Abstract
This presentation will examine green stormwater infrastructure effectiveness at a watershed-scale. For the past 20 years, streamflow, water quality, geomorphology, and benthic communities were monitored in 5 watersheds in suburban Washington D.C. The monitored watersheds include a forested control, an urban control with centralized stormwater management, and 3 suburban treatment watersheds featuring low-impact development and a high density of infiltration-focused stormwater facilities distributed across the watershed. We found effective imperviousness to better explain the ecological outcomes in the treatment watersheds compared to either directly connected imperviousness or total imperviousness.
Aditi Bhaskar is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder. Dr. Bhaskar specializes in changes to water resources that accompany urban development with a focus on interactions between streams, groundwater, stormwater, and urban irrigation. Bhaskar received a Sc.B. in Geology-Physics/Math from Brown University and a Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering from University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Then, Dr. Bhaskar was an National Science Foundation Earth Sciences Postdoctoral Fellow, which took her to the U.S. Geological Survey in Reston, Virginia. Dr. Bhaskar was at Colorado State University for 6 years before joining CU in 2023.