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Stormwater Management Impacts on Urban Stream Water Quality and Quantity During and After Development in Clarksburg, MD
Citation:
Loperfido, J., G. Noe, T. Jarnagin, Y. Mohamoud, K. Van Ness, AND D. Hogan. Stormwater Management Impacts on Urban Stream Water Quality and Quantity During and After Development in Clarksburg, MD. Presented at AGU Fall Meeting, San Francisco, CA, December 07, 2012.
Impact/Purpose:
Study on mitigation of impacts of urban development - compares centralized vs. distributed BMPs.
Description:
Urbanization and urban land use leads to degradation of local stream habitat generally termed as ‘urban stream syndrome.’ Best Management Practices (BMPs) are often used in an attempt to mitigate water quality and water quantity degradation in urban streams. Traditional development has employed stormwater BMPs that were placed in a centralized manner located either in the stream channel or near the riparian zone to treat stormwater runoff from large drainage areas; however urban streams have largely remained impaired. Recently, distributed placement of BMPs throughout the landscape has been implemented in an attempt to detain, treat, and infiltrate stormwater runoff from smaller drainage areas near its source. Despite increasing implementation of distributed BMPs, little has been reported on the catchment-scale (1-10 km^2) performance of distributed BMPs and how they compare to centralized BMPs. The Clarksburg Special Protection Area (CSPA), located in the Washington, DC exurbs and in Chesapeake Bay watershed, is undergoing rapid urbanization and employs distributed BMPs on the landscape which, treat small drainage areas with the goal of preserving high-quality stream resources in the area. In addition, the presence of a nearby traditionally developed (centralized BMPs) catchment and a forested catchment makes the CSPA an ideal setting to understand how the best available stormwater management technology implemented during urbanization and in the post-development suburban landscape affects stream water quality and quantity through a paired-watershed analysis. The Clarksburg Integrated Monitoring Partnership is a consortium of local and federal agencies and universities that conducts research in the CSPA including: monitoring of stream water quality, geomorphology, and biology; analysis of stream hydrological data; and GIS mapping and analyses of land cover, elevation change and BMP implementation data. Results indicate that during the development period