Abstract
Reliable methods are required to provide the detailed hydrologic information necessary to improve management of water resources and aquatic ecosystems in developing/urbanizing watersheds. A case study was implemented in a representative 230 km2 mixed-use, urbanizing watershed to advance precipitation/discharge understanding. Precipitation and streamflow were monitored in five sub-watersheds (nested-scale experimental watershed study design), partitioned by dominant land use type. Data were collected at 30-min intervals through the 2009 to 2015 water years. Individual sub-watershed area-normalized flow and runoff coefficients differed by as much as 400%. Two high density, urban sub-watersheds displayed large runoff coefficients indicating disproportionately high flow response to precipitation inputs. Regression analyses of sub-watershed land use characteristics and flow metrics showed strong (i.e. R2 > 0.9) statistically significant (p < 0.05) linear relationships for percentage developed, forest, and agriculture land cover. Observed relationships between land use and flow metrics illustrate the complexity of contrasting and intermingled land use types in urbanizing, mixed-land-use watersheds. Results highlight the variable hydrologic impacts of land use and suggest the potential for vegetation management as a tool for streamflow mediation in urban settings. The work is one of the first to utilize the experimental watershed method to isolate and quantify land use impacts in the context of a contemporary mixed-land-use watershed. Collectively, results emphasize the utility of the method for land and water resource managers seeking science-based information to guide management decisions and more effectively target remediation efforts in contemporary multiple-land-use watersheds.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Booth D, Jackson C (1997) Urbanization of aquatic systems: degradation thresholds, stormwater detection, and the limits of mitigation. J Am Water Resour Assoc 33:1077–1090
Booth D, Hartley D, Jackson R (2002) Forest cover, impervious surface area, and the mitigation of stormwater impacts. J Am Water Resour Assoc 38:835–845
Brezonik P, Stadelmann T (2002) Analysis and predictive models of stormwater runoff volumes, loads, and pollutant concentrations from watersheds in the twin cities metropolitan area, Minnesota, USA. Water Res 36:1743–1757
Brown L, Gray R, Hughes R, Meador M (2005) Introduction to the effects of urbanization on stream ecosystems. Am Fish Soc Symp 47:1–8
City of Columbia, Missouri (2016a) Columbia Missouri water system. https://www.como.gov/WaterandLight/Water/watersystem.php. Accessed 1 Dec 2016
City of Columbia, Missouri (2016b) Columbia regional wastewater treatment plant. https://www.como.gov/PublicWorks/Sewer/wwtppg_4.php. Accessed 1 Dec 2016
Dottori F, Martina MLV, Todini E (2009) A dynamic rating curve approach to indirect discharge measurement. Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 13(6):847–863
Helsel DR, Hirsch RM (1992) Statistical methods in water resources, vol 49. Elsevier, Amsterdam
Homer CG, Dewitz JA, Yang L, Jin S, Danielson P, Xian G, Coulston J, Herold ND, Wickham JD, Megown K (2015) Completion of the 2011 national land cover database for the conterminous United States-representing a decade of land cover change information. Photogramm Eng Remote Sens 81(5):345–354
Hooper L (2015) A stream physical habitat assessment in an urbanizing watershed of the Central USA. Master’s Thesis, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri
Huang D (2012) Quantifying stream bank erosion and deposition rates in a Central U.S. urban watershed. Master’s Thesis, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri
Hubbart JA (2011) Urban floodplain management: understanding consumptive water use potential in urban forested floodplains. Stormwater Journal 12(6):56–57
Hubbart JA, Link TE, Gravelle JA, Elliot WJ (2007) Timber harvest impacts on water yield in the continental/maritime hydroclimatic region of the United States. For Sci 53(2):169–180
Hubbart JA, Freeman G (2010) Sediment laser diffraction: a new approach to an old problem in the central U.S. Stormwater Journal 11:36–44
Hubbart JA, Holmes J, Bowman G (2010) TMDLs: improving stakeholder acceptance with science-based allocations. Watershed Sci Bull 1:19–24
Hubbart JA, Muzika RM, Huang D, Robinson A (2011) Improving quantitative understanding of bottomland hardwood forest influence on soil water consumption in an urban floodplain. The Watershed Science Bulletin 3:34–43
Hubbart JA, Zell C (2013) Considering streamflow trend analyses uncertainty in urbanizing watersheds: a baseflow case study in the Central United States. Earth Interact 17(5):1–28
Hubbart JA, Kellner E, Hooper L, Lupo AR, Market PS, Guinan PE, Stephan K, Fox N, Svoma BM (2014) Localized climate and surface energy flux alterations across an urban gradient in the central US. Energies 7(3):1770–1791
Ice GG, Stednick JD (2004) A century of forest and wildland watershed lessons. Society of American Foresters, Bethesda MD, p. 287
Jacobs Engineering Group, Inc. (2015) Long range water system study, Prepared for: City of Columbia, Water and Light Department, Columbia, Missouri. Available: http://www.como.gov/WaterandLight/Documents/LongRangeWaterStudy.pdf
Karwan DL, Gravelle JA, Hubbart JA (2007) Effects of timber harvest on suspended sediment loads in Mica Creek, Idaho. For Sci 53(2):181–188
Kellner E, Hubbart JA (2016) A comparison of the spatial distribution of vadose zone water in forested and agricultural floodplains a century after harvest. Sci Total Environ 542:153–161
Kochendorfer J, Hubbart JA (2010) The relative roles of climate and rural land-use changes in streamflow trends in the upper Mississippi River basin. The American Meteorological Society. Journal of Earth Interactions 14(20):1–12
Konrad CP, Booth DB (2005) Hydrologic changes in urban streams and their ecological significance. In American Fisheries Society Symposium 47:157–177
Kutta E, Hubbart J (2014) Improving understanding of microclimate heterogeneity within a contemporary plant growth facility to advance climate control and plant productivity. J Plant Sci 2(5):167–178
Lerch RN, Kitchen NR, Baffaut C, Vories ED (2015) Long-term agroecosystem research in the Central Mississippi River basin: Goodwater Creek experimental watershed and regional nutrient water quality data. J Environ Qual 44(1):37–43
McDonnell JJ (2003) Where does water go when it rains? Moving beyond the variable source area concept of rainfall-runoff response. Hydrol Process 17(9):1869–1875
Miller DE, Vandike JE (1997) Groundwater resources of Missouri (Vol. 2). Missouri Department of Natural Resources, Division of Geology and Land Survey
Missouri Climate Center (2014) http://climate.missouri.edu/. Accessed: 17 Sept 2014
Nichols J, Hubbart JA, Poulton BC (2016) Using macroinvertebrate assemblages and multiple stressors to infer urban stream system condition: a case study in the central US. Urban Ecosystems 19:1–26
Poff NL, Allan JD, Bain MB, Karr JR, Prestegaard KL, Richter BD, Sparks RE, Stromberg JC (1997) The natural flow regime. Bioscience 47(11):769–784
Savenije HH (1996) The runoff coefficient as the key to moisture recycling. J Hydrol 176(1):219–225
Schwartz FW, Zhang H (2003) Fundamentals of groundwater. John Wiley & Sons, New York
Searcy JK (1959) Flow-duration curves. US Government Printing Office, Washington
Stice A (2015) Stormwater fee increases would pay for repairs, upgrades. Columbia Daily Tribune http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/politics/elections/stormwater-fee-increase-would-pay-for-repairs-upgrades/article_2a29f9a9-e480-5097-b7ad-ec34ccc2a817.html. Accessed 1 Dec 2016
Sunde MG, He HS, Zhou B, Hubbart JA, Spicci A (2014) Imperviousness change analysis tool (I-CAT) for simulating pixel-level urban growth. Landsc Urban Plan 124:104–108
Sunde MG, He HS, Hubbart JA, Scroggins C (2016) Forecasting streamflow response to increased imperviousness in an urbanizing Midwestern watershed using a coupled modeling approach. Appl Geogr 72:14–25
Svoboda M, LeComte D, Hayes M, Heim R, Gleason K, Angel J, Rippey B, Tinker R, Palecki M, Stooksbury D, Miskus D, Stephens S (2002) The drought monitor. Bull Am Meteorol Soc 83(8):1181–1190
United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) (2016) National Inventory of Dams. http://nid.usace.army.mil/cm_apex/f?p=838:12. Accessed 29 Nov 2016
United States Census Bureau (USCB) (2015) http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/29/2915670.html. Accessed 20 Sept 2015
Vogel RM, Fennessey NM (1994) Flow-duration curves. I: new interpretation and confidence intervals. J Water Resour Plan Manag 120(4):485–504
Wahren A, Feger KH, Schwarzel K, Münch A (2009) Land-use effects on flood generation-considering soil hydraulic measurements in modelling. Adv Geosci 21:99–107
Walsh CJ, Roy AH, Feminella JW, Cottingham PD, Groffman PM, Morgan RP II (2005) The urban stream syndrome: current knowledge and the search for a cure. J N Am Benthol Soc 24(3):706–723
Williamson DR, Stokes RA, Ruprecht JK (1987) Response of input and output of water and chloride to clearing for agriculture. J Hydrol 94(1–2):1–28
Zeiger SJ, Hubbart JA (2015) Urban stormwater temperature surges: a central US watershed study. Hydrology 2(4):193–209
Zeiger SJ, Hubbart JA, Anderson SH, Stambaugh MC (2016) Quantifying and modelling urban stream temperature: a central US watershed study. Hydrol Process
Zeiger SJ, Hubbart JA (2016) Nested-scale nutrient flux in a mixed-land-use urbanizing watershed. Hydrol Process 30:1475–1490
Zell C, Kellner E, Hubbart JA (2015) Forested and agricultural land use impacts on subsurface floodplain storage capacity using coupled vadose zone-saturated zone modeling. Environ Earth Sci 74:1–14
Zhang Q, Ball WP, Moyer DL (2016) Decadal-scale export of nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment from the Susquehanna River basin, USA: analysis and synthesis of temporal and spatial patterns. Sci Total Environ 563:1016–1029
Zhang YK, Schilling KE (2006) Increasing streamflow and baseflow in Mississippi River since the 1940s: effect of land use change. J Hydrol 324(1):412–422
Zhou B, He HS, Nigh TA, Schulz JH (2012) Mapping and analyzing change of impervious surface for two decades using multi-temporal Landsat imagery in Missouri. Int J Appl Earth Obs Geoinf 18:195–206
Acknowledgements
Funding was provided by the Missouri Department of Conservation and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 7 through the Missouri Department of Natural Resources (P. N: G08-NPS-17) under Section 319 of the Clean Water Act. Additional funding was provided by partners of the Hinkson Creek Watershed Collaborative Adaptive Management program. Results presented may not reflect the views of the sponsors and no official endorsement should be inferred. Special thanks are due to Sean Zeiger. Collaborators include (but are not limited to) Boone County Public Works, City of Columbia, University of Missouri, and the U.S. Geological Survey.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Kellner, E., Hubbart, J.A. Application of the experimental watershed approach to advance urban watershed precipitation/discharge understanding. Urban Ecosyst 20, 799–810 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-016-0631-4
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-016-0631-4