D.L. Marrin

Water Sciences & Insights

As conventional sources of freshwater continue to be impacted, the use of alternatively produced drinking waters, such as desalinated seawater or condensed atmospheric water, are being increasingly consumed. Lacking the minerals and other natural properties of surface and ground waters, alternative waters are often modified or amended to address ta...

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In 2019, we published a study focused on the quantification of several indicators related to the water footprint of meat analogs. Recently, a comment requesting clarification of specific data that were reported in our study was published. The present reply addresses their questions. We justified the high volume of water consumed in the production o...

The authors wish to make the following corrections to the text, table and references of this paper [...]

A challenge to managing water resources is characterizing the heterogeneity created by the interactions among hydrological, ecological and anthropological processes. An option applied to other scientific disciplines includes identifying and analyzing emergent phenomena in complex systems, whose components self-organize into novel structures or proc...

Animal-based products reportedly have substantial water footprints. One alternative to meat products is meat analogs, which are processed plant-based foods mimicking real meat products. As data for the water footprints of meat analogs are limited, the present study assesses their water consumption and their potential for contributing to eutrophicat...

The challenges we face with water are largely a consequence of how we perceive it in postmodern industrialized societies. Despite the myriad ways that water connects us to the world, our management and engineering of it seldom reflects that realization. Whereas expanding our perceptions of water may appear to be a relatively simple task, there are...

Beyond just a visual data enhancement of water quality data, the use of hierarchically arranged spatial patterns and sequentially arranged temporal patterns can provide a means of discerning anomalies and correlations among water quality parameters that would otherwise be difficult to distinguish or communicate. Similarly, comparing actual water qu...

As a management tool for addressing water consumption issues, footprints have become increasingly utilized on scales ranging from global to personal. A question posed by this paper is whether water footprint data that are routinely compiled for particular regions may be used to assess the effectiveness of actions taken by local residents to conserv...

Sharing perceptions to more creatively approach or represent our challenges with water will necessarily encounter the hurdle of effective communication among diverse practitioners and the public. Spatial and temporal relationships are often used to describe water topics ranging from watershed and precipitation dynamics to conveyance networks. Visua...

An increasing global demand for food is occurring at the same time that water shortages and energy restrictions are escalating in many parts of the world. Much of the attention thus far has focused on supply side factors that can produce more food with fewer resources. Consumers, whose personal water footprints are dominated by food-related activit...

Acknowledged similarities and prospective synergies underlie the work of artists and scientists in perceiving and describing the natural world; however, there are few formalized or easily recognized methods to utilize those commonalities for enhancing art-science collaborations. The notion that observable or archetypal patterns could represent a fo...

Recent interest in art-science collaborations seems to have focused on how artists can benefit from technological advancements in creating their works and how scientists can use the graphic arts to more effectively display their data. But interactions between science and art can extend beyond these established exchanges. Functional art has traditio...

The inextricable link between water and the crucial issues facing humanity (e.g., food, energy, pollution, health, climate, resource security) means that our water choices will affect every aspect of earthly life. Perhaps we should look to water, itself, for guidance.

Artists and scientists have much to offer each other in perceiving and describing the world, as well as creatively addressing its many challenges. To enable a meaningful exchange, the data, theories, and mathematics of scientists must find common ground with the images, sounds, and forms of artists. A common language based on spatial and temporal p...

Watersheds and other real world landscapes frequently exhibit self-repeating patterns on different scales that are usually referred to as fractal. A fractal is a repeating geometric pattern that has the exact same proportions on different spatial scales. Water and ice in the form of rivers, oceans, and glaciers cut through the planet's surface in w...

The concept of hydromimicry is related to the better known one of biomimicry, which is the process of applying biological designs or processes to human solutions. By analogy, hydromimicry is based on emulating water’s natural patterns, rhythms, and behaviors in the design of human products, technologies, and management strategies. Although the prim...

This book presents diverse examples of technologies and management schemes that are actually or conceptually based on emulating, or mimicking, water and nature’s use of water. The examples range in scale from molecular to planetary and encompass diverse levels of both applicability and technical complexity. Moreover, a number of the thirty examples...

The global switch to energy sources that are more sustainable and less polluting than fossil fuels (particularly with respect to carbon dioxide emissions) seems to be inevitable given the current world situation. This switch is dependent upon local water resources and may also impact the global water cycle. Similarly, the effort to sequester carbon...

Once considered the substance that distinguished planet Earth from the rest of the Universe, water has now been discovered to exist everywhere from the coldest depths of interstellar space to the surface of our sun. Water is unquestionably the most anomalous and one of the most ubiquitous molecules in the cosmos. While science diligently labors ove...

The global switch to energy sources that are more sustainable and less polluting (particularly with respect to carbon dioxide emissions) seems to be inevitable given the current world situation. This switch is both dependent upon and will have a profound impact on local water resources and on the global water cycle. Most notably, hydrogen gas is pr...

Water Sciences & Insights WATER'S GEOMETRY Perhaps the late twentieth century's most startling discovery about liquid water was that it consists of a vast interconnected network, rather than just a random collection of agitated molecules. Individual water molecules serve as the network's components, which constitute the building blocks for the prim...

The most likely routes of introduction of human sewage into Hanalei Bay, Hawaii include [i] direct discharge via designed outfalls (treated sewage) or holding tanks aboard boats (untreated sewage), [ii] indirect surface discharge from sewage entering rivers or streams that empty into the Bay, and [iii] indirect subsurface discharge from sewage ente...

It should be no surprise that when we humans needed to dispose of the 21 st century's most "inconvenient" contaminant (carbon dioxide), one of the first places we would turn is water. After a century of dealing with environmental, ecological, and human health issues related to our dumping everything from raw sewage to mining wastes into the planet'...

For purposes of this review, wastewater disposal options are limited to secondary-and tertiary-treated effluent because the disposal of primary-treated effluent via ocean outfall systems, which are utilized elsewhere in Hawaìi, are not anticipated to be practical. The advantages of a tertiary-treated wastewater effluent over those of a secondary-tr...

The fact that the world’s attention is turning more and more toward water is certainly no coincidence. All of the environmental problems and many of the economic and political problems we face at the dawn of the new millennium are directly or indirectly related to water—often in ways that we simply do not realize. Our inability to recognize water’s...

Throughout history, water has been used as a symbol of wisdom, power, grace, music, and the undifferentiated chaos that gave rise to the material world. Many ancient cultures believed that everything in existence was birthed from, and ultimately returns to, the metaphoric “waters of chaos” through the substance of water. Whether portrayed as a shap...

As an elastic medium, water transmits sound as longitudinal waves that propagate along a path defined by the compression and subsequent relaxation of adjacent water molecules. Because water is a denser medium than air, water transmits sound waves faster and more efficiently than air. Underwater environments (e.g., oceans, lakes) are characterized b...

Liquid water forms a vast interconnected network that is just beginning to be understood for both its structure and its dynamics. The network is composed of individual molecules that chemically bond to two, three, or four of its nearest neighbors in a manner such that the bonds, or links, are switched as rapidly as a trillion times per second. Alth...

Water is present throughout the cosmos in solid and vapor phases; occurrence in the liquid phase appears to be more limited. The origins of water may be traced back to hydrogen atoms that were created following the Big Bang and oxygen atoms that continue to be created in the interior of dying stars. Water resides on everything from interstellar dus...

Generally recognized as the single most critical resource of the twenty-first century, water is one of the most essential and coveted resources on the planet. As we embark on a decision-making process dominated by politics and economics, perhaps it is time to reassess our underlying perception of water—both individually and collectively. A shift in...

A recent Eos article has raised a number of interesting points regarding the manner in which global change and related water issues are commonly perceived and addressed [Lakshmi 2003]. I would like to suggest some additional ways in which we, as Earth scientists, might consider addressing and describing (particularly to nonscientists) our water-rel...

