Project overview
Stormwater ponds are key features in urban landscapes for managing runoff and improving water quality. However, clear guidance on how best to implement and manage them for long-term performance is currently lacking. This project develops data needed to inform a robust analysis that will identify major design and maintenance factors that can help sustain high water quality functions over extended periods of time. The project will harmonize, standardize, and develop data collected by cities and watershed organizations, and collect and integrate new data to fill gaps and to provide data needed to address key project goals. Specifically, this project identified a key data gap for recently constructed ponds 10 to 20 years old where water quality diverges following construction, which will be a focus for new data collection. Resulting data will be used for predictive analysis to understand how vegetation and water quality changes over time in stormwater ponds, and how design and management factors such as depth, watershed features, or dredging influence on functions. Predictive models will be translated to guidance that can be used in considerations of design and management, and the curated database will be published as a resource for future use by researchers and managers.
Research questions
- What watershed, pond design, and management characteristics regulate submerged aquatic vegetation abundance, and beneficial functions, in stormwater ponds?
- How are factors that control pond function, including dissolved oxygen, sediment P form, and internal P loading regulated by pond age, size, and vegetation?
- What are the design and management factors that determine the long-term performance of stormwater ponds following construction?
Key innovations/contributions
This project will produce new, actionable, information that can be used to inform decisions related to stormwater pond management and maintenance, including a curated database of intensively studied stormwater ponds.
What does this mean for Minnesota?
We propose to study stormwater ponds, focusing on filling knowledge gaps around recently constructed ponds because we want to predict changes in pond conditions and function following construction and maintenance in order to understand how design and management approaches influence and sustain long term performance of ponds so that managing organizations are better able to predict long term change to make efficient, effective decisions regarding pond management and implementation.