Smart Growth & Water: Resources & Tools

Aquatic buffers

Streamside vegetation that filters stormwater and protects stream banks.

Aquatic corridor

The area where land and water meet. This can include floodplains, stream channels, springs and seeps, small estuarine coves, littoral areas, stream crossings, shorelines, riparian forest, caves, and sinkholes.

Channel morphology

The change in a stream channel's width or the shape of the stream banks. Increased erosion often causes a stream channel to widen and to deepen. Additional aspects of channel morphology include height, angle, and extent of bank erosion, substrate embeddedness, sediment deposition, and substrate.

Contingency planning strategies

The procedure used to deal with water supply contamination or service interruption emergencies.Critical habitats-The essential spaces for plant and animal communities or populations, including tidal wetlands, freshwater wetlands, large forest clumps, springs, spawning areas in streams, habitat for rare or endangered species, potential restoration areas, native vegetation areas, and coves.

Combined sewer systems

Sewers that are designed to collect rainwater runoff, domestic sewage, and industrial wastewater in the same pipe. Most of the time, combined sewer systems transport all of their wastewater to a sewage treatment plant, where it is treated and then discharged to a water body. During periods of heavy rainfall or snowmelt, however, the wastewater volume in a combined sewer system can exceed the capacity of the sewer system or treatment plant. For this reason, combined sewer systems are designed to overflow occasionally and discharge excess wastewater directly to nearby streams, rivers, or other water bodies.

Cumulative impacts

Describes situations when the effects of an action are added to or interact with other effects in a particular place and within a particular time. A multi-purpose practice used for the removal of sediment that accumulates at the bottom of water bodies.

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Ecological function

Potentially impacted by changes in channel morphology, stream hydrology, water quality, and habitat structure. Ecological function can be measured by fish diversity, macroinvertebrate diversity, biological integrity, EPA Rapid Bioassessment Protocol, fish barriers, and the leaf pack processing rate.

Habitat

The place where a plant or animal lives.

 

Hydrologic reserves

Undeveloped areas responsible for maintaining the predevelopment hydrologic response of a watershed. The three most common land uses are crops, forest, and pasture.

Habitat corridor

An area of land, such as a linear drainage ditch, a hedgerow, or railway embankment, that connects islands of wildlife habitat. Habitat corridors may also be referred to as stream corridors, wildlife corridors, or riparian zones.

Habitat structure

Defined by the pool-riffle ratio, pool frequency, depth and substrate, habitat complexity, instream cover, riffle substrate quality, riparian vegetative cover, riffle embeddedness.

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Land trusts

Legal entities which can operate locally, regionally, or nationally designed to own titles to or conservation easements on specific properties. Land trusts provide a focused venue for characterizing, prioritizing, and purchasing land or easements, and have an excellent track record of achieving the benefits sought.

New urbanism

A term used to describe development which focuses on the restoration of urban centers and towns within coherent metropolitan regions, the reconfiguration of sprawling suburbs into communities of neighborhoods and diverse districts, the conservation of natural environments, and the preservation of our built legacy.

Nitrous oxides

A major pollution concern for surface waters through air deposition.

Per capita land consumption

The land consumed by each person's share of their house lot or the land covered by their apartment complex plus their portion of all the other land that has been converted from rural to urban use to provide for jobs, recreation and entertainment, shopping, parking, transportation, storage, government services, religious and cultural opportunities, waste handling, and education.

Primary productivity

Plant growth and the resulting increase in plant mass that occurs as part of the photosynthesis process.

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Sanitary sewer overflows

Properly designed, operated, and maintained sanitary sewer systems are meant to collect and transport all of the sewage that flows into them to a publicly owned treatment works (POTW). However, occasional unintentional discharges of raw sewage from municipal sanitary sewers occur in almost every system. These types of discharges are called sanitary sewer overflows.

Source water

Untreated water from streams, rivers, lakes, or underground aquifers which is used to supply private wells and public drinking water.

Sprawl

Patterns of urban growth which includes large acreage of low-density residential development, rigid separation between residential and commercial uses, residential and commercial development in rural areas away from urban centers, minimal support for non-motorized transportation methods, and a lack of integrated transportation and land use planning.

Stream hydrology

The flow regime of a stream. Several variables of hydrology can be altered by construction, development, or land conversion including summer dry weather flow, wetted perimeter, cross-sectional area of the stream, and peak storm flow. Increased runoff can increase flood peaks and the magnitude and frequency of bankfull storms, and decrease baseflow between storms.

Transit-oriented development

One alternative to sprawling strip development involves creating nodes of transit-oriented development at one-mile intervals along a corridor.

Water quality

The properties of the stream water. Variables affected include summer water temperature, turbidity, total dissolved solids, substrate fouling index, wet weather bacteria, and wet weather carbon.

Water quality management plans

Prescribe the regulatory, construction, and management activities necessary to meet the water body goals.

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