Modeling Water Quality and Urban Typology in iUTAH GAMUT Watersheds
Location
USU Eccles Conference Center
Event Website
http://water.usu.edu
Start Date
4-5-2016 4:57 PM
End Date
4-5-2016 5:00 PM
Description
The intersection of human activity and water quality is a major focus of aquatic research, as we try to understand and then minimize the impacts of land-use change on this precious resource. However, the contribution of specific infrastructures and social behaviors are not usually considered, with very diverse landscapes being lumped under a generic label of “urban”, because of the complexity in categorizing the degree or type of urbanization. This lack of nuance is compounded by limited datasets collected at low spatial and/or temporal resolutions. As part of the iUTAH EPSCoR project, we collected water quality data across elevation and land-use gradients in three Wasatch watersheds—Logan, Red Butte, and Provo. These watersheds represent different stages of transitioning from agricultural to urban land-use. This provides us a unique opportunity to analyze correlations between these water quality values and specific factors of urbanization. We are modeling three water quality variables (E. coli, total nitrogen, and total phosphorus) collected monthly over the three iUTAH watersheds at 66 sites for one year. We calculated land-use statistics for subwatersheds delineated for each site using 10-m DEM data. Land use and climate variables being compared for their predictive capacity include land cover, water related land use, elevation, typology (Jackson-Smith et al. 2015), miles of road, impervious surface, number of storm drain outfalls, socio-economic status, season, and antecedent precipitation. From this data we will build models for each water quality in each watershed to compare how each land use variable affects each aspect of water quality and which land use variables are significant for each watershed. Preliminary results suggest that precipitation, which is usually highly correlated with E. coli in urban watersheds, did not predict E. coli in any land use type or season.
Modeling Water Quality and Urban Typology in iUTAH GAMUT Watersheds
USU Eccles Conference Center
The intersection of human activity and water quality is a major focus of aquatic research, as we try to understand and then minimize the impacts of land-use change on this precious resource. However, the contribution of specific infrastructures and social behaviors are not usually considered, with very diverse landscapes being lumped under a generic label of “urban”, because of the complexity in categorizing the degree or type of urbanization. This lack of nuance is compounded by limited datasets collected at low spatial and/or temporal resolutions. As part of the iUTAH EPSCoR project, we collected water quality data across elevation and land-use gradients in three Wasatch watersheds—Logan, Red Butte, and Provo. These watersheds represent different stages of transitioning from agricultural to urban land-use. This provides us a unique opportunity to analyze correlations between these water quality values and specific factors of urbanization. We are modeling three water quality variables (E. coli, total nitrogen, and total phosphorus) collected monthly over the three iUTAH watersheds at 66 sites for one year. We calculated land-use statistics for subwatersheds delineated for each site using 10-m DEM data. Land use and climate variables being compared for their predictive capacity include land cover, water related land use, elevation, typology (Jackson-Smith et al. 2015), miles of road, impervious surface, number of storm drain outfalls, socio-economic status, season, and antecedent precipitation. From this data we will build models for each water quality in each watershed to compare how each land use variable affects each aspect of water quality and which land use variables are significant for each watershed. Preliminary results suggest that precipitation, which is usually highly correlated with E. coli in urban watersheds, did not predict E. coli in any land use type or season.
https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/runoff/2016/2016Posters/10
Comments
A poster by Erin Jones, who is with Brigham Young University, Plant and Wildlife Sciences