Source Stream Research Articles

Resource Allocation Network for Segregated Targeting Problems with Dedicated Sources

Resource allocation networks (RAN) are efficiently optimized using the techniques of Pinch Analysis. Primarily, these RANs consist of a set of source streams and a set of demands. However, in the past a special type of RAN, called segregated targeting problems, is identified which consists of multiple sets of demands called zones. The resource and cost optimality of such problems are determined by using the sequential targeting and the concept of prioritized cost. In this paper, segregated targeting problems are extended to include dedicated sources in each zone. In segregated targeting problems, sources are shared by all zones. However, in the extended version of the problem, there are some dedicated sources specific to a zone in which they are present and are not shared with other zones due to proximity, safety, operability, etc. The primary objective of this paper is to develop an algorithm, based on the principles of Pinch Analysis, to determine the minimum resource requirement for a segregated target...

Longitudinal distribution of macroinvertebrates in snowmelt streams in northeast Greenland: understanding biophysical controls

In a changing climate, Arctic streams are expected to show more influence from snowmelt, rainfall and groundwater, and less domination from glacial meltwater sources. Snowmelt streams are characteristic features of Arctic ecosystems, yet our current understanding of longitudinal patterns in benthic macroinvertebrate assemblages in these systems is limited when compared to glacier-fed systems. This study characterised longitudinal patterns of macroinvertebrate communities in snowmelt streams in northeast Greenland to provide novel insights into Arctic stream communities as dominant water sources shift with climate change. Benthic macroinvertebrates and environmental variables were sampled at three sites along five streams. Taxa diversity, evenness and abundance were expected to increase with distance from the stream source due to enhanced channel stability and warmer water temperature. This expectation for diversity and evenness was found in two streams, but abundance was up to ten times higher at the upstream sites compared to downstream, where biofilm biomass and ionic load were also highest. Here communities were largely dominated by the genus Eukiefferiella (Chironomidae). In the other three streams, no clear pattern in longitudinal macroinvertebrate community composition was evident due to low channel stability along the entire stream length. This study highlights the considerable variation in macroinvertebrate zonal distribution between snowmelt streams in northeast Greenland. A change towards more snowmelt-dominated streams in the Arctic could lead to shifts in the longitudinal organisation of macroinvertebrate community assemblages and the dominant species as a function of channel stability characteristics.

Reproductive biology of two species of Hyalella Smith, 1874 (Crustacea: Amphipoda: Hyalellidae) from southern Brazil

ABSTRACTReproduction is a critical event in the life cycle of animals, and a high amount of energy is allocated to it. The aim of this study was to characterize the reproductive biology of two recently described species of Hyalella from the north-east region of state of Rio Grande do Sul in southern Brazil. The specimens were collected during 12 months from a stream source (Hyalella georginae) and from a water reservoir (H. gauchensis), in Palmeira das Missões municipality, state of Rio Grande do Sul. Upon sampling, ovigerous females and pairs in precopulatory behaviour were separated into microtubes. In the laboratory, the cephalothorax length (CL in mm) of all specimens was measured. Male size at onset of sexual maturity was larger than that of the females, in both species. There was a correlation between the size of paired males and females: larger males carried larger females, in both Hyalella species. Precopulatory pairs were found throughout the year; however, H. georginae had a higher frequency in spring, and H. gauchensis in autumn. There was a positive correlation between the CL of ovigerous females and the number of eggs/juveniles. A reduction in the number of eggs throughout the embryonic development was observed in H. georginae. The average fecundity of H. georginae was significantly higher than H. gauchensis. The differences between the reproductive biology of these species may be related to the physical and environmental conditions at which they are exposed in their habitats.

Reprint of Anatomy of Labrador Sea Heinrich layers

Heinrich layers (H-layers) are distinct, decimetre to centimetre thick layers of ice-rafted debris (IRD) that were deposited in the North Atlantic during the Late and middle Pleistocene. H-layers (H-layers) are characterized by high detrital carbonate and low foraminifera contents. In the Labrador Sea, H-layers reach metre thickness in some proximal core sites near the iceberg source of the Hudson Strait ice stream and show five distinct depositional facies involving sediment lofting and low-density turbidity currents as sediment delivery processes besides ice rafting. Thick massive ice-rafted layers (type I H-layers) occur in the most proximal parts of H-layer 3 and older H-layers. Within 300km distance from the assumed Hudson Strait ice stream terminus, H-layers somewhat more distal than type I H-layers consist predominantly of stacked thin layers of graded muds containing IRD (type II H-layers). The graded muds that are spiked with IRD resulted from the deposition of fine-grained lofted sediment that collected dropstones and grains under the iceberg route. At greater distance from the Hudson Strait outlet on the slope and rise south of the strait, H-layers on the levees of tributary canyons to the Northwest Atlantic Mid-Ocean Channel (NAMOC) consist of alternations of thin mud turbidites with intercalated laminae of IRD (type III H-layers). On the levees of NAMOC, type IV H-layers consist of layers of IRD alternating with fewer fine-grained spill-over turbidites, because the spill-over frequency from the deep channel was less than that from the less deep canyons on the slope. Type V is made up of bioturbated hemipelagic muds with coarser IRD and occurs in regions between canyons not reached by spill-over turbidity currents and in distal regions of the open ocean or on seamounts. Transport of significant portions of the sediment in H-layers by suspended sediment columns lofted from sand-carrying fresh-water turbidity currents (type II) and by low-density turbidity currents (types III and IV) explains the high percentage of detrital carbonate in the fine (<63μm) grain-size fractions (>80% of the total detrital carbonate of the bulk sediment), which cannot be derived from icebergs alone. It also explains the low magnetic susceptibility and low grey levels on the colour scale compared to H-layers in the North Atlantic east of Greenland. The anomalously great thickness of individual H-layers on the slope and rise off the Hudson Strait as documented in isopach maps reflects the combined effect of the various processes involved in their deposition. Four hypotheses for the origin of H-events are discussed — (i) the binge–purge model, (ii) the subglacial outburst–flow model, (iii) the external forcing model, and (iv) the catastrophic ice-shelf break-up model

Weathering fluxes and sediment provenance on the SW Scottish shelf during the last deglaciation

The reconstruction of past ice sheet dynamics can inform on long-term ice stream activity, and in turn provide constraints on the response of modern ice sheets to climate change. The Hebrides Ice Stream (HIS) flowed across part of the western Scottish shelf to the shelf-break during the last glacial cycle. To investigate the deglacial dynamics of the HIS following the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), lead (Pb) isotope records were extracted from the FeMn oxyhydroxide and detrital fractions of recovered laminated glacimarine mud sequences to monitor the changing activity of HIS during its retreat. These provide, respectively, relative timing of glacially weathered inputs to the marine environment and some source information on the eroded sediments. The FeMn oxyhydroxide fraction is dominated by pre-formed particles and shows a marked decrease from radiogenic at ~21cal ka to less radiogenic Pb isotope compositions towards 15.4–13ka. This decrease represents a reduction in the flux of subglacially-derived radiogenic Pb to the continental shelf, and it is interpreted as the result of the break-up of the ice-stream in western Scotland around that time. The Pb, Sr and Nd isotopic signatures of the detrital fraction indicate a preponderance of fine sediments originated from the NW Highlands throughout the period studied (~21 to 15cal ka BP), most likely dictated by the orientation of tidal and oceanic current directions and sediment delivery. Both fractions show inversion of the 208Pb/204Pb ratio relative to the other Pb isotope ratios. This is observed only in one core site in the detrital fraction, and extended to all cores in the FeMn oxyhydroxide fraction. This behaviour highlights the influence of ocean currents in restricting the detrital but encouraging dispersal of the FeMn oxyhydroxide signal. Periodic increased contributions from a high Th/U source, potentially the neighbouring Archaean amphibolitic Lewisian basement in the Outer Hebrides, are proposed as the source of these 208Pb/204Pb inversions. This study demonstrates how geochemical investigation on continental shelves can be used to constrain the activity and flow sources of palaeo-ice streams, and the utility of combining detrital and FeMn oxyhydroxides to determine the combined influence of the continental sources of material and their dispersal in the marine environment.

Voila: Visual Anomaly Detection and Monitoring with Streaming Spatiotemporal Data.

