology that reduces the effect of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere through bacterial conversion of methane into carbon dioxide without producing harmful by-products. It is very important that media in which the bacteria live possesses certain characteristics that allows them to grow properly. Compost has been widely used, but it has disadvantages such as instability and compaction issues. The aim of this work was to investigate the performance of flax straw, wood shavings, and lava rock (with and without nutrient addition) used in a mixture along with compost looking to provide better conditions for methanotrophs to thrive and achieve high methane oxidation rates with little degradation from the media. Through laboratory column experiments we found the best material to be the compost:wood shavings mixture in a 30:70 ratio at 70% of FC, with 89% removal efficiency.Item Open Access Evaluating the Effectiveness of Bioretention Systems for Managed Aquifer Recharge in Cold Climates(2022-01) Hall, Glenn; Cey, Edwin; He, Jianxun (Jennifer); Hayashi, MasakiBioretention systems are a low impact development (LID) technology being utilized to mitigate the flooding and contamination impacts of urbanization on stormwater runoff. These systems are difficult to monitor in cold climates using traditional water-budget techniques when surface temperatures drop below freezing. A bioretention system in the Town of Okotoks, Alberta Canada was investigated to address four objectives. 1) Develop a method to monitor the system year-round. 2) Investigate seasonal changes in the infiltration and recharge characteristics of the system. 3) Determine if there was evidence of nutrient leaching from the system. 4) Develop a technique to estimate recharge from the system. The site was instrumented using a paired monitoring well set-up that allowed for characterization of the local groundwater mound induced by recharging waters. The solution of Hantush was used to calculate the recharge rates required to produce observed groundwater mounding heights and estimate the recharge produced by the bioretention system on a per-event basis. The method overestimated recharge by a factor of three compared to estimates obtained using the water budget technique, but could be corrected by finding an appropriate K value to match the water budget data. The system was estimated to recharge 2500 m3 of stormwater over two years. Winter snow-melt events produced recharge volumes comparable to those induced by a 4.5 mm summer precipitation event. Recharge volumes were found to be strongly correlated with precipitation magnitude, groundwater mound height, and the duration of the mounding event, and had no significant correlation with antecedent soil moisture. Nitrate leeching was observed beneath the bioretention system, with aquifer nitrate concentrations reaching 3.8 mg/L. While bioretention systems are effective at recharging aquifers in cold climates, groundwater plays an important role in the function of these treatment-infiltration systems and care must be taken to ensure nitrogen contamination does not lead to adverse ecological impacts for wildlife or humans. Future work should look at decreasing the uncertainty in recharges estimates associated with this method and accounting for the impact of heterogeneous and anisotropic aquifers with time-variant infiltration rates and recharge pond geometries at surface.Item Open Access Hydrological Frequency Analysis under Nonstationary Conditions(2022-08-03) Vidrio-Sahagún, Cuauhtémoc Tonatiuh; He, Jianxun (Jennifer); Wang, Xin; Zhou, QiThe hydrological frequency analysis (HFA) evaluates the recurrence of extreme flow and precipitation events and guides water-related management and risk assessment. The conventional HFA assumes stationarity in the underlying process. However, climate change and other changes in the watersheds may induce nonstationarity in hydrometeorological variables. Under nonstationary scenarios, the nonstationary HFA (NS-HFA) is the theoretical choice. To implement the NS-HFA with more confidence, further understanding of the impacts of nonstationarity on the analysis and advancements of the existing approaches are desired.This dissertation, therefore, aimed to improve the understanding of the HFA under nonstationarity and advance the NS-HFA applications by: (a) investigating the impacts of ignoring the nonstationarity of different patterns and degrees in the stationary HFA (S-HFA); (b) examining the association between the nonstationarity characteristics and estimated flood hazards; (c) improving the determination of the NS-HFA model by proposing a novel procedure based on the decomposition of nonstationary stochastic processes; (d) enhancing the computational efficiency and numerical stability of the profile likelihood (PL) method, which is theoretically superior to other available methods for quantifying the uncertainty in the NS-HFA; and (e) comprehensively assessing the use of the Metastatistical approach and its simplified version to advance the NS-HFA from the perspectives of fitting efficiency, accuracy, and uncertainty. The results demonstrated that: (a) neglecting the nonstationarity in the S-HFA would lead to decreasing the accuracy and increasing the uncertainty of the