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Interdisciplinary Workshop Case Study Valley Creek Watershed near Philadelphia, PA

Interdisciplinary Workshop Case Study Valley Creek Watershed near Philadelphia, PA. Claire Welty UMBC (University of Maryland Baltimore County) Center for Urban Environmental Research and Education & Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering July 19, 2005. Appetite for Land Defies Control

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Interdisciplinary Workshop Case Study Valley Creek Watershed near Philadelphia, PA

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  1. Interdisciplinary Workshop Case Study Valley Creek Watershed near Philadelphia, PA Claire WeltyUMBC (University of Maryland Baltimore County) Center for Urban Environmental Research and Education & Dept. of Civil and Environmental EngineeringJuly 19, 2005

  2. Appetite for Land Defies Control Space is being devoured faster than it's being saved. Where big homes go, traffic and pollution follow. First of five parts. By Diane Mastrull and Nancy Petersen INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS Sunday, February 7, 1999 It is development clocked locally at an acre an hour. Twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year. That is a conservative estimate of how fast the remaining open land in Philadelphia, Bucks, Montgomery, Delaware, Chester, Gloucester, Camden and Burlington Counties is being bulldozed.

  3. Goal of Project • To quantify impacts of development on water resources and aquatic ecosystems in an urbanizing watershed Goals of Presentation • To illustrate why multidisciplinary approaches can be helpful for evaluating these kinds of problems • To demonstrate several types of models utilized in the project

  4. Baltimore Field Site

  5. Valley Creek Watershed - Land-Use History 1650-1700 Colonial Settlement 1700-1850 Agricultural Development 1850-1950 Industrial Development 1950-present Suburban Sprawl Schuylkill River Valley Forge National Historical Park Valley Creek Little Valley Creek 24 mi2 1 mi

  6. 1850-1950 Industrial Development • VFNH Park Cedar Hollow Quarry • Catanach Quarry • • N.I.K.E. Site Malvern TCE • • Knickerbocker Landfill • • • Paoli Rail Yard Foote Mineral Co. Bishop Tube Co.

  7. 2002 Land Use 17% Impervious Area

  8. Geology North Valley Hills (Noncarbonate rock) Chester Valley (Carbonate rock) South Valley Hills (Noncarbonate rock) Fault

  9. Groundwater Flow Paths Sloto (1990)

  10. Bromide Concentrations in Valley Creek • Foote Mineral Site

  11. USGS Gauge • Q (cfs) Quarry Trib

  12. Hyporheic Zone

  13. Station Locations for Tracer Test N USGS, +7470 m Quarry Discharge, + 320 m VCP, + 2275 m Mill Rd, +5510 m Church Rd, 0.0 m

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  17. Best Fit of USGS OTIS Model to Data to Determine Stream Parameters D = longitudinal dispersion coefficient a = hyporheic exchange rate A = main channel cross-sectional area As = storage cross-sectional area As /A = transient storage area http://co.water.usgs.gov/otis/

  18. Results REACH Quarry to VCP VCP to Mill Rd Mill Rd to USGS Length, km 1.85 3.24 1.96 D, m2/s 1.4 0.5 0.7 As/A 0.07 1.3 0.03 a, s-1 2.7E-04 1.0E-02 8.7E-06 • Dispersion, exchange, storage area are flow dependent • Transient storage zone (As/A) and exchange rate (a) are dominant in the middle reach •  Exchange rates (a) are consistent with type of bed material as reported in the literature Ryan, Packman, and Welty, WRR, 40, W01602, doi:10.1029/2003WR002458,January 2004.

  19. Food Web Analysis Using Stable Isotopes • 1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • • • 9 8 5 • 10 • • 15 • 6 14 • 7 • 11 • 12 • 13 Creek Chub d15N signal

  20. Septic System Creek Chub d15N signal Steffy and Kilham, Ecological Applications, 14(3), 637-641, June 2004.

  21. Fish Diversity

  22. Simpson Diversity Index 13 11 14 10 2.5 9 8 4.0 4.0 4 5.4 2.9 3 2 1 2.6 1.8 2.5 3.9 5 4.4 Totals (taken each section as a whole) Watershed: 6.3 Main branch: 3.7 VC: 5.6 LVC: 5.0 6 15 3.2 3.6 7 1.2 12 S = total number of species pi = proportion of S made up of ith species

  23. ? Steffy and Kilham, Urban Ecosystems In review

  24. Springs in Valley Creek Watershed 15 5 7 • 108 sampleable springs • Flow rates and major ions measured

  25. Cross-Covariance Between Spring Flow and Fish Species Diversity Steffy, McGinty, Welty, and Kilham, JAWRA, 40(5), 1269 - 1275, October 2004

  26. Geostatistical Analysis of Spring Water Quality • Geologic vs. Land-Use Signatures

  27. Geology Indicator Variograms Chickies Quartzite Ledger Dolomite Elbrook Limestone Octoraro Phyllite Conestoga Limestone

  28. Water Quality Variograms Related to Geology 5.0 - 8.3 0.1 - 190 mg/L pH Calcium

  29. Land-Use Indicator Variograms Public Lands Farms Industrial Commercial Residential

  30. Water Quality Variograms Related to Land Use 3 - 180 mg/L 2.6 - 270 mg/L Sodium Chloride McGinty, A.L..L., MS Thesis, Drexel University, Dept. of Civil, Arch., and Env. Eng., 2003; McGinty and Welty, in preparation, to be submitted to Hydrogeology Journal, 2005.

  31. Stormwater Management • 111 detention basins •Functioning as designed? • Additive effects?

  32. Detention Basin Surveys Inputs Rainfall Percentage Impervious Area Soils Land Slopes Geology Output Stream flow rate Assessment Approach: Stormwater Modeling Mathematical Model

  33. Methods • 111 detention basins surveyed, including outflow devices •  6 recording raingauges installed in watershed •  US Army Corps of Engineers HEC-HMS model chosen •  Soils, infiltration, basin, rainfall data incorporated into model •  Predictions of storm runoff with and without basins quantified 2.0 inch rainfall Peak without basins: 117cfs Peak with basins: 114 cfs •  Basins are designed for 2 - 100 yr storms •  Basins have no effect on small storms (here ≤ 1 yr) •  97% of our rainfall falls as small storms • Need for revising design criteria Emerson, Welty, and Traver, ASCE J Hydrologic Eng, 10(3), 237-242, May 2005.

  34. Summary • Watershed-scale research > importance of recognizing spatial and temporal heterogeneity > natural vs anthropogenic characteristics •  Utilization of existing conditions and data for process-based, quantitative assessments where possible

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