Grantee Research Project Results
2013 Progress Report: Center for Green Infrastructure and Stormwater Management
EPA Grant Number: R835142Center: Center for Integrated Multi‐scale Nutrient Pollution Solutions
Center Director: Shortle, James S.
Title: Center for Green Infrastructure and Stormwater Management
Investigators: Echols, Stuart Patton , Orland, Brian A , Ready, Richard C , Gray, Barbara L , Royer, Matthew B
Current Investigators: Echols, Stuart Patton , Orland, Brian A , Royer, Matthew B , Ready, Richard C , Clark, Shirley E , Gray, Barbara L , Shortle, James S. , Saacke-Blunk, Kristen , Wagener, Thorsten
Institution: Pennsylvania State University
EPA Project Officer: Packard, Benjamin H
Project Period: March 1, 2012 through February 28, 2018
Project Period Covered by this Report: March 20, 2013 through March 19,2014
Project Amount: $2,173,026
RFA: Sustainable Chesapeake: A Collaborative Approach to Urban Stormwater Management (2011) RFA Text | Recipients Lists
Research Category: Congressionally Mandated Center , Sustainable and Healthy Communities , Water
Objective:
The Center for Green Infrastructure and Stormwater Management contains 5 projects summarized below.
Objective of Project 1: Decision Making: Cognitive and Institutional Barriers
To understand the cognitive and institutional barriers that currently prevent the adoption of innovative green infrastructure solutions for stormwater management, and to identify ways in which those barriers can be overcome, research will focus on institutional stakeholders in three Pennsylvania counties with high urban loadings of pollutants and high vulnerability to future urban land conversion in the Pennsylvania portion of the Chesapeake Watershed.
Objectives of Project 2: Green Infrastructure Design and Visualization
- Develop visual/verbal “dashboards” that communicate to local decision makers (municipal governments and school boards) the information necessary to portray the implications of stormwater management plans for their facilities via data-coupled 3-D visualization;
- Investigate the effects of introducing data-coupled visualization into the deliberation of stormwater management plans addressing perceived improvements in decision-making processes and timing, and confidence in the outcomes;
- Develop visualization “sets” representing alternative development scenarios and calibrated to the needs of and linkages with other projects.
Objective of Project 3: Hydrologic and Water Quality Modeling for Green Infrastructure
The objective of this portion of the third project under this Center umbrella is to improve the technical tools available to decision-makers and to understand the technical barriers to implement green infrastructure in the Chesapeake Bay Basin.
Objective of Research 3 part 2: Hydrologic and Water Quality Modeling for Green Infrastructure
The major objective of this research is to implement a high resolution, spatially explicit watershed model that resolves the local effects of current and projected stormwater practices at a watershed within the Chesapeake Bay Watershed region and to test the relative performance of green infrastructure practices as a function of surrounding land cover, position in the watershed, soil type and soil conditions. Our approach to modeling of green infrastructure design involves a spatially explicit, multi-process strategy for assessing and simulating water quantity and quality impacts of urban stormwater flooding, soil degradation and the role of altered residence times of contaminants and flooding on the urban landscape as well as the larger watershed in which it exists. The project will evaluate three testbeds in the Lancaster, Pennsylvania area.
Objective of Project 4: Non-hydrological Benefits and Citizen Preference
The objective of this project is to measure residents' attitudes toward and preferences over nonhydrological aspects of green stormwater management, including the various ways that stormwater managment can affect the built and natural landscape, and to measure residents' willingness to pay for changes in attributes of the landscape that can be affected by green stormwater management approaches.
Objective of Project 5: Public Engagement and Outreach
Project 5 (Public Engagement and Outreach) will ensure that all of the research conducted by the Center will be authentically connected to decision makers and stakeholders in a high priority target region in Pennsylvania, thereby achieving greater adoption of green infrastructure and stormwater management practices within communities where they are needed the most. In addition, by engaging key decision makers at all levels, the Center’s outreach and engagement strategy will facilitate Center research outcomes related to understanding the barriers to widespread adoption of green infrastructure approaches to stormwater management in Pennsylvania. Wide dissemination of outcomes is proposed so that key stakeholders will be better able to influence decision makers in their communities across the Chesapeake Bay watershed.
Specifically, the project objectives are to:
- Ensure research involves decision makers and communities within the target region.
- Engage key community stakeholders within the target region in an advisory capacity to ensure regional relevance of project.
- Fully engage public decision makers and citizens within the target region through conferences that frame issues, barriers, and potential solutions, disseminate outcomes and research results, and make recommendations for influencing decision makers and developing tools to achieve widespread implementation of green infrastructure in Pennsylvania.
- Achieve broad external engagement and outreach of research results and project outcomes to a wider citizen audience through the Center’s website.
Progress Summary:
The progress of 5 projects funded under the Center for Green Infrastructure and Stormwater Management are summarized below.
Progress for Project 1: Decision Making: Cognitive and Institutional Barriers
Three primary activities were undertaken during Year Two: (1) We conducted additional interviews; (2) We began content analyzing the interviews; and (3) We presented our preliminary findings at the Green Infrastructure Forum (organized by the overall project) in June in Harrisburg as well as at one professional meeting.
Interviews: We conducted an additional 12 interviews this year bringing the total number of interviews to 27 and the number of people interviewed to 34. Interviewees fall into the following stakeholder categories: local government supervisors and planning staff, state regulators, conservation commissions, developers, citizen advocacy groups (for and against regulation), consulting engineers who design stormwater management systems, homeowners’ associations and technical advisory groups. A few interviews were repeated with key regulatory officials. Also included in this year’s interviews were several developers, additional township supervisors and an advocacy organization that opposes government intervention to regulate stormwater. A breakdown of the interviewees by stakeholder category appears in Table 1. Our intention is to conduct about five more interviews during Year Three to ensure a wide array of stakeholders in the sample of those interviewed. Based on the interview findings, we are also designing a few questions for inclusion in the survey being conducted as part of Project 3.
Loca/County Officials & Planners | State Regulators | Conservation Committee Staff | Consulting Engineers | Developers | Citizen Advocasy Groups | Homeowners' Associations | Technical Advisory Panels |
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10 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 1 | 3 |
Content Analysis: To identify barriers referenced by our interviewees, we are conducting a grounded theory analysis of the interview data (along with any archival data we collect). For this purpose, we are using Scholari Sage’s NVivo software. As the interviews are transcribed, we import the Word files into NVivo where we are creating an inductive coding scheme. This coding scheme has evolved as additional interviews were analyzed (e.g., as new barriers are identified). We now have a robust coding scheme that is being used for organizing the data from all the interviews. So far, all but nine interviews have been coded.
Presentation of preliminary findings: The preliminary results of our interview analysis were presented at the Green Infrastructure Forum that our whole project organized for stakeholders of the tri-county area covered by the project (see a detailed description under Project 5). In addition to presenting our findings, we gathered input from those who attended about the benefits of and barriers to effective SWM they had experienced. These data were recorded on flip charts and will be coded along with the interview data and reflected in the final report for Project 1. A presentation about the project and its preliminary findings also was given at the International Association of Conflict Management meeting in Tacoma, Washington, in July of 2013. Project results also may be featured at the Academy of Management Meeting in Philadelphia in August 2014 as part of a symposium on negotiation of public policy disputes (if it is accepted for inclusion in the program).
Progress for Project 2: Green Infrastructure Design and Visualization
The aims of Project 2 have not changed since the original application. As detailed above, work toward these objectives is ongoing, and progressing according to schedule. Three of the four specific Year Two objectives have been met. While we are prepared for the Workshop, that is not yet scheduled.
- Complete the series of photorealistic visualization necessary to test the Project 4 Instrument.
- Refine the visualizations based on outside feedback.
- Prepare for the pre-workshop survey for the pilot Stormwater Planning Workshop.
- Prepare for the pilot Stormwater Planning Workshop, to be held at the end of Year Two.
Progress for Project 3: Hydrologic and Water Quality Modeling for Green Infrastructure
Two of the goals under Project 3 are (1) the development and implementation of a Web-based survey of technical personnel involved in stormwater management regarding the current state of the practice and the barriers to implementing the modern tools that are available, and (2) statistically analyzing the large number of studies that exist in the International BMP Database for the design parameters that affect a treatment device’s water quality performance. For goal (1), the comments from the reviewers are currently being incorporated into the draft survey. It is planned that the survey will be available for use in mid-May 2014. For goal (2), the initial analysis of the BMP database is complete and has been published as a Master’s thesis plus the early results have been presented at several national and regional symposia.