analysis; (b) the nonstationarity patterns and degrees are strongly associated with the hydrological hazards; (c) the proposed decomposition-based approach based upon the theoretical decomposition of nonstationary stochastic processes advances the model determination in the NS-HFA from both theoretical and practical perspectives; (d) the proposed methods, which incorporate the classical regula-falsi numerical method and the generalized maximum likelihood principle, effectively reduce the computational burden and numerical instability of the PL method, and consequently facilitate its practical applications; and (e) compared to the NS-HFA based on the generalized extreme value distribution, the use of the simplified Metastatistical approach yields improved performance from various perspectives. Therefore, this dissertation improved the understanding of the HFA and advanced the NS-HFA for real-world applications.Item Open Access Impacts of Vegetation and Growing Media on Evapotranspiration in Bioretention Systems(2021-09) Nasrollahpour, Reza; He, Jianxun (Jennifer); Chu, Angus; Wang, XinAlthough bioretention systems have known benefits in managing urban stormwater, there is still a gap of knowledge about the role of evapotranspiration (ET) in these systems. To date, very few works have studied the effects of different parameters on ET simultaneously over an extended period, especially in the field. Therefore, this work aimed to investigate the role of design variables (including growing media and vegetation) and climatic parameters on ET in bioretention systems. To this end, twenty-four bioretention mesocosms constructed using three media types (i.e., media 40, media 70, and clay-loam mixed with wood chips) and planted with three vegetation types (i.e., herbaceous mixes, woody mixes, and turfgrass as control) were monitored during three growing seasons in 2018 – 2020. The set-up of the mesocosms allowed examining the roles of these variables along with their interactions on ET. The results confirmed the effect of media and vegetation, apart from the climatic variables, on ET at the surface and deep layers of the mesocosms. Still, their impacts were more prominent at the surface layer. Among the investigated media and vegetation types, the media 70 and the woody vegetation appeared to outperform their counterparts in enhancing ET during the study period. The findings also demonstrated that the effects of media and vegetation on ET in the mesocosms varied with time. The influence of design variables, particularly the vegetation, became more prominent over time. In addition, the impact of media-vegetation interactions on ET was identified, and thus its consideration is necessary. These results suggest the need for optimizing bioretention systems with regard to the design variables, whose roles in ET are time- and depth-variant, to promote ET and, in turn, the bioretention performance.Item Open Access Investigating Water Sources and Survival Strategies of Conifer Trees Growing on Cliffs.(2024-02-12) Ives, Michelle Amy; Johnson, Edward; Muench, Douglas; Martin, Yvonne; He, Jianxun (Jennifer)Vertical limestone cliffs in the Canadian Rockies are often heavily fractured. These fractures can collect soil and organic matter and provide a substrate for tree growth on these otherwise inhospitable bedrock cliffs. Trees growing in this environment face several constraints, the most significant of which is limited water availability, yet often live to be well over 150 years old. With the increasing potential for tree mortality due to climate-induced drought in forests worldwide, insight from these already chronically water-stressed trees is invaluable. Here I investigate the source and quantity of water for two species of trees, Douglas Fir (Pseudostuga mensiesii) and Engelmann spruce (Picea engelmannii), growing on a south facing limestone cliff in the Canadian Rockies. I explore the role of the fracture contributing area and fracture soil characteristics in the volume of infiltrated water. Additionally, I look at adaptations of the two species to long-term water stress in this harsh environment. I found that: 1) Both species of trees get water from recent rainfall and evaporated soil water. 2) Overland flow may be a significant additional water input for trees growing on cliffs (2x the volume of direct rainfall). The volume of this input depends on contributing area and soil hydraulic characteristics, with larger contributing areas generating more overland flow and more overland flow infiltrating in soils with higher hydraulic conductivity. 3) Trees growing on the limestone cliff have access to limited amounts of water, moving max daily volumes of sapflow less than 50 L/day in 2021 and 80 L/day in 2022, while trees at nearby glacial till site are moving up to 619 L/day and 418 L/day. 4) Both species cope with chronic water stress by growing slowly and maintaining consistently small sapwood areas. Douglas Fir growing on the cliff maintain higher levels of transpiration during periods with low water availability, which may be attributed to their more cavitation resistant tracheid cells. Although these trees are extremely water limited, they have survived long periods of time, and provide some insight into how chronically water stressed trees are better adapted to deal with water limitation.Item Open Access Mitigation of nutrient leaching from bioretention systems using amendments(2023-07) Zhang, Yihui; He, Jianxun (Jennifer); Chu, Angus; Huang, WendyBioretention systems have been showcased to be effective in reducing stormwater quantity and improving stormwater quality. However, the systems can also leach nutrients, especially during their initial operation, which needs to be mitigated to optimize their benefits. To examine the efficiency of six amendments selected primarily for reducing phosphorus (P) leaching, six amended and two control cells were constructed and monitored soon after their construction in the field of the 2020 growing season. The effects of the amendments on both the hydrological performance (in terms of water retention rate (WRR)) and water quality performance (in terms of the event mean concentration and pollutant removal rate) were investigated. The results showed that all amendments had the capability of preventing or mitigating P leaching from bioretention systems to varying degrees, with the water treatment residual (WTR) outperforming all other amendments, followed by the activated aluminum (AA) and sorptiveMEDIA (SM) amendments. In addition, some of the amendments (i.e., drywall (DRY), WTR, and SM) were also found to be beneficial in reducing the nitrogen (N) leaching to a slight degree, whereas eggshell (EGG) introduced an extra source of N leached. Furthermore, the temporal evolution of the P leaching of the amendment cells was found to be different from that of the control cells. The same result was not observed for the temporal evolution of the N leaching, implying that the amendments (except EGG) did not largely affect the N leaching. Among the amendments’ effect on WRR, there was no obvious difference. Whereas the observed differences between the control cells and some amendment cells in vegetation growth and antecedent media moisture condition might imply their potential impacts on the hydrologic performance. Overall, other than P leaching, the use of amendments affected other functions of bioretention systems, which should be taken into consideration when selecting an amendment for practice.Item Open Access Model Estimation of Depression-focused Groundwater Recharge and its Variability in the Canadian Prairies(2024-08-28) Uddin, Shihab; Hayashi, Masaki; Cey, Edwin; He, Jianxun (Jennifer)The Canadian Prairies is characterized by a cold, semiarid climate with topographical variations containing numerous depressions. These depressions play an important role in the hydrology of the prairie region by storing runoff water and replenishing groundwater through focused infiltration termed as depression-focused groundwater recharge. This study investigated the spatial distribution of depression-focused groundwater recharge in Alberta and Saskatchewan using a soil-water-balance model named Versatile Soil Moisture Budget-Depression Upland System (VSMB-DUS). Automated digital elevation model (DEM) analysis was used to identify topographical depressions across Alberta and Saskatchewan and to determine hydrologically relevant parameters. Hourly meteorological data of Alberta and Saskatchewan, along with land-use data collected from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, were used to run simulations using VSMB-DUS. A statistical approach was developed to distribute the simulated groundwater recharge across similar surficial geological settings. Simulations also incorporated the effects of different types of land use in the two prairie provinces. A chloride mass balance method was used to estimate regional-scale groundwater recharge for a comparison with model-simulated recharge. A sensitivity analysis was conducted to determine uncertainty in the recharge estimation. Results showed that depression-focused groundwater recharge ranges from 2 to 55 mm yr-1 in Alberta and Saskatchewan with an uncertainty of 3–15 mm yr-1. Simulated recharge was higher under managed grassland and cropland scenarios compared to unmanaged grassland, indicating the sensitivity of recharge to agricultural practices.Item Open Access Traffic Prediction Based on Land Use Applying Deep Learning: Case Studies in Calgary, Canada(2021-10) Azad, Abul Kalam; Wang, Xin; Liang, Hung-Ling (Steve); Stefanakis, Emmanuel; Gao, Yang; He, Jianxun (Jennifer); Li, SongnianLand uses impact the transportation system in the communities, which reflects changes in vehicular traffic, and transportation capacity. Therefore, proper assessments of the traffic prediction from land use are critical in determining the required improvements in transportation infrastructure. These assessments can also help to provide appropriate policies that serve the urban development goals. Land use and transportation planning are interdependent and are essential factors in forecasting traffic. In recent years, predicting traffic based on land use, along with several other variables, such as demographics, has become a worthwhile area of study as this helps in urban planning. This manuscript-based thesis examines Artificial Neural Network (ANN), Deep Neural Network Regression (DNN-Regression), and Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) methods to predict traffic in Calgary, Canada. These