Effects of Land Use and Sample Location on Nitrate‐Stream Flow Hysteresis Descriptors during Storm Events

Abstract

The U.S. Geological Survey's New Jersey and Iowa Water Science Centers deployed ultraviolet‐visible spectrophotometric sensors at water‐quality monitoring sites on the Passaic and Pompton Rivers at Two Bridges, New Jersey, on Toms River at Toms River, New Jersey, and on the North Raccoon River near Jefferson, Iowa to continuously measure in‐stream nitrate plus nitrite as nitrogen (NO3 + NO2) concentrations in conjunction with continuous stream flow measurements. Statistical analysis of NO3 + NO2 vs. stream discharge during storm events found statistically significant links between land use types and sampling site with the normalized area and rotational direction of NO3 + NO2‐stream discharge (N‐Q) hysteresis patterns. Statistically significant relations were also found between the normalized area of a hysteresis pattern and several flow parameters as well as the normalized area adjusted for rotational direction and minimum NO3 + NO2 concentrations. The mean normalized hysteresis area for forested land use was smaller than that of urban and agricultural land uses. The hysteresis rotational direction of the agricultural land use was opposite of that of the urban and undeveloped land uses. An r2 of 0.81 for the relation between the minimum normalized NO3 + NO2 concentration during a storm vs. the normalized NO3 + NO2 concentration at peak flow suggested that dilution was the dominant process controlling NO3 + NO2 concentrations over the course of most storm events.

Monitoring the riverine pulse: Applying high‐frequency nitrate data to advance integrative understanding of biogeochemical and hydrological processes

“…Investigators applied hysteresis approaches to study NO 3 − concentration patterns during storm events prior to the widespread deployment of high‐frequency sensors (Butturini et al, ; House & Warwick, ; Ocampo, Sivapalan, & Oldham, ), but a rapid increase in hysteresis‐focused investigations has occurred over the past decade, driven in part by the increasing availability of high‐frequency data (Baker & Showers, ; Duncan, Band, & Groffman, ; Dupas, Jomaa, Musolff, Borchardt, & Rode, ; Rusjan, Brilly, & Mikoš, ; Shrestha, Osenbrück, & Rode, ). These high‐frequency data have allowed examination of hysteresis for every storm in a watershed, leading to improved understanding of seasonal and threshold patterns of NO 3 − sources and land use and climate variation effects on storm response (Baker & Showers, ; Bowes et al, ; Duncan, Welty, Kemper, Groffman, & Band, ; Dupas et al, ; Feinson, Gibs, Imbrigiotta, & Garrett, ). While clockwise hysteresis in NO 3 − concentrations is reported more frequently than anticlockwise hysteresis (Bowes et al, ; Duncan, Band, et al, ; Lloyd, Freer, Johnes, & Collins, ; Thomas, Abbott, Troccaz, Baudry, & Pinay, ; Vaughan et al, ), patterns can vary within the same watershed as governed by factors such as season, antecedent climatic conditions, and storm magnitude (Baker & Showers, ; Dupas et al, ; Eludoyin et al, ; Fovet et al, ).…”

“…In contrast to agricultural drains, impermeable surfaces and storm sewers in urban watersheds provide a short‐lived pulse of NO 3 − and other nutrients due to wash off, typically rapidly depleted, leading to a short‐lived spike and then dilution of stream NO 3 − concentrations (Schwientek et al, ). The few sensor‐based studies in urban systems generally show clockwise NO 3 − hysteresis (Carey et al, ; Feinson et al, ; Vaughan et al, ) though anticlockwise hysteresis has been reported for small storms where sources such as groundwater (Duncan, Welty, et al, ) or an initial flush from combined sewer overflow (Schwientek et al, ) can dominate. Beyond broad patterns and flow relations, high‐frequency sensors have identified unexpected sharp spikes in NO 3 − and other nutrient concentrations in agricultural and urban settings (Bende‐Michl, Verburg, & Cresswell, ; Duncan, Welty, et al, ; Wade et al, ).…”

Seasonal variability of stream water quality response to storm events captured using high-frequency and multi-parameter data

“…The seasonal variability of stream water composition has been mainly studied for base flow but much less for storm flow. Feinson et al (2016) found that seasonal effect on storm NO 3 -Q hystereses was site specific. Sherriff et al (2016) related the variations in TSS-Q storm patterns to the combination of seasonal changes in connectivity and in source availability depending on catchment permeability and seasonal land cover variability (arable vs grasslands).…”

“…Such constraints are now relaxed thanks to the development of nearly-continuous monitoring techniques (Kirchner et al, 2004;Ockenden et al, 2016;Rode et al, 2016;van Geer et al, 2016;Blaen et al, 2016;Ruhala and Zarnetske, 2017) that enable the measurements of nonhydrological parameters such as turbidity (Lawler et al, 2006), electrical conductivity (Penna et al, 2015), or concentrations of Nitrate (NO 3 ) or mineral Nitrogen (N), Dissolved or Total Organic Carbon (TOC), Total Suspended Solids (TSS), and Phosphorus (P) (Jordan et al, 2007;Halliday et al, 2013;Bowes et al, 2015;Jeong et al, 2012;Lloyd et al, 2016;Ockenden et al, 2016, Feinson et al, 2016, Sherriff et al, 2016.…”

“…With the continuity of the monitoring, the number of recorded events increased allowing for the analysis of their variability. Several investigations have been conducted using multivariate statistics to assess the role of various hydrological and meteorological variables or catchment features (size, topography, soil types, land use) (Bernal et al, 2002;McGlynn and McDonnell, 2003;Lloyd et al, 2016;Sherriff et al, 2016;Feinson et al, 2016).…”