Project 3 part 2: The site chosen this year is the Conestoga watershed in south-central PA. The watershed includes agricultural, forest, suburban, urban and urbanizing landuse-land cover types. Initial simulations have been run for the Conestoga watershed for the climate Reanalysis period (hourly data for 1979-Present). Currently, we are calibrating the model against streamflow and limited groundwater level records. Once calibration is complete, the model simulations will evaluate benefits of a range of management techniques (detention, harvesting, etc.) with multiple constraints (flooding, recharge, residence times, etc.). We are also developing future climate-landuse-landcover scenarios for the impact and efficiency of green infrastructure within the overall watershed framework. The data resources are derived from our new watershed data service, HydroTerre (www.hydroterre.psu.edu). The service hosts on-demand geospatial data for soils (SSURGO, USDA), geology (PASDA), landuse-land-cover (NLCD), climate (NLDAS-2, NOAA), and terrain model (USGS, NED).
The Conestoga River watershed underwent rapidly urbanization process due to population exploding in Lancaster County of Pennsylvania during the past decades. During urbanization, soil properties, surface water availability, radiation, vegetation cover and evapotranspiration are altered dramatically. Although results are preliminary, it is clear that urban-suburban lands exhibit very high runoff ratios (Q/P) as compared to forest and even agricultural land cover.
Progress for Project 4: Non-hydrological Benefits and Citizen Preference
During the period, progress has been made on the design of the survey instrument, the sampling frame, and the recruitment protocol.
- Significant progress has been made in developing the computer-based survey instrument. A survey script was written and coded into survey software Qualtrics. Based on initial experience with the survey software, it was decided that an experimental design with two options per choice would be used, instead of three options per choice.
- The experimental design for the survey was completed. This was done using the SAS macro choiceeff. A design with 24 attribute combinations blocked into 12 choice questions was chosen. Data sets were simulated for this design to check the statistical power of the design.
- Progress was made on designing the recruitment protocol. Existing community groups (choral groups, youth sports associations, etc.) will be contacted and offered to participate in the survey as a fundraising exercise. Groups will provide us with a list of email addresses and names of members. We will contact members and solicit their participation. For each completed survey, the group will be given a donation.
Progress of Project 5: Public Engagement and Outreach
- Complete work with Project 1 researchers to identify decision makers for first round interviews. Project 5 team members continued to work closely with Project 1 team members to outreach to a diverse group of decision makers involved in stormwater management decisions in the target region and facilitate first round interviews. In this reporting period, the first round interviews were completed. This task has allowed Project 5 to squarely meet one of its primary objectives: ensuring the research is authentically connected to decision makers and stakeholders in the high priority target region of the Lower Susquehanna.
- Plan and hold initial kickoff conference, “Green Infrastructure Forum: A dialogue about dealing with stormwater in the Lower Susquehanna.” Project 5 team members planned and held an initial kickoff conference with local stakeholders in the target region. Entitled “Green Infrastructure Forum: A dialogue about dealing with stormwater in the Lower Susquehanna,” the forum was held on June 26, 2013, at Penn State's Harrisburg campus. A diverse group of over 40 invited stakeholders and decision makers involved in stormwater management attended the event. The forum allowed the PI and Center research leaders to describe the overall research and engagement objectives of the Center, present research plans, and receive feedback from attendees. Sessions also were held in which research team members led small group facilitated sessions to learn about local green infrastructure successes and challenges, identify and explore barriers and suggest potential solutions for overcoming those barriers. Results from the forum have helped provide feedback to the research teams and have helped shape research plans and approaching moving forward.
- Hold initial Community Partners Council meeting. The initial meeting of the Community Partners Council (CPC) was held on June 26, 2013, immediately after the Green Infrastructure Forum. Since our last project report, the CPC was expanded to include a greater diversity of geography and stakeholder interests within the project target area. The initial CPC meeting provided all members and research team members an opportunity to introduce one another and describe their interest and role in the project and in stormwater management issues. CPC members provided feedback and reactions to the initial forum and ideas for engaging community members and stakeholders moving forward.
Future Activities:
Future activities for projects funded under the Center for Green Infrastructure and Stormwater Management are summarized below.
Project 2: Green Infrastructure Design and Visualization
- Pilot test and then conduct full survey.
- Interact with other scientists to develop dissemination mechanisms.
- Expand implementation to additional locations.
- Reconfigure visualization interface to integrate project findings.
Project 3: Hydrologic and Water Quality Modeling for Green Infrastructure
During the next funding year, the survey (Goal 1) will be completed and administered to professionals (technically oriented) who are working in the Bay basin. The International BMP Database data analysis (Goal 2) will be continued, with much of the work focusing on the relationships between water quality and design parameters such as drainage area, peak flows, total volume, etc. This will include using the database, as updated in 2014, and the addition of studies from other large databases, such as that assembled by the U.S. EPA and CalTrans.
Project 3 part 2: Future climate scenarios are under development from IPCC projections. Once the historical reanalysis runs are complete, we will begin the climate scenario runs. Our strategy will be to compare how green infrastructure impacts or is impacted by surrounding landuse/cover conditions (urban, suburban, etc.), and whether these impacts are altered under IPCC climate scenarios. In Year 2, we will fully implement the models over each of the three watersheds. As part of this effort, we are interpreting “the built environment” geospatial data layers from LIDAR scenes (PASDA). This work will first be completed without the built environment overlay to establish a base for comparison (e.g., forest land cover or other). Once interpretation of LIDAR is complete, we should have reasonable representations of the “built” environment in digital form ready for simulation. Published results for soil hydraulic property changes as a function of land use will be implemented in the model and critical areas will be identified (e.g., flood prone areas, poor drainage locations, etc.). Hypothetical scenarios for how green infrastructure might improve critical areas and lead to a more coherent design will be evaluated within the virtual model environment described below.
Project 4: Non-hydrological Benefits and Citizen Preference
Next steps in this project are:
- Test the draft survey instrument using verbal protocols with a convenience sample of residents.
- Finalize survey instrument.
- Obtain human subjects clearance.
- Identify community groups.
- Recruit participants and implement survey.
- Analyze data.
Project 5: Public Engagement and Outreach
Major activities and objectives for the subsequent reporting period include:
- Work with research team members to plan and hold first Science Advisory Council (SAC) meeting.
- Work with research team members to plan and hold second CPC meeting.
- Finalize white paper proceedings on initial community forum.
- Continue to work with research team leaders to help identify stakeholders and sites within the target region willing to serve as research subjects and test beds.
- Provide assistance and advice to research team members developing the Center’s website regarding outreach and engagement content.
- Begin planning second community forum to share interim research progress and results.
Journal Articles: 3 Displayed | Download in RIS Format
Other center views: | All 22 publications | 5 publications in selected types | All 3 journal articles |
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Type | Citation | ||
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Leonard L, Duffy CJ. Essential Terrestrial Variable data workflows for distributed water resources modeling. Environmental Modelling & Software 2013;50:85-96. |
R835142 (2013) R835142 (2015) R835142 (Final) |
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Yu X, Bhatt G, Duffy C, Shi Y. Parameterization for distributed watershed modeling using national data and evolutionary algorithm. Computers & Geosciences 2013:58;80-90. |
R835142 (2015) R835142 (Final) |
Exit Exit Exit |
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Yu X, Duffy C, Zhang Y, Bhatt G, Shi Y. Virtual experiments guide calibration strategies for a real-world watershed application of coupled surface-subsurface modeling. Journal of Hydrologic Engineering 2016;21(11):04016043. |
R835142 (2016) |
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Supplemental Keywords:
Community, engagement, stakeholders, decision makers, watersheds, stormwater, water quality, nutrients, Chesapeake Bay, Susquehanna River, water, land, outreach, public participation, green infrastructureRelevant Websites:
Penn State Integrated Hydrologic Modeling System Exit
Progress and Final Reports:
Original Abstract Subprojects under this Center: (EPA does not fund or establish subprojects; EPA awards and manages the overall grant for this center).
R835142C001 Decision Making – Cognitive and Institutional Barriers
R835142C002 Green Infrastructure Design and Visualization
R835142C003 Hydrologic and Water Quality Modeling for Green Infrastructure
R835142C004 Non-Hydrological Benefits and Citizen Preference
R835142C005 Public Engagement and Outreach
The perspectives, information and conclusions conveyed in research project abstracts, progress reports, final reports, journal abstracts and journal publications convey the viewpoints of the principal investigator and may not represent the views and policies of ORD and EPA. Conclusions drawn by the principal investigators have not been reviewed by the Agency.
Project Research Results
- Final Report
- 2016 Progress Report
- 2015 Progress Report
- 2014 Progress Report
- 2012 Progress Report
- Original Abstract
3 journal articles for this center