methods used three key variables: land use, demographics, and temporal data. The proposed methods were compared and evaluated with other existing traditional methods, such as Negative Binomial Regression and Auto Regressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA). Comparative experiments showed that the proposed methods outperformed the traditional methods. The land use change characteristics also affect and challenge how a city manages, organizes, and plans for new developments and transportation. These challenges can be better tackled with effective monitoring and predicting methods, enabling the best possible efficiency for a growing city like Calgary. Using the concept of ontology in land use change is an initiative currently being researched and explored. Ontology incorporates relationships between various entities of land use. This study also aims to present Land Use Change Ontology (LUCO) with a deep neural network for traffic prediction. This study is inspired by deep learning methods and effective data mining computing capabilities of RNN to predict traffic while considering the impact of land use change. RNN was successful in learning the features of traffic flow under various land use change situations. Experimental results indicated that, with the consideration of LUCO, the deep learning predictors had better accuracy when compared with other existing models. The success of these modelling approaches indicates that cities could apply these traffic prediction modelling approaches to make land use transportation planning more efficient.Item Open Access Use of Remote Sensing and Ground Data in Comprehension of the Flooding in the Bow River Basin, Alberta(2015-06-29) Veiga, Victor Barcante; Hassan, Quazi; He, Jianxun (Jennifer)Flooding is a devastating natural hazard throughout the world. Consequently, a flood management system is vital. Here, the aim was to investigate elements of flood management as it pertains to the Bow River in Alberta. The specific objectives included: (i) river flow forecasting at Calgary, (ii) flood extent estimation at Calgary, and (iii) river planform change detection. Analyses revealed that using a multivariable linear regression (MLR) formulated as a function of upstream gauge stations and the station of interest using antecedent flows demonstrated strong relationships (i.e., r2 = 0.93). Furthermore, the flood extent estimation gave a kappa statistic of 0.6, which is reasonable considering that the image was taken 16 days after peak flood time. Lastly, the Bow River planform change detection showed that the 2013 floods caused a higher erosion in the lower Bow River (i.e., 361.62ha) as compared to the upper Bow River area (i.e., 206.01ha).Item Open Access Water Quality Response to Hydro-Meteorological Variation in Alberta Rivers(2017) Rostami, Sajjad; He, Jianxun (Jennifer); Hassan, Quazi Khalid; Rangelova, Elena Veselinova; Du, Ke (Duke)Surface water in rivers as a major component of water resources is susceptible to influences posed by natural factors besides anthropogenic activities. However, different from anthropogenic activities, the effects of natural factors are often beyond human control. This thesis aimed to understand how riverine water quality responds to hydro-meteorological conditions, especially flow and precipitation. The investigation of the hydro-meteorological response of riverine water quality was conducted through statistically analyzing hydro-meteorological variables and eleven water quality data collected from three rivers in Alberta, Canada, and their river basins during the time period of 1988 - 2014. Both flow and water quality parameters, in general, showed significant seasonal variation in the rivers. The dependence of water quality on flow was investigated in three flow regimes, which were formulated based on flow magnitude. The water quality parameters were categorized into eight groups using cluster analysis based on their response pattern to flow. The results suggest that water quality parameters respond to flow differently under different flow regimes due to their different physical nature and their different contribution sources. To investigate the meteorological response of riverine water quality, the linkages between river flow and precipitation and between river water quality and precipitation were focused. The results showed the significant dependency of river flow as well as most of the water quality parameters on cumulative antecedent average areal precipitation (AAP). Furthermore, the qualitative response of water quality to the three categories of cumulative antecedent AAP, which were classified according to its magnitude, was observed. In general, a higher amount of precipitation, which is associated with a higher flow, would results in the decrease of some water quality parameters by diluting or the increase of some water quality parameters by mobilizing and transporting pollutant into rivers. Overall, similar water quality responses to flow and precipitation were confirmed. Therefore, all the results obtained in this thesis suggest that riverine water quality management, especially for the rivers whose variation in flow is primarily driven by precipitation, should take hydro-meteorological condition into the consideration.