HR: 0830h
AN: H51C-1080    [PDF]
TI: Water Quality Monitoring in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park: Present and Future
AU: * Robinson, R B
EM: rbr@utk.edu
AF: Dept of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 223 Perkins Hall University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996 United States
AU: Moore, S E
EM: Steve_E_Moore@nps.gov
AF: Great Smoky Mountains National Park, 107 Park Headquarters Road, Gatlinburg, TN 37738 United States
AU: Shubzda, J
EM: jshubzda@utk.edu
AF: Dept of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 223 Perkins Hall University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996 United States
AU: Barnett, T W
EM: tbarnet1@utk.edu
AF: Dept of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 223 Perkins Hall University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996 United States
AU: Roby, J C
EM: jroby1@utk.edu
AF: Dept of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 223 Perkins Hall University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996 United States
AU: Buchanan, J R
EM: jbuchan7@utk.edu
AF: Biosystems Eng and Env Science, 305 Agricultural Engineering B The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996 United States
AU: Odom, K R
EM: krodom@ci.maryville.tn.us
AF: Dept of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 223 Perkins Hall University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996 United States
AB: The streams of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park (GRSM) are all headwater streams. Five of these streams are designated Outstanding National Resource Waters (ONRW). But these and other streams are threatened with impairment by the highest acid deposition rate received by any park. Acid deposition is already suspected of causing trout loss in multiple stream reaches. This paper discusses the current GRSM water quality monitoring program and future changes. The major GRSM water quality issues include: 1) How `healthy' are the streams for aquatic life? 2) Is water quality getting better or worse? 3) Why is the stream quality as it is and why do several trends exist? To answer these questions, several water quality monitoring efforts are ongoing: 1) Quarterly grab samples are collected from 90 sites and analyzed for major ions, pH, acid neutralizing capacity (ANC), conductivity, and aluminum. 2) A high altitude site in the Noland Divide watershed records flow, pH, conductivity, and temperature every 15 minutes on two small streams. Biweekly stream, open sit precipitation, and throughfall samples are analyzed for the same analytes as above. 3) Special projects have monitored water quality in adjacent streams during road reconstruction projects. The objectives of the Noland Divide site include providing data on acid deposition flux and trends in the Park as well as flow and chemistry data on the two streams to monitor trends. The objectives of the stream survey of 90 sites include identifying long term trends in water quality, assessing the health of streams, assisting Park management decisions, e.g., viable streams for brook trout restoration, and understanding drivers of water quality in the Park (geology, vegetation, acid deposition, precipitation, logging history, elevation, watershed geometry, stream size, etc.). Analyses of the data and literature have led to several conclusions: 1) pH is decreasing over time at lower elevations 2) Streams have very little capacity to resist acidification, and severe drops in pH during storms can be expected. 3) 80 percent of the GRSM waters are OK for trout during baseline flow conditions. 4) Watershed with higher elevations and steeper slopes have lower pH probably due to shallower soils. 5) Watersheds with higher limestone have higher ANC and thus are less sensitive to acid deposition A monitoring limitation is that few storm event samples are taken. pH regularly dropped to less than 5.0 during the few storm events studied. To collect more storm event data, sondes, precipitation gauges, and auto-samplers are being installed in a watershed. Also, a new ICP spectrometer will allow a more metals to be analyzed. Recently, the stream sampling network was analyzed to identify redundancies in water quality and basin characteristics between sites. Based on multivariate analyses and a simulated annealing optimization approach, about 40 sites will be dropped and four sites added. Also, sampling frequency will increase to six times per year to allow faster trend identification.
DE: 1806 Chemistry of fresh water
DE: 1848 Networks
DE: 1871 Surface water quality
SC: Hydrology [H]
MN: 2003 Fall Meeting