Research | ingrid-luffman

My Research

I have four main areas of research: Karst hydrology, watershed restoration, soil erosion, and medical geography. At first, they may seem somewhat disparate but they are logically linked through my interest in the environment, watershed processes, and spatial analysis. All of these areas of research benefit from using a spatial approach to understand, quantify, or model a process.

You may have seen the Citizen Scientist sign at Founders Park, Johnson City. This project uses crowdsourced data to better understand how stream flow in Brush Creek behaves, especially with respect to precipitation events. This Citizen Scientist project partners with Johnson City Public Works, the Boone Watershed Partnership, and ETSU Geosciences to encourage the Johnson City community to contribute data on Brush Creek water levels at Founder's Park. We went live in April 2017 - check out the raw (uncorrected) data in the graphs below!

CLICK BUTTONS BELOW TO VIEW DATA FROM OTHER TIME PERIODS
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Explanation:

Stream stage (water depth in feet) is shown in yellow --read the values on the left vertical axis. Precipitation (inches) is in blue and hangs down from the upper horizontal axis. These data represent 5 minute rainfall totals. Read the amounts from the right hand vertical axis. Long rainfall events can be identified by looking for clusters of blue vertical bars. For example, the dreary weeks of rain we experienced in Feb 2018 didn't produce a lot of precipitation volume (so the blue lines are short), but rain occurred consistently throughout the day, so the blue lines are very close together and there are a lot of them. You will probably also notice a seasonal pattern of heavier rainfall events in the spring.

You may also notice how the stream responds to rainfall, especially with high flows in August 2020 (a record stage height at 4.8 ft). Interestingly, we have occasional reports of high stage with no recorded rainfall. This is probably because rain occurred elsewhere in the watershed and wasn't captured by my weather station at ETSU. Thanks to community scientists like you, we were able to capture water levels during these rain events. Keep sending me those stage data, the more I receive the better resolution dataset I'll have!

Research Overview

Karst Hydrology

Some of my recent research in karst hydrology has involved two student projects - both dye tracing experiments. The first one was a class project for my graduate and senior undergraduate hydrology class on the Morrell Cave Springshed. Two fluorescent dyes were injected into Dry Creek in Bluff City, and the surrounding surface and cave streams were monitored daily for about three weeks to record the passage of the dye plume. This dye trace established that water from Dry Creek travels along multiple flow paths after sinking through joints in the stream channel, and emerges in Morell Cave stream.

The second dye trace experiment was completed on the Rock House Cave Springshed, and three dyes and three ISCOs were used in three caves! The goal of this project was also to describe the surface-subsurface karst hydrology of the springshed. This research was the senior thesis project for one of our geology majors, and it was presented by the student at the GSA meeting in Vancouver in Fall 2014, with a related poster to be presented at the TN AWRA meeting in 2015.

For the Fall 2015 Hydrology class, I plan for my class to conduct a study on turbidity in response to rainfall events in one of the local streams.

Watershed Restoration

I serve as President of the Boone Watershed Partnership, and one of my research interests is the connection between land use, water quality, and human health. The partnership has been very successful in funding and completing stream restoration projects:

Sinking Creek - reduce cattle access to Sinking Creek and Catbird Creek, connect 24 watershed residents to sanitary sewer service, perform septic tank and drainfield repairs.
Beaver Creek - address bank erosion that contributes to increased sediment load in Beaver Creek, address runoff from a municipal parking lot.
Jacob's Nature Park - a new city park developed along Sinking Creek will feature educational exhibits on the importance of clean water, the role of wetlands, and the natural history of the wetland.

My role was to conduct watershed land use studies to identify hot spots where restoration projects were expected to have the most impact. I helped to develop a Watershed Action Plan and co-authored the grant proposal to restore Beaver Creek. You can read about these efforts and others on the Boone Watershed Partnership website.

Soil Erosion

The ETSU Valleybrook Campus is located about 15 miles north of the main campus on 144 acres. The acreage is of most interest to me and my colleague Dr. Arpita Nandi, and we have several ongoing research projects on this site. These include:

gully erosion rates and precipitation parameters at the hillslope scale,
channel incision following dam removal at the plot scale, and
erosion processes and freeze-thaw.

All of these projects rely heavily on student involvement. So far two Senior Thesis projects have come from this research and multiple independent student projects, leading to many conference presentations and published manuscripts (check out the publications list below!)

Medical Geography

My dissertation research branched out into medical geography, by examining environmental conditions as risk factors for disease. This research examined the relationship of E. coli O157 and cryptosporidiosis with environmental factors such as surface water quality, land use, livestock density, socioeconomic factors, drinking water source and geology. This research stemmed from an increased incidence of both diseases in East Tennessee from 2000 thorugh 2010.

Recently, I have collaborated with colleagues in Public Health to assess COVID-19 cases from a spatiotemporal perspective. We are interested in how cases developed during the first wave of the pandemic in TN, as well as the role of rurality in the timing of the pandemic in TN counties.

Publications

*student co-authors

Peer Reviewed Research

Fashina, L.*, Luffman, I., Nandi, A., and Joyner, T.A. (2023) “Evaluation of karst spring water quality in northeast Tennessee using water quality indices.” Agrosystems, Geosciences and Environment, 6, e20429. https://doi.org/10.1002/agg2.20429.

O’Shea, T.*, Farmer, S.*, Nandi, A., Bilderback, E., Luffman, I., and Joyner, T.A. (2023) “Using an inventory of unstable slopes to prioritize probabilistic rockfall modeling and acid base accounting in Great Smoky Mountains National Park.” Environmental and Engineering Geoscience, 29:2, 73-91. doi.org/10.2113/EEG-D-22-00063.

Fashina, L.*, Luffman, I., Joyner, T.A., and Nandi, A. (2022) “Geospatial assessment of karst spring water quality in northeast Tennessee, USA.” Geosciences, 12, 303. doi.org/10.3390/geosciences12080303.

Luffman, I. and Connors, D. (2022) “Stream stage monitoring with community science-contributed stage data.” Hydrology, 9(11). https://doi.org/10.3390/hydrology9010011.

Magno, M.*, Luffman, I., and Nandi, A. (2021) “Evaluating spatial regression-informed cokriging of metals in soils near abandoned mines in Bumpus Cove, Tennessee, USA.” Geosciences, 11(11) 434. doi.org/10.3390/geosciences11110434.

Luffman, I., Joyner, T. A., Tollefson, W., Mann, A., Quinn, M. and Pienkowski, S.* (2021) “Rurality and COVID-19 in Tennessee: assessing and communicating pandemic emergence and transmission.” Southeastern Geographer, 61(3) 203-221. https://doi.org/10.1353/sgo.2021.0016.

Mann, A., Joyner, T. A., Luffman, I., Quinn, M., Tollefson, W., Frazier, A.*, (2021) “Emergence of COVID-19 and patterns of early transmission in an Appalachian sub-region: evaluating the period from initial cases to phased re-openings.” Journal of Appalachian Health, 3(3) 7-21. doi.org/10.13023/jah.0303.02.

Das, R.*, Nandi, A., Joyner, T.A., and Luffman, I., (2021) “Application of GIS based knowledge-driven and data-driven methods for debris-slide susceptibility mapping.” Special Issue Geospatial Appalachia: Multidisciplinary Explorations of a Region in International Journal of Applied Geospatial Research, 12(1) doi: 10.4018/IJAGR2021010101

McCurdy, P.*, Luffman, I., Joyner, T.A., and Maier, K., (2021) “Storm sampling to assess inclement weather impacts on water quality in a karst watershed: Sinking Creek, Watauga watershed, East Tennessee.” Journal of Environmental Quality, doi: 10.1002/jeq2.20196.

Luffman, I. and Nandi, A. (2020) “Seasonal precipitation variability and gully erosion in Southeastern USA.” Water, 12:925, doi: 10.3390/w12040925.

Luffman, I. and Nandi, A. (2019) “Freeze-thaw-related gully erosion in a humid subtropical climate: a weekly analysis 2012-2018.” Agronomy, 9(9): 549 doi: 10.3390/agronomy9090549.

Magno, M.*, Nandi, A., and Luffman, I., (2019) “Using spatial regression to model Potentially Toxic Metal (PTM) mobility based on physicochemical soil properties.” Applied and Environmental Soil Science, doi: 10.1155/2019/6432571.

Archer, J.*, Luffman, I., Nandi, A., and Joyner, T. A. (2019) “Florida’s recycled water footprint: a geospatial analysis of distribution (2009-2015).” AIMS Environmental Sciences, 6(1): 41-58 doi: 10.3934/environsci.2019.1.41.

Archer, J.*, Luffman, I., Joyner, T. A., and Nandi, A. (2019) “Identifying untapped potential for recycled water use using geospatial analysis: A comparative study of Florida and California in 2009.” Journal of Water Reuse and Desalination, 9(2): 173-192. doi: 10.2166/wrd.2018.012

Adu Agyemang, A. B.*, Nandi, A., Luffman, I., and Joyner, T. A. (2018) “Groundwater nitrate concentrations and its relation to landcover, Buncombe County, NC.” In Shakoor A., Cato K. (eds) IAEG/AEG Annual Meeting Proceedings, San Francisco, California, Volume 2. Springer, Cham.

Kincheloe, J.*, Nandi, A., and Luffman, I. (2018). “Aeolian erosion processes in humid subtropical Ultisols in Southeastern United States.” Journal of Geography and Earth Sciences, 6(1): 19-30. doi:10.15640/jges.v6n1a3

Luffman, I., Nandi, A., Luffman, B.* (2018). “Comparison of geometric and volumetric methods to a 3D solid model for measurement of gully erosion and sediment yield.” Geosciences, (8(3): 86. doi: 10.3390/geosciences8030086

Johnson, C.*, Nandi, A., Joyner, T. A., and Luffman, I. (2018). “Iron and manganese in groundwater: Using kriging and GIS to locate high concentrations in Buncombe County, NC.” Groundwater, 56(1), 87-95.

Land, T.*, Nandi, A., and Luffman, I. (2017). “Channel geomorphic evolution after dam removal: is scale important?” Environmental and Engineering Geoscience, 1078-7275.

Barnes, N.*, Luffman, I., & Nandi, A. (2016). "Gully Erosion and Freeze-Thaw Processes in Clay-rich Soils, Northeast Tennessee, USA." GeoResJ, 9: 67-76. Available at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214242816300328

Burnham, T.*, Luffman, I., Whitelaw, M., and Gao, Y. (2015). “Assessing structural control on groundwater flow in the Morrell Cave springshed, Sullivan County, Tennessee.” Geological Society of America Special Papers, 516, SPE516-13.

Harris, Joseph B.*; Gregg, Chris; Joyner, T Andrew; and Luffman, Ingrid (2015) "Preparing a Small Town for a Hazardous Materials Incident: An Examination of Evacuation Routing Algorithms and Plume Models." International Journal of Geospatial and Environmental Research: Vol. 2: No. 1, Article 5. Available at: http://dc.uwm.edu/ijger/vol2/iss1/5

Luffman, I., Nandi, A., & Spiegel, T.* (2015). "Gully morphology, hillslope erosion, and precipitation characteristics in the Appalachian Valley and Ridge province, southeastern USA." CATENA, 133: 221-232.

Luffman, I. and Tran, L. (2014). “Risk factors for E. coli O157 and cryptosporidiosis infection in individuals in karst valleys of East Tennessee, USA.” Geosciences, 4(3): 202-218. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265412453_Risk_Factors_for_E._coli_O157_and_Cryptosporidiosis_Infection_in_Individuals_in_the_Karst_Valleys_of_East_Tennessee_USA

Nandi, A. and Luffman, I. (2012). "Erosion related changes to physicochemical properties of Ultisols distributed on calcareous sedimentary rocks." Journal of Sustainable Development, 5(8): 52-68. http://ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/jsd/article/viewFile/17373/12593

Zhang, M., Wang, K., Zhang, C., Chen, H., Liu, H., Yue, Y., Luffman, I., and Qi, X. (2011). "Using the radial basis function network model to assess rocky desertification in northwest Guangxi, China." Environmental Earth Sciences, 62(1): 69-76.

Luffman, I. (2010). “Wake up call in east Tennessee? Correlating flood losses to National Flood Insurance Program enrollment.” Southeastern Geographer, 50(3): pp. 305-322

Hamilton, J. and Luffman, I. (2009). “Precipitation, pathogen and turbidity trends in the Little River, Tennessee.” Physical Geography, 30(3):236-248.

Conference Papers

Hansen, J.*, Luffman, I., and Brown, A. (2020). “Leveraging community scientists and GIScience to model roadside stream sedimentation in the US National Forest, North Carolina.” In Proceedings of the 29th Water Resources Symposium, Burns, Tennessee. Note: Symposium cancelled due to COVID-19 pandemic, proceedings are in press.

McCurdy, P.* and Luffman, I. (2020). “Storm sampling to assess water quality in a karst watershed.” In Proceedings of the 27th Tennessee Water Resources Symposium, Burns, TN. Note: Symposium cancelled due to COVID-19 pandemic, proceedings are in press.

Jarvis, W.*, Welty, J.*, Luffman, I., and Nandi, A. (2020). “Influence of topography and physical properties on hydric soils in Devil’s Kitchen Branch Bog, Greeneville, TN.” In Proceedings of the 27th Tennessee Water Resources Symposium, Burns, TN. Note: Symposium cancelled due to COVID-19 pandemic, proceedings are in press.

Bledsoe, A.*, McCurdy, P.*, Hansen, J.*, James, T.*, Luffman, I., and Tomsic, C. (2020). “Reducing campus stormwater impacts: Brush Creek reconnaissance and restoration proposal.” In Proceedings of the 27th Tennessee Water Resources Symposium, Burns, TN. Note: Symposium cancelled due to COVID-19 pandemic, proceedings are in press.

James, T.* and Luffman, I. (2019). “Beaver Creek, Northeast Tennessee and Southwest Virginia hydrological modelling using ArcGIS-SWAT.” In Proceedings of the 28th Water Resources Symposium, Burns, Tennessee.

Hansen, J.*, James, T.*, and Luffman, I. (2019). “Monitoring E. coli levels in Beaver Creek, Northeast Tennessee.” In Proceedings of the 28th Water Resources Symposium, Burns, Tennessee.

Luffman, I., Connors, D., Muncy, T.*, and Perkins, C.* (2019). “Citizen scientist participation in flood study, Johnson City, TN.” In Proceedings of the 28th Water Resources Symposium, Burns, Tennessee.

Grant, A.* and Luffman, I. (2018). “Is water quality in Boone Lake a dam problem? An assessment of water quality pre- and post-drawdown.” In Proceedings of the 27th Water Resources Symposium, Burns, Tennessee. P10 – P14.

Luffman, I., Lawson, S.*, and Nandi, A. (2017). “Estimating groundwater flow using a bail test during water table lowering.” In Proceedings of the 26th Water Resources Symposium. Burns, Tennessee.

Archer, J.*, Luffman, I., and Joyner, T. A. (2016). “Reclaiming Florida’s freshwater supply.” In Proceedings of the 2016 Tennessee Water Resources Symposium. Burns, Tennessee.

Doyka, A.*, Luffman, I., and Whitelaw, M. (2016). “Groundwater flow in a karst watershed: structural controls of the Stony Creek Syncline.” In Proceedings of the 2016 Tennessee Water Resources Symposium. Burns, Tennessee. P9 – P13.

Luffman, I., Barrigar, G., & Scheuerman, P. (2016). "Phase I Restoration of Beaver Creek, Bristol TN/VA." In Proceedings of the 2016 Tennessee Water Resources Symposium. 2C17–2C22. Burns, Tennessee

Fridell, Z.*, Luffman, I., Whitelaw, M. (2015). "Groundwater Source Assessment of the Rock House Springshed, Carter County, TN." Proceedings fo the 2015 Tennessee Water Resources Symposium, P9-P14.

Luffman, I. (2009). “Is stream discharge fractal? A comparison of Watauga River discharge before and after construction of Watauga Dam”. Proceedings of the Nineteenth Tennessee Water Resources Symposium, Burns, TN. http://tnawra.er.usgs.gov/2009/Proceedings2009.pdf

White papers and reports

Barrigar, G., Luffman, I., and Scheuerman, P. (2011). “Beaver Creek Total Maximum Daily Load Implementation Plan for E. coli, Nitrates, Nitrites, and Sediment Reduction.” Boone Watershed Partnership, Johnson City, TN.

Luffman, I. (2006). “Boone's Creek Watershed Assessement - Phase 1 Final Report”. East Tennessee State University prepared for Tennessee Valley Authority

Luffman, I. (2005). “Buffalo Creek Watershed Assessment - Phase 1 Final Report”. East Tennessee State University.

Chase, K., Craig, C., Luffman, I., Maier, K., Scheuerman, P. (2004). “Guidance for Development of a Total Maximum Daily Load Implementation Plan for Fecal Coliform Reduction.” Sinking Creek Watershed Alliance prepared for Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation.

Luffman, I. (2004). “Sinking Creek/Cash Hollow Watershed Assessment 319 Nonpoint Source Program Final Report.” East Tennessee State University and First Tennessee Development District prepared for Tennessee Department of Agriculture.

Luffman, I. and Craig, C. (2003). “Sinking Creek Watershed Assessment 604(b) Water Quality Planning Grant Final Report.” East Tennessee State University and First Tennessee Development District prepared for Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation.