Abstract
Non-point source pollution (NPS) besides point source pollution (PS) has contributed to pollutant loading into natural receiving water bodies. Due to the nature of NPS, the quantification of pollutant loading from NPS is very challenging but crucial to riverine water quality management, especially for the river reach flowing through urban areas. The water quality in the river reach of the Bow River flowing through the City of Calgary in Alberta, Canada, is affected by both PS and NPS. Thus, understanding and characterizing water quality of discharges (affected by NPS) into the river reach is necessary for better managing riverine water quality and preventing water quality degradation. In the paper, monitored event mean concentrations (EMCs) of stormwater runoff and mean concentrations of snowmelt and baseflow of seven common pollutants from sub-catchments, which are categorized into four land use types including commercial, industrial, residential and on-going development land uses, were used to investigate the linkage between land use and water quality. Statistical analysis techniques were adopted to identify differences or similarities in water quality among different flow types, different land use types, and among/between catchments of same land use. The results indicated that EMCs of many water quality parameters vary among different land use types and among/between catchments of same land use. The results also showed median EMCs of pollutants of snowmelt and baseflow are, in general, lower than those of stormwater runoff. In addition, Stormwater Management Model was employed to investigate the physical process that would affect water quality response to storm events for two typical land uses, industrial and residential land uses. The modeling results supported that wash-off of particulate matters might primarily affect water quality response of catchments between different land uses. All the results shed the light on the necessity of quantifying pollutant loading considering the characteristics of land uses.
Highlights
Urbanization occurring across the world alters urban hydrologic cycle and it largely increases water quantity due to the increase of impervious area, such as roads, parking lots, and rooftops
The result that total phosphorus (TP) level is higher in stormwater runoff than that in baseflow obtained in the paper is consistent with the results of reference [17]; whereas the result is contradictory to that observed by reference [18], which concluded that levels of TP along with total nitrogen (TN) are higher in snowmelt instead
This paper investigated the linkage between land use and water quality in an urban setting, the City of Calgary, Alberta, Canada using two different approaches: statistical analysis and modeling
Summary
Urbanization occurring across the world alters urban hydrologic cycle and it largely increases water quantity due to the increase of impervious area, such as roads, parking lots, and rooftops. Water released from stormwater drains of a typical urban area/catchment includes baseflow, snowmelt and stormwater runoff. The different types of flow all contribute pollutant loading from nonpoint pollution sources (NPS) Among these flow types, stormwater runoff has been claimed to be one of the most common sources of water pollution, for example in U.S [5]. An urban setting always composes of different land use types to accommodate various anthropogenic activities. Stormwater runoff from different types of land use has been shown to have little to no similarity in terms of pollutant concentrations [6] [7] [8]. Reference [9] stated that urban stormwater from catchments with similar land use type and percentage of impervious area shows large variations in pollutant concentrations. Water quality of baseflow and snowmelt is expected to be associated with land use characteristics
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