Trends in urban storm water quality in Tallinn and influences from stormflow and baseflow

Abstract

Temporal trends provide a good interpretation of change in stormwater quality over time. This study aimed to analyse trends and influences due to stormflow and baseflow. Grab samples of 18-19 years from 1995 to 2014 recorded at outlets of 7 Tallinn watersheds were analysed for monotonic trend through seasonal Mann Kendall test for long-term, short-term, baseflow and stormflow. Statistically significant downward trends (P-value (p) < 0.05) were found for 6 – hydrocarbon (HC), 1 – suspended solids (SS), 3 – biological oxygen demand (BOD), 4 – total nitrogen (TN) and 2 – total phosphorus (TP) out of 7 sampling outlets over the last 10 years. Less significant decreasing trends (p > 0.05 and < 0.2) for 3 – SS, 1 – BOD, 1 – TN and 1 – TP were identified. Statistically significant long-term upward trends of pH were re-vealed in 5 basins, which reduced to 2 with 5 less significant upward trends over the 10 year period, indicating improve-ments in pH reduction. Härjapea has the highest pH without trend but it includes an upward trend of TN at p = 0.051. The highly possible causes for downward trends are street sweeping, sewer network improvement, decline in sub-urban agri-cultural areas, etc. The upward trend results of pH are related to increased alkalinisation due to acidic rain, weathering of carbonate rocks, sewage discharge and alkaline road dust. In most of the basins, stormflow has more influence on trends than baseflow.