The increasing availability of spatiotemporal data continuously collected from various sources provides new opportunities for a timely understanding of the data in their spatial and temporal context. Finding abnormal patterns in such data poses significant challenges. Given that there is often no clear boundary between normal and abnormal patterns, existing solutions are limited in their capacity of identifying anomalies in large, dynamic and heterogeneous data, interpreting anomalies in their multifaceted, spatiotemporal context, and allowing users to provide feedback in the analysis loop. In this work, we introduce a unified visual interactive system and framework, Voila, for interactively detecting anomalies in spatiotemporal data collected from a streaming data source. The system is designed to meet two requirements in real-world applications, i.e., online monitoring and interactivity. We propose a novel tensor-based anomaly analysis algorithm with visualization and interaction design that dynamically produces contextualized, interpretable data summaries and allows for interactively ranking anomalous patterns based on user input. Using the "smart city" as an example scenario, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework through quantitative evaluation and qualitative case studies.

Conditions controlling the timing of the autumn migration to hibernation sites in a Japanese headwater frog, Rana sakuraii

AbstractStudies on amphibian autumn migrations to hibernation sites are few, and those investigating the conditions controlling the timing of migrations are even fewer. I investigated an explosive‐breeding frog, Rana sakuraii, in Japanese mountain headwaters in 6 different years, focusing on the start and end of autumn migrations. Autumn migrations began in late October. Initially, frogs moved into the streams from terrestrial sites around the stream sources, and thereafter moved downstream entirely underwater. Start days were always the first rainy days after the minimum air temperature had dropped to about 6°C or lower (minor start days) or about 4°C or lower (major start days) regardless of the air temperature on the start days. In early or mid‐December, in‐stream migratory movements ended when the maximum water temperature dropped below the 5°C threshold (the same threshold temperature initiating the winter breeding migration). I hypothesize that, in many temperate‐zone amphibians, the timing of autumn migration to hibernation sites is basically dependent on three common conditions: (1) the experience of a prerequisite minimum air temperature (PMAT) before the start day; (2) the decrease in day length to a threshold value; (3) the first rainy (or high humidity) day after (1). Further, I hypothesize that the threshold ambient temperature inducing the end of the autumn migration is almost the same as that inducing emergence from hibernation, that is, the start of the winter breeding migration for explosive breeders, and that this is the daily maximum, and not the daily minimum.

Samza

Distributed stream processing systems need to support stateful processing, recover quickly from failures to resume such processing, and reprocess an entire data stream quickly. We present Apache Samza, a distributed system for stateful and fault-tolerant stream processing. Samza utilizes a partitioned local state along with a low-overhead background changelog mechanism, allowing it to scale to massive state sizes (hundreds of TB) per application. Recovery from failures is sped up by re-scheduling based on Host Affinity. In addition to processing infinite streams of events, Samza supports processing a finite dataset as a stream, from either a streaming source (e.g., Kafka), a database snapshot (e.g., Databus), or a file system (e.g. HDFS), without having to change the application code (unlike the popular Lambda-based architectures which necessitate maintenance of separate code bases for batch and stream path processing). Samza is currently in use at LinkedIn by hundreds of production applications with more than 10, 000 containers. Samza is an open-source Apache project adopted by many top-tier companies (e.g., LinkedIn, Uber, Netflix, TripAdvisor, etc.). Our experiments show that Samza: a) handles state efficiently, improving latency and throughput by more than 100X compared to using a remote storage; b) provides recovery time independent of state size; c) scales performance linearly with number of containers; and d) supports reprocessing of the data stream quickly and with minimal interference on real-time traffic.

Nitrogen Source Stabilization of Quorum Sensing in the Pseudomonas aeruginosa Bioaugmentation Strain SD-1.

