Watershed Management

This course focused on many things relating to watersheds, including delineating and characterizing watersheds of various shapes and sizes, identifying aspects of a watershed that impact its hydrology and water quality, and utilizing various types of monitoring equipment to collect data and monitor various components of a watershed, including hydrologic variables, water quality parameters, biological health of communities, and stream health. The course also included 2 field trips– one to an agricultural area and one to an urban area in the city of Charlottesville VA to assess stormwater best management practices (BMPs), which was so much fun to talk to actual government workers about what they do and the financial and environmental problems they deal with.

Over the duration of this course, we also set up an entire rainwater harvesting system at the Longwood EEC building in Lancer Park, including 7 rainwater collection barrels at 7 different downspouts on the building. Our goal was to collect preliminary data for what will later be a study on what the best filtration technique is for rainwater harvesting systems. We split into groups to monitor different aspects of water quality at sampling events after it rains. My group measured and monitored TSS, or Total Suspended Solids. Linked below is a report and literature review we wrote on the study. It was so cool to be able to say that I have installed a rainwater harvesting system and participated in conducting water quality research.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/18u_q4I43P09zsuJhsyGOxGDbew6aUNK05Is5xMRaobY/edit?usp=sharing