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2020 Mohawk Watershed Symposium - Abstract Volume
Abstract and Figures
The 12th Mohawk Watershed Symposium was cancelled due to Covid-19. This abstract volume, which was essentially complete at the time of cancellation, is the record of the meeting that did not happen. Over the years this Symposium has taken on an important role in unifying and galvanizing stakeholders in the watershed. A coalition of invested stakeholders allows us as a group to tackle important issues that affect water quality, recreation opportunities, flood mitigation, and other basin-wide issues. By all measures, 2019 was a big year in the watershed.
The historic 2019 Halloween Storm caused significant damage in the upper part of the watershed, especially in the West Canada Creek, East Canada Creek, and a number of smaller tributaries. Aid from FEMA for individual assistance was denied and this has caused considerable distress for those with damaged homes.
A major effort this year was the work of the Reimagine the Canal task force. This task force took on a number of issues related to the entire Erie Canal, which was divided into Western, Central, and Mohawk sections. Issues included water for irrigation, invasive species, flooding, and ice jamming. The Mohawk was perhaps the most complicated because the Canal and the main stem of the Mohawk need to co-exist despite change in the watershed. The task force effort included the Mohawk Flood Assessment aimed at evaluating benefits from a number of flood mitigation strategies along the length of the River. It also acted on a separate report on ice jamming in the Schenectady Pool in front of the Vischer Ferry Dam, at Lock E7.
The Vischer Ferry Dam (VFD) on the lower Mohawk has been under the spotlight for years – in part for its suspected role in causing ice jams that then can flood the Stockade of Schenectady. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) license is coming up, so NYPA, the dam owner, started the renewal process last year for both the VFD and the Crescent Dam, just downstream. The FERC review process can force significant environmental review of the ways in which dams integrate into the local ecosystem and relate to river hydrology.
Meanwhile, the City of Schenectady continues formulating its ambitious plan to use FEMA funds to mitigate flooding in Stockade. The plan moving forward may involve elevating or perhaps moving homes in a managed retreat. This plan is intertwined with mitigation efforts for ice jamming at the VFD because jamming causes back-up flooding that can affect the Stockade.
Water quality remains a central issue in the watershed and a growing number of stakeholders are involved in this effort. For a healthy and vibrant ecosystem we need clean water. The health of our waters can only be assessed from hundreds of measurements taken across the watershed by students, educators, and dedicated professionals from SUNY Cobleskill, SUNY Polytechnic in Utica, Union College, Cornell, Schoharie River Center, Riverkeeper, DEC, USGS, and others who have been addressing water quality through research. These critical measurements include quantifying the distribution, source, and fate of environmental contaminants including fecal bacterial, microplastics, nitrogen, phosphorus, and others.
Stewardship and education are a critical piece of effective watershed management. Stakeholder meetings such as the Mohawk Watershed Symposium, and local water advocates (including West Canada Creek Alliance, Riverkeeper, and Dam Concerned Citizens) play a key role in identifying problems, educating the public, and effecting change where it is most needed. Youth education programs centered on water quality and ecosystem health, such as the Environmental Study Teams at both the Schoharie River Center and Fort Plain High School, insure that all our waterways pass into the hands of the next generation of active, engaged, and knowledgeable stewards.
The meeting this year would have featured approximately 30 presentations covering a wide range of topics. We were delighted to see so many familiar names and we welcome those new to the Mohawk Watershed Symposium. We will be back as soon as possible.
Abstracts include:
Reimagining the Erie Canal / Mohawk River as flood risk mitigation resource
K. Avery, B. Juza .
S. 6893 Flood Buyout Bill
M. Buttenschon, J. Griffo
Detection, quantification and identification of enteric bacteria in the upper Hudson River – a pilot study
J. Cohen, N. Geier, K. Songao, O. Spencer, A. LoBue, W. Quidort
Algal community dynamics in the lower Mohawk River
A. Conine, M. Schnore
Relating microbial diversity to nitrogen cycling in the Mohawk River and diverse freshwater ecosystems
J. Damashek, A. Dautovic, C. Garrett
Stockade resilience: adaptive preservation on the Mohawk River, Schenectady, New York
K. Diotte
Increasing fecal indicator bacteria (FIB) counts in the Mohawk River and elsewhere in the Hudson watershed since 2015
J. Epstein, B. Brabetz, A. Juhl, C. Knudsen, N. Law, J. Lipscomb, G. O’Mullan, S. Pillitteri, C. Rodak, D. Shapley
Notes from a Watershed – The Mohawk River
J. Garver
The Halloween flood of 2019 in the Mohawk River watershed
C. Gazoorian
Streamflow capture along the Mohawk River: determining transit time to municipal well-field
J. Gehring, M. Stahl, D. Gillikin, A. Verheyden-Gillikin
Eastward expansion of invasive Round Goby towards the Hudson River
S. George, B. Baldigo, C. Rees, M. Bartron
Pervious concrete offers a prospective solution to contaminated runoff threatening water quality
A. Ghaly
The swinging environmental pendulum: how policies and attitudes shift with changes in US administration
A. Ghaly
eDNA methods help reveal barriers to American Eel (Anguilla rostrate) migration into the Mohawk River, New York
H. Green, M. Wilder, H. Miraly, C. Nack, K. Limburg
Naturalizing the Mohawk River: navigating the political challenges of change
S. Gruskin
“Plastic Pollution: Nurdles and the Coleco Connection” Utilizing digital storytelling by youth to educate the public about emergent environmental concerns in their community
K. Hensley, F. Staley, C. Cherizard, A. Francisco, L. English, D. Carlson, P. Munson, J. McKeeby, S. Hadam, E. McHale
Numerical modeling of breakup ice dynamics in the lower Mohawk River
F. Huang, H. Shen, J. Garver
A five-year series of snap-shots: Data and observations of Enterococci and Escherichia coli levels from a Mohawk River water quality project as it enters Year Six of a longitudinal study
N. Law, B. Brabetz, K. Boulet, A. Giacinto, C. Rodak, J. Epstein, J. Lipscomb, D. Shapley
A flood insurance analysis of Schenectady’s Stockade district
W. Nechamen
Potential opportunities for tributary reconnections within the Erie Canal and Mohawk River
A. Peck, K. France, R. Shirer
Exploring baseline water quality conditions in the Mohawk River: Observations of fecal indicator bacteria during the Fall of 2018 and Summer of 2019
C. Rodak, E. Haddad
Mohawk River watershed modeling in SWAT
M. Schnore, A. Conine
Microplastic pollution in Mohawk River tributaries: likely sources and potential implications for the Mohawk Watershed
J. Smith, E. Caruso, N. Wright
Is there a Corps of Engineer/State Flood Control role in the Mohawk Basin?
R. Wege
Climate related discoveries, 62 years of daily CO2 measurements, and the Keeling Curve
F. Wicks
Enterococci levels in the Hans Groot Kill and Mohawk River, Schenectady, NY
E. Willard-Bauer, J. Smith, J. Garver, D. Goldman, B. Newcomer
Incorporating ice jam flooding into regulatory base flood elevations at the historic Schenectady Stockade
J. Woidt, J. Rocks
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An ice jam of historic proportions formed in January 2018 on the lower Mohawk River. The ice jam was 27 km long, and the toe was lodged in the Rexford Knolls, a chronic jam point. The Knolls are a unique section of the river where late-glacial capture moved the channel to a bedrock incised gorge, and today the channel is narrow and deep with a prominent constriction. Along the length of the jam at least four other jam points also affected flow and progress of ice movement. The toe of the jam failed during high water at 21-22 February caused by rain and then exceptionally warm temperatures (21°C, 70°F). A significant release of water moved downstream, and water levels dropped 1.8 m (6 ft) in a few hours, which relieved flooding of homes in the Stockade of Schenectady.
Conclusions:
Our investigation indicates that fly ash and coal ash are nearly ubiquitous in the surface waters of the Mohawk River and Erie Canal. The presence of fly ash and coal ash in many of the samples indicates that the legacy of coal-burning in the Mohawk River Watershed remains with us, likely both as spoils piles exploited as a resource and as particulates incorporated into soil over time and released to the river through bank erosion and surface runoff. The relatively high concentration of fly ash and coal ash in samples bracketing the former power station located upstream of Lock 10 suggests that byproducts of coal-burning were initially deposited close to the source, but are being remobilized in the course of both typical river flow and flood events. It is possible that erosion associated with Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee in 2011 exposed sources of fly ash and coal ash particles that are being progressively introduced into the river, especially between Amsterdam and Rotterdam Junction where Lock 10 and Lock 9, respectively, experienced significant structural damage and catastrophic channel-widening. The potential environmental impacts related to leaching of heavy metals from fly ash and coal ash have been studied elsewhere. Further investigation of the chemical stability of fly ash and coal ash in the Mohawk River may be warranted.
Conclusions:
Microplastic particles are pervasive in surface waters of the lower Mohawk River. Both abundance (particles/sample and particles/m2) and proportions of particle type in each sample vary non-systematically, however, along the sampled length of the river. Notwithstanding the inherent potential for variability associated with any sampling campaign that occurs over multiple days, the variations in abundance suggest that microplastics are being sequestered within the river, perhaps in wetland areas, and diluted to some extent at the pooled eastern end of the river. Variations in proportions of plastic types likely reflect the influence of local inputs, such as surface runoff, combined sewer overflows, and WWTP effluent, which deliver pulses or streams of particles with characteristic features (e.g., Styrofoam particles in Utica, blue microbeads in Schenectady). In some cases, high abundance of microplastic particles corresponds closely to proximity to WWTP outflow, but not in all cases. Teasing apart the variables that combine to produce the microplastic load at any given location in the lower Mohawk River is the primary goal of using microplastic pollution to better understand the pollution load in the river.
Water extraction for anthropogenic use has become a major flux in the hydrological cycle. With increasing demand for water and challenges supplying it in the face of climate change, there is a pressing need to better understand connections between human populations, climate, water extraction, water use, and its impacts. To understand these connections, we collected and analyzed stable isotopic ratios of more than 800 urban tap water samples in a series of semiannual water surveys (spring and fall, 2013 to 2015) across the Salt Lake Valley (SLV) of northern Utah. Consistent with previous work, we found that mean tap water had a lower 2H and 18O concentration than local precipitation, highlighting the importance of nearby montane winter precipitation as source water for the region. However, we observed strong and structured spatiotemporal variation in tap water isotopic compositions across the region which we attribute to complex distribution systems, varying water management practices and multiple sources used across the valley. Water from different sources was not used uniformly throughout the area and we identified significant correlation between water source and demographic parameters including population and income. Isotopic mass balance indicated significant inter- and intra-annual variability in water losses within the distribution network due to evaporation from surface water resources supplying the SLV. Our results demonstrate the effectiveness of isotopes as an indicator of water management strategies and climate impacts within regional urban water systems, with potential utility for monitoring, regulation, forensic and a range of water resource research. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
Environmental heterogeneity is ubiquitous, but environmental systems are often analyzed as if they were homogeneous instead, resulting in aggregation errors that are rarely explored and almost never quantified. Here I use sim-ple benchmark tests to explore this general problem in one specific context: the use of seasonal cycles in chemical or isotopic tracers (such as Cl, 18O, or 2H) to estimate timescales of storage in catchments. Timescales of catchment storage are typically quantified by the mean transit time,meaning the average time that elapses between parcels of water entering as precipitation and leaving again as streamflow.Longer mean transit times imply greater damping of seasonal tracer cycles. Thus, the amplitudes of tracer cycles in precipitation and streamflow are commonly used to calculate catchment mean transit times. Here I show that these calculations will typically be wrong by several hundred percent, when applied to catchments with realistic degrees of spatial heterogeneity. This aggregation bias arises from the strong nonlinearity in the relationship between tracer cycle amplitude and mean travel time. I propose an alternative storage metric, the young water fraction in streamflow, defined as the fraction of runoff with transit times of less than roughly 0.2 years. I show that this young water fraction (not to be confused with event-based “new water” in hydrograph separations) is accurately predicted by seasonal tracer cycles within a precision of a few percent, across the entire range of mean transit times from almost zero to almost infinity. Importantly, this rel-tionship is also virtually free from aggregation error. That is,seasonal tracer cycles also accurately predict the young water fraction in runoff from highly heterogeneous mixtures of subcatchments with strongly contrasting transit-time distributions. Thus, although tracer cycle amplitudes yield biased and unreliable estimates of catchment mean travel times in heterogeneous catchments, they can be used to reliably estimate the fraction of young water in runoff.
Aggregation in environmental systems – Part 1: Seasonal tracer cycles quantify young water fractions, but not mean transit times, in spatially heterogeneous catchments. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/291086732_Aggregation_in_environmental_systems_-_Part_1_Seasonal_tracer_cycles_quantify_young_water_fractions_but_not_mean_transit_times_in_spatially_heterogeneous_catchments [accessed Jan 19, 2016].
Urban streams commonly express degraded physical, chemical, and biological conditions that have been collectively termed the urban stream syndrome. The description of the syndrome highlights the broad similarities among these streams relative to their less-impaired counterparts. Awareness of these commonalities has fostered rapid improvements in the management of urban stormwater for the protection of downstream watercourses, but the focus on the similarities among urban streams has obscured meaningful differences among them. Key drivers of stream responses to urbanization can vary greatly among climatological and physiographic regions of the globe, and the differences can be manifested in individual stream channels even through the homogenizing veneer of urban development. We provide examples of differences in natural hydrologic and geologic settings (within similar regions) that can result in different mechanisms of stream ecosystem response to urbanization and, as such, should lead to different management approaches. The idea that all urban streams can be cured using the same treatment is simplistic, but overemphasizing the tremendous differences among natural (or human-altered) systems also can paralyze management. Thoughtful integration of work that recognizes the commonalities of the urban stream syndrome across the globe has benefitted urban stream management. Now we call for a more nuanced understanDing of the regional, subregional, and local attributes of any given urban stream and its watershed to advance the physical, chemical, and ecological recovery of these systems.
A mathematical analysis is developed to describe the evolution and characteristics of river ice jams. The principal components of the analytical model are the static force equilibrium of the fragmented ice cover; the unsteady continuity equations for the frozen and liquid water; the nonuniform unsteady momentum relation for the flow; and relations in which compressive and shear strengths of the floating fragmented ice cover vary linearly with local jam thickness. A numerical method is outlined for solving the equations for the case in which the jam has evolved to the point that it propagates upstream with constant velocity (quasi-steady conditions), and a complete set of example results is presented for a specific flow and channel. Estimates are derived for the time required for the jam to evolve to the quasi-steady state and for the velocity of the jam front during the evolutionary stage.