HR: 09:30h
AN: B51F-07 INVITED     [Abstracts]
TI: Integrating Hydrology, Ecology, and Biogeochemistry in Stormwater Management: the Vermont Experience
AU: * Bowden, W B
EM: breck.bowden@uvm.edu
AF: Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, 304 Aiken Center, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT 05405 United States
AB: Although Vermont has had a stormwater management program since the 1970's, support for the program languished during a period intense suburban development in several counties in the state, most notably Chittenden County next to Lake Champlain. Beginning in 2000, the state renewed efforts to address concerns that stormwater runoff from suburban developments had significantly degraded streams in the area and threatened the health of the Lake. The state employs an extensive, EPA-approved biomonitoring program (based on macroinvertebrates and fish) to assess the health of streams. However, it is difficult to translate these data into targets for stormwater management or to predict how and especially when they will change as a result of future management practices. The challenge of managing stormwater in this area is further compounded by a complete lack of historical hydrologic monitoring data. Ultimately a stakeholder-driven process developed that has lead to an innovative partnership among state agencies, resource managers, NGO's, the US-EPA and scientists. Through this partnership a unique consensus evolved that management for hydrologic targets by themselves would address most of the stakeholders' concerns. The new regulations that are emerging are based on two components. The first component relies on flow-duration curves (FDC's) derived from a simple, widely-used stormwater model (P-8) for which adequate input data are available. The model was calibrated for streams in other areas for which long-term hydrologic data were available and then used to generate `synthetic' FDC's for the stormwater impaired and a suite of `attainment' (developing, but currently un-impaired) watersheds in Vermont. Statistical (cluster) analyses of synthetic FDC's provide watershed-wide targets for hydrologic reduction. Sub-watershed mapping linked to further multivariate analysis of the flow data identify specific locations to implement best management practices (BMP's) that will achieve these targets. This approach is firmly grounded in first principles of stormwater hydrology and recognition of the impacts of altered hydrology on stream ecology and biogeochemistry. Stakeholders have accepted the approach because it is objective, defensible, and subject to future, quantitative analysis and adjustment (adaptive management). This approach is not specific to Vermont and could be employed in any region.
UR: http://www.uvm.edu/~ran
DE: 0439 Ecosystems, structure and dynamics (4815)
DE: 0478 Pollution: urban, regional and global (0345, 4251)
DE: 0485 Science policy (6620)
DE: 1803 Anthropogenic effects (4802, 4902)
DE: 1813 Eco-hydrology
SC: Biogeosciences [B]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005