Abstract: Using Watershed Modeling to Optimize Management of Urban Stormwater to Control Stream Nitrogen

Ph.D. student Colin Bell will be presenting the following poster at the American Ecological Engineering Society meeting this week in Syracuse, New York.

Using Watershed Modeling to Optimize Management of Urban Stormwater to Control Stream Nitrogen

Colin Bell
Dr. Sara McMillan
Dr. Christina Tague
Dr. Anne Jefferson
Dr. Sandra Clinton

Urban infrastructure expansion causes the alteration of hydrologic and nutrient regimes, elevating nitrogen (N) concentrations in the streams that receive stormwater runoff. The inclusion of stormwater Best Management Practices (BMPs) in urban watersheds has been found to help ameliorate these problems by retaining water and reducing N concentrations through denitrification and uptake. The Regional Hydro-Ecological Simulation System (RHESSys) is currently being used to test the impact of different BMP implementation strategies and fertilizer application regimes to simulate their effects on instream N in an urbanizing, residential watershed in Charlotte, NC. RHESSys is a distributed, process-based model that simulates natural and anthropogenic N and carbon (C) sources, processing and export. Watershed characterization of two watersheds with contrasting land uses (suburban and forested), along with field monitoring of instream and BMP water chemistry is currently being completed. This will allow us to parameterize the influences of existing BMPs on instream N concentrations, and allow RHESSys to scale up their observed functionality. RHESSys will test multiple, spatially-explicit scenarios to identify the combination of N loading and BMP treatment that minimizes aquatic ecosystem degradation so that land developers can urbanize responsibly.