Melcher Anthony A, Horsburgh Jeffery S
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Utah Water Research Laboratory, Utah State University, 8200 Old Main Hill, Logan, UT, 84322-8200, USA.
Environ Monit Assess. 2017 Jun;189(6):285. doi: 10.1007/s10661-017-5974-7. Epub 2017 May 23.
Water quality in urban streams and stormwater systems is highly dynamic, both spatially and temporally, and can change drastically during storm events. Infrequent grab samples commonly collected for estimating pollutant loadings are insufficient to characterize water quality in many urban water systems. In situ water quality measurements are being used as surrogates for continuous pollutant load estimates; however, relatively few studies have tested the validity of surrogate indicators in urban stormwater conveyances. In this paper, we describe an observatory aimed at demonstrating the infrastructure required for surrogate monitoring in urban water systems and for capturing the dynamic behavior of stormwater-driven pollutant loads. We describe the instrumentation of multiple, autonomous water quality and quantity monitoring sites within an urban observatory. We also describe smart and adaptive sampling procedures implemented to improve data collection for developing surrogate relationships and for capturing the temporal and spatial variability of pollutant loading events in urban watersheds. Results show that the observatory is able to capture short-duration storm events within multiple catchments and, through inter-site communication, sampling efforts can be synchronized across multiple monitoring sites.
城市溪流和雨水系统中的水质在空间和时间上都具有高度动态性，并且在暴雨事件期间可能会发生急剧变化。为估算污染物负荷而通常采集的不频繁的抓取样本不足以表征许多城市水系统中的水质。现场水质测量正被用作连续污染物负荷估算的替代方法；然而，相对较少的研究测试了替代指标在城市雨水输送系统中的有效性。在本文中，我们描述了一个观测站，旨在展示城市水系统中替代监测所需的基础设施，并捕捉雨水驱动的污染物负荷的动态行为。我们描述了城市观测站内多个自主水质和水量监测站点的仪器设备。我们还描述了实施的智能和自适应采样程序，以改进数据收集，用于建立替代关系以及捕捉城市流域污染物负荷事件的时空变异性。结果表明，该观测站能够捕捉多个集水区内的短历时暴雨事件，并且通过站点间通信，可以在多个监测站点同步采样工作。
