Calculator to Estimate Annual Infiltration Performance of Roadside Swales
Publication: Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 23, Issue 6
Abstract
Roadside swales or drainage ditches are low-impact development (LID) practices for stormwater treatment and control, and there is a need to quantify their infiltration performance for design and planning purposes. A roadside swale calculator has been developed where only the main design parameters that have a significant impact on the runoff volume output are required, in addition to the rainfall distribution of the study site. The inputs of the calculator are the saturated hydraulic conductivity of the soil, width of the swale, width of the road, and location’s rainfall frequency or volume percentile. The calculator and the ancillary information provided can be used to determine: (1) the total percentage of annual volume infiltrated, (2) the percentage of events entirely captured by a roadside swale in a year, and (3) the percentage of road runoff infiltrated by a roadside swale with a specific swale width-to-road width ratio and saturated hydraulic conductivity for a given rainfall depth event.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
Acknowledgments
The writers are grateful to the Minnesota Department of Transportation and Minnesota Local Road Research Board for funding this research under Contract No. 99008-97, with Barbara Loida as Technical Liaison. J. L. Nieber’s effort on this project was partially supported by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Hatch/Multistate project 12-059.
References
Abida, H., and Sabourin, J. F. (2006). “Grass swale-perforated pipe systems for stormwater management.” J. Irrig. Drain. Eng., 55–63.
Ahearn, D., and Tveten, R. (2008). “Legacy LID: Stormwater treatment in unimproved embankments along highway shoulders in Western Washington.” Int. Low Impact Development Conf., ASCE, Reston, VA.
Ahmed, F., Gulliver, J. S., and Nieber, J. L. (2015). “Field infiltration measurements in grassed roadside drainage ditches: Spatial and temporal variability.” J. Hydrol., 530(11), 604–611.
Ahmed, F., Nestingen, R., Nieber, J. L., Gulliver, J. S., and Hozalski, R. M. (2014). “A modified Philip-Dunne infiltrometer for measuring the field-saturated hydraulic conductivity of surface soil.” Vadose Zone J., 13(10).
Akan, A. O. (2014). “Hydrologic modeling of urban vegetative filter strips.” J. Hydrol. Eng., 188–195.
Asleson, B. C., Nestingen, R. S., Gulliver, J. S., Hozalski, R. M., and Nieber, J. L. (2009). “Performance assessment of rain gardens.” J. Am. Water Resour. Assoc., 45(4), 1019–1031.
Barrett, M. E., Walsh, P. M., Malina, J. F., and Charbeneau, R. B. (1998). “Performance of vegetative controls for treating highway runoff.” J. Environ. Eng., 1121–1128.
Caltrans. (2003). “Final report: Roadside vegetated treatment sites (RVTS) study.”, Caltrans Division of Environmental Analysis, Sacramento, CA.
Campolongo, F., and Saltelli, A. (1997). “Sensitivity analysis of an environmental model: An application of different analysis methods.” Reliab. Eng. Syst. Saf., 57(1), 49–69.
Chu, S. T. (1978). “Infiltration during unsteady rain.” Water Resour. Res., 14(3), 461–466.
Davis, A. P., Stagge, J. H., Jamil, E., and Kim, H. (2012). “Hydraulic performance of grass swales for managing highway runoff.” Water Res., 46(20), 6775–6786.
Deletic, A. (2001). “Modelling of water and sediment transport over grassed areas.” J. Hydrol., 248(1–4), 168–182.
Dosskey, M. G., Helmers, M. J., and Eisenhauer, D. E. (2011). “A design aid for sizing filter strips using buffer area ratio.” J. Soil Water Conserv., 66(1), 29–39.
Efron, B., and Tibshirani, R. (1993). An introduction to the bootstrap, Chapman and Hall, New York.
Emmons and Olivier Resources. (2005). “Issue paper ‘B’, precipitation frequency analysis and use.” Minnesota Stormwater Manual Sub-Committee, Stillwater, MN.
Flanagan, D. C., Foster, G. R., Neibling, W. H., and Burt, J. P. (1989). “Simplified equations for filter strip design.” Trans. Am. Soc. Agricul. Biol. Eng., 32(6), 2001–2007.
Garcia-Serrana, M., Gulliver, J. S., and Nieber, J. L. (2016). “Roadside swale calculator.” ⟨http://stormwater.safl.umn.edu/resources/roadside-swale-calculator⟩ (Jan. 10, 2017).
Garcia-Serrana, M., Gulliver, J. S., and Nieber, J. L. (2017a). “Infiltration capacity of roadside filter strips with non-uniform overland flow.” J. Hydrol., 545(2), 451–462.
Garcia-Serrana, M., Gulliver, J. S., and Nieber, J. L. (2017b). “Non-uniform overland flow-infiltration model for roadside swales.” J. Hydrol., 552(7), 586–599.
Green, W. H., and Ampt, G. (1911). “Studies of soil physics. I: The flow of air and water through soils.” J. Agric. Sci., 4(1), 1–24.
Herman, J. D., Kollat, J. B., Reed, P. M., and Wagener, T. (2013). “Technical note: Method of Morris effectively reduces the computational demands of global sensitivity analysis for distributed watershed models.” Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 17(7), 2893–2903.
Iman, R. L., and Conover, W. (1982). “A distribution-free approach to inducing rank correlation among input variables.” Commun. Stat. