Landscape level estimate of lands and waters impacted by road runoff in the Adirondack Park of New York State

Abstract

Road runoff is understood to be a significant stressor in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, yet the effects of this stressor are poorly understood at large spatial scales. We developed an efficient method for estimating the spatial impact of road runoff on lands and waters over large geographic areas and then applied our methodology to the 2.4 million ha Adirondack Park in New York State. We used TauDEM hydrologic modeling and a series of ESRI GIS processes to delineate surface flow downslope of paved roads, illustrating the potential movement of pollutants originating from paved roads through the USGS 10 m DEM topography. We then estimated the land and surface water areas, number of water bodies, and total stream length potentially impacted by road runoff from paved roads. We found that as much as 11% of land area, 77% of surface water area, 1/3 of the water bodies, and 52% of stream length in the Adirondack Park may be impacted by road runoff. The high degree of hydrologic association between paved roads and the lands and waters of this region strongly suggests that the environmental impacts of road runoff should be evaluated along with other regional stressors currently being studied. Being able to estimate the spatial impact of road runoff is important for designing monitoring programs that can explicitly monitor this stressor while also providing opportunities to understand the interaction of multiple environmental stressors.

Salting our freshwater lakes

“…Positive chloride trends were present in lakes with as little as 1% impervious coverage. This finding is consistent with studies of US streams that found increased chloride concentrations associated with any urban land cover (31) or roads (32,33) and substantiates findings of ecological community thresholds associated with low levels of catchment urbanization (34). Across the NALR, lakes with mean chloride concentrations >1 mg L −1 (mean value of the time series) were more likely to be associated with positive trends in chloride (Fig.…”

Long-term chloride concentrations in North American and European freshwater lakes

“…Buffer widths of 100, 200, 300, 400, 500, 1,000, and 1,500 m were chosen based on previous findings, such as those by Kelting et al 29 , who found that >70% of total variation in chloride concentrations in Adirondack Park, NY could be explained by the road density in 320- to 1,280-m buffer zones. Regalado and Kelting 30 used a 100-m buffer as an estimate of vehicular spray distance, and Read et al 31 used a 200-m buffer to understand local drivers on lake characteristics across the United States. We calculated both the percent impervious surface and total road density within buffer zones surrounding each lake as metrics for urban development.…”

Hydrologic connectivity as a framework for understanding biogeochemical flux through watersheds and along fluvial networks

“…Increased connections come in the form of tile drains and irrigation networks in agricultural systems McIsaac and Hu, 2004) and impervious surfaces in urban environments (DeWalle et al, 2000;Jones et al, 2000). These rapid transport systems readily deliver water and associated material (e.g., nutrients, pollutants, road salts) to the channel network during hydrologic events (Regalado and Kelting, 2015;Yang et al, 2011). This is an area of concern for aquatic ecosystem management in part because the large amount of inorganic nutrients (e.g., nitrogen, N, and phosphate, P) humans apply to the terrestrial environment (Bouwman et al, 2013b;Filippelli, 2008;Vitousek et al, 1997) in the form of fertilizers can be readily transported to rivers, lakes, and other receiving water bodies (Baker and Johnson, 1981;Smith et al, 2015).…”