Text description of "Leveraging Minnesota's Stormwater Data For Improved Management of Water Quality in Urban Ponds, Lakes, and Streams" poster

Ben Janke^1,2,5, Jacques Finlay^1,2,5, Mary Marek-Spartz⁵, Mike Trojan³, Bruce Wilson⁴, Amanda Van Pelt^1,5

¹Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior (UMN); ²St. Anthony Falls Laboratory (UMN); ³Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (retired); ⁴Department of Biosystems and Bioproducts Engineering (UMN; Retired); ⁵MSP Urban LTER

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Introduction

For years, Minnesota cities, watershed districts, and other agencies have been collecting date on volume of rainfall runoff and transported pollutants, with some datat records beginning in the early 2000's. These data are typically collected for purposes of permitting, runoff load calcuations, and assessment of management practice performance.

In this project, we combined valuable water quality monitoring resources from 91 sites across the Twin Cities metro area (representing 650+ site-years and the efforts of 12 organizations) into a single database.

Image of TCMA Stormwater Monitoring Database showing number of sites, average record length, events, volume and discharge, and stormwater constituents

Research Goals

Assemble a comprehensive database of stormwater pollutant concentrations in watersehds of the TCMA
Improve understanding of landscape and slimate drivers of runoff pollution
Develop summaries and predictive models that can provide input to pond and watershed models

Find the Database Here!

tinyurl.com/yf4bzunj

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Maps of Using Landscape features to determine and map drivers of runoff pollutants in the Twin Cities

Methods

Runoff concentration data were acquired from the cities and agencies that originally collected and analyzed the runoff samples. Data were cleaned and formatted as needed, and statistically summarized using censored datat methods.

We developed geospatial indicators of landscape features with relevance to pollutant sources and transport (see Table below). These were used in regression analyses to investigate spatial variability in pollutants across the TCMA, with applicability to runoff management and developing inputs to models of watershed runoff and stormwater ponds.

Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the cities and organizations contributing data to this project: Capitol Region Watershed District, city of Bloomington, Mississippi Watershed Management Organization, Minneapolis Parks and Recreation Board, Riley-Purgatory-Bluff Creek Watershed District, Ramsey-Washington Metro Watershed District, city of St. Paul & WSB Engineering, Stantec, South Washington Watershed District, Washington Conservation District, and Three Rivers Park District. Funding provided by the MN Stormwater Research Council and National Science Foundation.

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