Pseudomonas aeruginosa SD-1 is efficient at degrading aromatic compounds and can therefore contribute to the bioremediation of wastewater. P. aeruginosa uses quorum sensing (QS) to regulate the production of numerous secreted "public goods." In wastewater bioaugmentation applications, there are myriad nitrogen sources, and we queried whether various nitrogen sources impact the stabilities of both QS and the bacterial populations. In a laboratory strain of P. aeruginosa, PAO1, the absence of a nitrogen source has been shown to destabilize these populations through the emergence of QS mutant "cheaters." We tested the ability of SD-1 to grow in casein broth, a condition that requires QS for growth, when the nitrogen source with either NH4Cl, NaNO3, or NaNO2 or with no added nitrogen source. There was great variability in susceptibility to invasion by QS mutant cheaters and, by extension, the stability of the SD-1 population. When grown with NH4Cl as an extra nitrogen source, no population collapse was observed; by contrast, two-thirds of cultures grown in the presence of NaNO2 collapsed. In the populations that collapsed, the frequency of social cheaters exceeded 40%. NaNO3 and NaNO2 directly favor QS mutants of P. aeruginosa SD-1. Although the mechanism by which these nitrogen sources act is not clear, these data indicate that the metabolism of nitrogen can affect the stability of bacterial populations, an important observation for continuing industrial applications with this species.IMPORTANCE Bioaugmentation as a method to help remediate wastewater pollutant streams holds significant potential to enhance traditional methods of treatment. Addition of microbes that can catabolize organic pollutants can be an effective method to remove several toxic compounds. Such bioaugmented strains of bacteria have been shown to be susceptible to competition from the microbiota that are present in wastewater streams, limiting their potential effectiveness. Here, we show that bioaugmentation strains of bacteria might also be susceptible to invasion by social cheaters and that the nitrogen sources available in the wastewater might influence the ability of cheaters to overtake the bioaugmentation strains. Our results imply that control over the nitrogen sources in a wastewater stream or selective addition of certain nitrogen sources could help stabilize bioaugmentation strains of bacteria.

Watershed geomorphology interacts with precipitation to influence the magnitude and source of CO2 emissions from Alaskan streams

AbstractBoreal ecosystems contain a large fraction of the world's soil carbon and are warming rapidly, prompting efforts to understand the role of freshwaters in carbon export from these regions. We examined geomorphic controls on the magnitude of stream CO2 emissions and sources of stream dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) across a heterogeneous river basin in SW Alaska. We found that watershed slope and precipitation interact to control gaseous carbon fluxes from streams, with the highest flux from low‐gradient watersheds following rainstorms. Watershed slope influences C loading and stream CO2 fluxes by controlling carbon accumulation in watersheds and to a lesser extent by determining gas transfer velocity across the stream air‐water interface. Low gas transfer velocity in flat streams offsets some of the effects of higher terrestrial C loading at those sites, resulting in lower than expected vertical CO2 fluxes. While the isotopic composition of stream DIC (Δ14C and δ13C) was highly variable across space and time, shifts toward contemporary, terrestrial sources after precipitation were most pronounced in flat watersheds. At base flow DIC was a mixture of modern and aged sources of biogenic and geologic origin (Δ14C, −198.3‰ to 27.9‰, n = 23). Aged (Δ14C‐depleted) C sources contributed to food webs via a pathway from DIC to algae to invertebrate grazers. We observed coherent changes in stream carbon chemistry after large rainstorms despite considerable physical heterogeneity among watersheds. These patterns provide a way to extrapolate across boreal landscapes by constraining CO2 concentration and flux estimates by local geomorphic features.

Concentration potential concepts: Powerful tools for design of water-using networks with multiple contaminants

This paper reviews concentration potential concepts and their applications in the design of water-using networks (WUNs) with multiple contaminants. The concentration potential concepts were proposed to determine the concentration order of water streams of multiple contaminants based on the overall allocating possibility of source streams to demand streams on the analogy of single contaminant WUNs. The precedence order of water-using processes, which is crucial for the network design, can be effectively identified by the values of Concentration Potential of Demands (CPDs). The concentration potential concepts, which were originally presented for the water networks of fixed contaminant load model, up to now have been successfully used to design a verity of water-using networks. Computing software has also been developed by combining the concentration potential concepts and linear programming approach. The methods proposed based on the concentration potential concepts have the advantages of simple calculation and clear engineering meaning. The results obtained based on the concentration potential concepts are comparable to that obtained by the literature methods. It is shown that the concentration potential concepts are powerful tools for the design of WUNs with multiple contaminants.

Process analysis transit of municipal waste. Part I - International provisions of law

Abstract One of the crucial reasons of the system changes of waste management in our legal system in Poland was a need to implement solutions and mechanisms that are applied in the European Union. At the European Union law level, a Directive 2008/98/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 19 November 2008 on waste and repealing certain Directives constitutes a basic legal document described in this part of the article. The essential idea of the quoted directive is creating legal measures, promotion of eliminating waste production and treating it as a source instead. Achievement of these assumptions requires providing segregation at source and recycling of the main waste streams above all. It is necessary to encourage this action and support the reuse of products and waste utilization. Indicated international legal instruments are of primary importance for internal rules, which shall be constructed in a way that enables the achievement of goals determined by the EU law. Legal-organizational internal systems associated with the management of waste have undergone substantial changes from 2010. National legal provisions will be presented in the second part of the article.

An FPGA based cascaded CBC block cipher through RPSPNC and TE

Security system can be enhanced by cascading approach where two or more cryptographic algorithms are applied serially or parallel. In this paper the plaintext is first divided into number of blocks and each block are first encrypted by Recursive Positional Substitution on Prime-Nonprime of Cluster (RPSPNC) and then the resultant blocks are encrypted by Triangular Encryption (TE). In RPSPNC source stream is divided into blocks and a generating function is applied on each block to generate a same size of intermediate block t, repetition of this generating function for finite number of time regenerates the original block. In TE, source stream is broken into blocks of size n, and then XNOR operation is performed from MSB to LSB generating a block of size n − 1 and continues to form a triangle. Encryption is done in any of four types and decryption is done in similar method. Lastly combining all the encrypted blocks the ciphertext is generated. Thus applying cascaded approach much better result has been generated as compared to separate RPSPNC and TE. The results are also compared with State-of-art technique from literature, RCT, RMRO and much known RSA.

JMetalSP: A framework for dynamic multi-objective big data optimization

Multi-objective metaheuristics have become popular techniques for dealing with complex optimization problems composed of a number of conflicting functions. Nowadays, we are in the Big Data era, so metaheuristics must be able to solve dynamic problems that may vary over time due to the processing and analysis of several streaming data sources. As this is a new field, there is a need for software platforms to solve dynamic multi-objective Big Data optimization problems. In this paper, we present jMetalSP, which combines the multi-objective optimization features of the jMetal framework with the streaming facilities of the Apache Spark cluster computing system. Thus, existing state-of-the-art multi-objective metaheuristics can be easily adapted to deal with dynamic optimization problems that are fed by multiple streaming data sources. Moreover, these algorithms can take advantage of the parallel computing features of Spark. We describe the architecture of jMetalSP and show how it can be used to solve a dynamic bi-objective instance of the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) based on New York City's real-time traffic data. We have also carried out an experimental study to assess the performance of the resultant jMetalSP application in a Hadoop cluster composed of 100 nodes.

Oil Based Drilling Fluid Waste: An Overview on Environmentally Persistent Pollutants

Operational discharges of spent drilling fluid, produced water, and accumulated drill cuttings from oil and gas industry are a continuous point source of environmental pollution. To meet the strict environmental standard for waste disposal, oil and gas industry is facing a numerous challenges in technological development to ensure a clean and safe environment. Oil and gas industry generates a large amount of spent drilling fluid, produced water, and drill cuttings, which are very different in every drilling operation in terms of composition and characterisation. This review article highlights the knowledge gap in identifying the different sources of waste streams in combined drilling waste. This paper also emphasises how different chemicals turn into environmentally significant pollutants after serving great performance in oil and gas drilling operations. For instance, oil based drilling fluid performs excellent in deeper drilling and drilling in the harsh geological conditions, but ended with (produces) a significant amount of persistent toxic pollutants in the environment. This review paper provides an overview on the basic concepts of drilling fluids and their functions, sources and characterisation of drilling wastes, and highlights some environmentally significant elements including different minerals present in drilling waste stream.

Fog-Based Transcoding for Crowdsourced Video Livecast

Recent years have witnessed the booming popularity of CLS platforms, through which numerous amateur broadcasters live stream their video contents to viewers around the world. The heterogeneous qualities and formats of the source streams, however, require massive computational resources to transcode them into multiple industrial standard quality versions to serve viewers with distinct configurations, and the delays to the viewers of different locations should be well synchronized to support community interactions. This article attempts to address these challenges and to explore the opportunities with new generation computation paradigms, in particular, fog computing. We present a novel fog-based transcoding framework for CLS platforms to offload the transcoding workload to the network edge (i.e., the massive number of viewers). We evaluate our design through our PlanetLab-based experiment and real-world viewer transcoding experiment.

Identifying the source population of fish re-colonizing an arid-land stream following wildfire-induced extirpation using otolith microchemistry

Movement is necessary for re-colonization of habitats following disturbance, but methods to estimate dispersal of small-bodied fishes are limited. We evaluated the efficacy of otolith microchemistry in identifying habitat origin of longfin dace Agosia chrysogaster in the Gila River, NM, USA. Additionally, we used this method to determine the source population of speckled dace Rhinichthys osculus that re-colonized a tributary reach following wildfire-induced extirpation. We determined otolith microchemical analysis was possible after finding elevated ambient water concentrations of Mg, Mn, and Sr in the disturbed tributary both before and after wildfire relative to other source streams. These water chemistry differences allowed us to test if speckled dace were derived from downstream populations, or from those potentially persisting within refugia in the fire-affected tributary. We found that otolith signatures consistently reflected water chemistry patterns for Mn and Sr, allowing us to classify individuals to known capture locations 86% (range = 74–100%) of the time. Otolith microchemistry techniques then revealed that 88% of speckled dace that re-colonized the fire-affected tributary reach were derived from refuge populations within the tributary. Our results indicated that otolith microchemistry could be an important tool for characterizing re-colonization dynamics of fish populations residing in chemically heterogeneous stream networks.

SPar: A DSL for High-Level and Productive Stream Parallelism

This paper introduces SPar, an internal C++ Domain-Specific Language (DSL) that supports the development of classic stream parallel applications. The DSL uses standard C++ attributes to introduce annotations tagging the notable components of stream parallel applications: stream sources and stream processing stages. A set of tools process SPar code (C++ annotated code using the SPar attributes) to generate FastFlow C++ code that exploits the stream parallelism denoted by SPar annotations while targeting shared memory multi-core architectures. We outline the main SPar features along with the main implementation techniques and tools. Also, we show the results of experiments assessing the feasibility of the entire approach as well as SPar’s performance and expressiveness.

Divergent responses of sympatric species to livestock encroachment at fine spatiotemporal scales

Livestock are a major human-induced threat to wildlife worldwide, especially in forest landscapes where livestock degrade the food and habitat of forest-dwelling wildlife. However, few empirical studies on this topic have been conducted at fine spatiotemporal scales that are crucial for wildlife-livestock interactions, in particular those involving multiple sympatric wildlife species under policy changes. Here, we demonstrate wildlife-livestock interactions through examining the interactions of several sympatric, threatened wildlife species with livestock in Wolong Nature Reserve, China, using data collected from infrared camera traps, DNA analysis of panda fecal samples and panda distribution predictive modeling along with habitat predictors. Camera trapping revealed an increase in livestock after the government implemented an incentive policy to encourage livestock production midway through the study. Three species (giant panda, red panda, and golden snub-nosed monkey) were displaced as more livestock encroached on forest habitat. In contrast, the detection rate of sambar deer was not affected by livestock encroachment, but sambar shifted the timing of visiting water sources (streams) to dusk (when livestock disturbance and other human activities were lower). The number of giant pandas detected via DNA testing of feces was relatively stable, but panda distribution modeling showed that pandas occurred across a wider area after disturbance. Our research shows that with increased livestock, different wildlife species may respond in different ways, which is likely associated with their biological traits (e.g., life history strategy and diet). Our study underscores the need for careful livestock policy making and planning.

Multivariate statistical techniques for the evaluation of surface water quality of the Himalayan foothills streams, Pakistan

Himalayan foothills streams, Pakistan play an important role in living water supply and irrigation of farmlands; thus, the water quality is closely related to public health. Multivariate techniques were applied to check spatial and seasonal trends, and metals contamination sources of the Himalayan foothills streams, Pakistan. Grab surface water samples were collected from different sites (5–15 cm water depth) in pre-washed polyethylene containers. Fast Sequential Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometer (Varian FSAA-240) was used to measure the metals concentration. Concentrations of Ni, Cu, and Mn were high in pre-monsoon season than the post-monsoon season. Cluster analysis identified impaired, moderately impaired and least impaired clusters based on water parameters. Discriminant function analysis indicated spatial variability in water was due to temperature, electrical conductivity, nitrates, iron and lead whereas seasonal variations were correlated with 16 physicochemical parameters. Factor analysis identified municipal and poultry waste, automobile activities, surface runoff, and soil weathering as major sources of contamination. Levels of Mn, Cr, Fe, Pb, Cd, Zn and alkalinity were above the WHO and USEPA standards for surface water. The results of present study will help to higher authorities for the management of the Himalayan foothills streams.