Water was once considered an anomalous substance indigenous to planet Earth, but science has recently discovered water everywhere: from the coldest depths of interstellar space to the nuclear infernos within stars. Ancient cultures maintained that everything in creation is but a unique expression of this sacred liquid. In the twenty-first century,...

As environmental scientists, our understanding of solute behavior (e.g., fate, transport, remediation) is based on macro-scale properties such as solubility, diffusivity and phase partitioning. These gross physical properties of solutes are actually a result of molecular-and atomic-scale dynamics, which are described by thermodynamic and quantum me...

Along with carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrous oxide (N2O),and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), methane (CH4) concentrations in the atmosphere have increased markedly since the industrial revolution [Ledley et al, 1999] .These so-called greenhouse gases, along with water vapor, are generally considered to be the major players in the current global warming tre...

This study investigates the presence and concentration of light hydrocarbon gases in soil vapor located immediately above the capillary fringe of a petroleum-contaminated aquifer. A correlation was observed for the linear regression plot of redox potential versus detectable C2+C3 alkane concentrations for a limited number of sampling points. C2+C3...

Although standard methods of monitoring the progress of in-situ remediation may provide general results for the most permeable zones affected by soil vapor extraction or bioventing, they are essentially unsuccessful at providing information on the degree of heterogeneity within the remediation zone and on the existence of “hot spots.” Data are pres...

Sampling and analysis of soil gas were originally developed to investigate the presence of volatile chemicals or geologically-produced gases in the subsurface. More recently, soil gas surveys have been used to monitor in-situ remediation technologies such as air sparging (in aquifers) and soil vapor extraction, as well as to detect minute quantitie...

Delineation and remediation of subsurface contamination have become a major focus of environmental science during the past five years. Conventional technologies available for subsurface investigations always will be required to confirm and monitor subsurface contamination; however, quicker and less expensive techniques are useful for preliminary si...

2 Donn L. Marrin (consulting and research scientist, 5666 LaJolla Blvd., Suite 190, LaJolla, CA 92037) received his B.S. (1977) and M.S. (1980) degrees from the University of California in the biological and environmental sciences, respectively. After earning his Ph.D. in 1984 from the Department of Hydrology and Water Resources, University of Ariz...

Shallow soil gas (<2 meters deep) was collected and analyzed for trichloroethylene (TCE) to determine the relationship with ground-water contamination directly below. The gaseous TCE plume was mapped with 46 probes and spanned three orders of magnitude in concentration (<0.001 to 2 μg/1). TCE concentrations in water from five monitoring wells aroun...

The present investigation was conducted on a TCE-contaminated aquifer beneath Tucson International Airport, Arizona. Shallow soil gas (<2 meters deep) was collected and analyzed for halocarbon contaminants to evaluate the relationship with vadose zone and groundwater contamination directly below. The TCE plume in shallow soil gas was mapped with 46...

Populations of benthic invertebrates and macrophytes differed in abundance between lake and reservoir. These differences had a substantial effect on the food habits of Tahoe sucker. The most important food items for lake suckers, mollusks and amphipods, were rarely found in the reservoir, and represented <1% of the total diet of reservoir suckers....

Intraspecific resource partitioning among three size classes of tahoe sucker was investigated in a small subalpine lake in California. Distribution of fish was determined by underwater observation, and stomach content analysis provided information on dietary patterns. Juvenile fish were restricted to shallow or weedy areas of the lake, while adult...

Food habits of exotic brown trout (Salmo trutta) and rainbow trout (Salmo gairdnerii) and of two native nongame fishes, tni chub (Gila bicoior) and Tahoe sucker (Catostomus tahoensis) were investigated in a California subalpine reservoir. Competition for food resources between trout and native fishes is often cited as the cause for decreased salmon...

The objectives of this paper are to characterize an "ideal" environmental impact assessment (e.i.a.); to review the contemporary status of e.i.a. for several major activities and areas of development; and to identify successes, failures, and future needs in e.i.a.The institutional procedures to be followed for e.i.a. have been formalized in a numbe...