Speaker:
Kristina Hopkins, USGS
[—-]
The U.S. Geological Survey worked with Montgomery County, MD to better understand the effectiveness of selected stormwater practices. Fourteen years of streamflow monitoring in Clarksburg, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, DC, within the Chesapeake Bay watershed, provided an opportunity to investigate how the amount and timing of runoff changed as the area transitioned from agriculture to suburban development with a high density of green stormwater infrastructure practices. The study included a forested control site, an urban control site with large, detention-based stormwater control practices, and two treatment sites that transitioned from agriculture to suburban development with green stormwater infrastructure.
This study asked two main questions:
- How does the amount of runoff change when an agricultural area is developed into a suburban neighborhood with a high density of green stormwater infrastructure?
- Can suburban development with a high density of green stormwater infrastructure store and infiltrate enough runoff to replicate forested conditions?
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