USGS Webinar – March 1 – 12 PM
After a long hiatus the MD-DC-DE WSC Seminar series is returning! Please plan to join us for our next seminar on Wednesday March 1st, 2023 at 12PM virtually via Teams.
Urban Stream Restorations Increase Floodplain Soil Carbon and Nutrient Retention Along a Chronosequence
Stream restoration is a commonly used management practice to improve water quality via carbon and nutrient retention to meet regulatory or voluntary water quality standards in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. These types of restoration projects have few quantifiable measures of project success, no standard metrics, and rarely collect pre-restoration data. However, storage of nutrients, such as phosphorus (P) and carbon (C), in floodplain soils of restored streams can act as an easily quantifiable indicator of restoration success, particularly when the project goals include improved water quality. This study examines phosphorus and carbon concentration in post-restoration floodplain surficial soil samples to see if there is any change in storage of these nutrients over time. Floodplain surficial soil samples (10 cm depth) were collected from 18 streams in the urbanized Piedmont region of northern Virginia, representing a chronosequence of time (1-10+ yrs.) since restoration, as well as surficial soil samples from unrestored and reference streams. The samples were analyzed for total carbon (TC), total nitrogen (TN) and total phosphorus (TP) retention, whereas CO2 mineralization potential and equilibrium phosphorus concentration (EPC0) were measured as metrics of nutrient and carbon loss. These metrics were compared to time since restoration and potential environmental drivers, including soil moisture, pH, particle size, organic matter content, and degree of phosphorus saturation. Older stream restoration samples indicated increasing nutrient retention for TC, TN, and TP that surpassed both unrestored and reference streams, as well as decreasing C mineralization turnover and no significant changes in EPC0. Soil wetness and organic matter, key drivers in nutrient retention, also increased as restoration projects aged increasing nutrient and C storage. Overall, stream restoration did improve carbon and nutrient retention in floodplains as compared to unrestored sites and exceeded those of low urbanization ‘reference’ sites.
Our speaker will be Katrina Napora. Katrina is a Pathways Student Trainee with the U.S. Geological Survey Florence Bascom Center in Reston, Virginia, and master’s student at George Mason University. She completed her bachelor’s degree in 2020, and has worked in several wetland ecosystems, include fresh and saltwater marshes, temperate peatlands, cypress swamps, oyster beds and seagrass meadows. Most recently, she has focused on stream-floodplain systems.
This presentation will be available remotely via Teams via the following link:
