Delineating High-Resolution Urban Drainage Systems for Stormwater Management in the Mystic River Watershed
Characterizing hydrology and pollutant inputs in urban watersheds requires the consideration of both the natural and manmade environment. The Mystic River Basin is a highly urbanized, 76-square-mile watershed north of Boston, Massachusetts, that includes several underserved communities. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) developed a watershed-scale web application of the Mystic River Basin to inform stormwater management. This is the first watershed-scale effort to represent urban hydrology by incorporating manmade infrastructure, such as storm drains and culverts, into the USGS’ StreamStats application. Methods developed in the study can be applied to any urban area, including underserved communities in urban settings.
The water quality of the Mystic River and its tributaries is negatively affected by pollutants from urban development and industrial land use in this densely-populated area. Using the web application developed by USGS, communities can accurately define hydrology and predict pollutant inputs through the urban system including natural and altered flow, stormwater drainage into catch basins, and flow through pipe networks. Including infrastructure in watershed-scale tools is critical to understanding urban hydrology and supporting decision makers.
The USGS’ StreamStats program is a publicly-accessible web application that typically relies on natural, unaltered flows for accurate stream basin delineations. Because subsurface drainage networks are inaccessible for defining topographic drainage areas in StreamStats, the USGS worked with municipalities of the Mystic River Basin to allow users to define high-resolution urban drainage areas that include drains, pipes, and culverts. The resulting application combined elevation and hydrography data with municipal data to map a watershed-scale stormwater drainage network. This basin-wide network includes approximately 36,000 catch basins, 62,000 pipes and 5,000 stream segments.
The Mystic River Basin StreamStats application displays the stormwater drainage network of pipes and inlets. Users can click on a point in the watershed and the application will determine the contributing drainage areas to that point that account for both topography and the urban stormwater network. Additionally, users can calculate pollutant loading export rates based on land use. The available land-use/land-cover basin characteristics were developed to represent aggregated land uses for which pollutant load export rates are defined in the 2016 Massachusetts Small Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System (MS4) General Permit.
Characterizing hydrology and pollutant inputs in urban watersheds requires the consideration of both the natural and manmade environment. The Mystic River Basin is a highly urbanized, 76-square-mile watershed north of Boston, Massachusetts, that includes several underserved communities. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) developed a watershed-scale web application of the Mystic River Basin to inform stormwater management. This is the first watershed-scale effort to represent urban hydrology by incorporating manmade infrastructure, such as storm drains and culverts, into the USGS’ StreamStats application. Methods developed in the study can be applied to any urban area, including underserved communities in urban settings.
The water quality of the Mystic River and its tributaries is negatively affected by pollutants from urban development and industrial land use in this densely-populated area. Using the web application developed by USGS, communities can accurately define hydrology and predict pollutant inputs through the urban system including natural and altered flow, stormwater drainage into catch basins, and flow through pipe networks. Including infrastructure in watershed-scale tools is critical to understanding urban hydrology and supporting decision makers.
The USGS’ StreamStats program is a publicly-accessible web application that typically relies on natural, unaltered flows for accurate stream basin delineations. Because subsurface drainage networks are inaccessible for defining topographic drainage areas in StreamStats, the USGS worked with municipalities of the Mystic River Basin to allow users to define high-resolution urban drainage areas that include drains, pipes, and culverts. The resulting application combined elevation and hydrography data with municipal data to map a watershed-scale stormwater drainage network. This basin-wide network includes approximately 36,000 catch basins, 62,000 pipes and 5,000 stream segments.
The Mystic River Basin StreamStats application displays the stormwater drainage network of pipes and inlets. Users can click on a point in the watershed and the application will determine the contributing drainage areas to that point that account for both topography and the urban stormwater network. Additionally, users can calculate pollutant loading export rates based on land use. The available land-use/land-cover basin characteristics were developed to represent aggregated land uses for which pollutant load export rates are defined in the 2016 Massachusetts Small Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System (MS4) General Permit.