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Spatial and Temporal Patterns of Chloride Contamination in a Shallow, Urban Marsh

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Abstract

High chloride concentrations occur in inland waters from road salt applications (NaCl) as deicers. We studied seasonal and spatial distributions of chloride contamination in a shallow, urban marsh in Madison, Wisconsin, during the warm-wet winter of 2012–13, the cold-dry winter of 2014–15, and in the ice-free season of 2015. Chloride concentrations at the open water sites ranged from 10 to 1,261 mg L−1. Marsh inflows include a storm sewer, direct precipitation, and distributed surface flow and inferred groundwater flow around the marsh’s perimeter. The upstream storm sewer had more influence on chloride concentrations in the upper marsh, whereas runoff from a large snow storage pile had more influence in the lower marsh. In the cold-dry winter, the storm sewer and ion exclusion from ice formation greatly influenced chloride concentrations. In the warm-wet winter, snow melt, and rain on snow events diluted chloride concentrations in the open marsh, while more snow and deicer use increased the role of a snow storage pile as a source of chloride. In the open-water sites in 2015, chloride concentrations decreased following rain, but continued to increase in drier periods, which suggests distributed overland and groundwater inflows provide a source of legacy chlorides to the marsh.

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Data Availability

Data for all dates and sites are available at https://doi.org/10.6073/pasta/5e3e6a0f3ec6450eced1219713e38042. Photos taken at the sites are available in Supplementary Information.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the Lakeshore Nature Preserve for student funding, Emily Stanley and Elizabeth Runde for chemical analysis of water samples, Corinna Gries for data management, and Rhonda James (Facilities Planning and Management, UW-Madison) for providing data on campus salt and sand use and plumbing diagrams of the storm waters near the marsh. We thank many other students and staff at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Limnology and the Lakeshore Nature Preserve for assistance in the field. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Cooperative Agreement DEB-1440297. Two anonymous reviewers provided thoughtful feedback that significantly improved the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Limnology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA

    Greta Helmueller, John J. Magnuson & Hilary A. Dugan

  2. College of Marine Science, University of South Florida, St. Petersburg, FL, USA

    Greta Helmueller

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  1. Greta Helmueller
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  2. John J. Magnuson
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  3. Hilary A. Dugan
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Correspondence to John J. Magnuson.

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Helmueller, G., Magnuson, J.J. & Dugan, H.A. Spatial and Temporal Patterns of Chloride Contamination in a Shallow, Urban Marsh. Wetlands 40, 479–490 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13157-019-01199-y

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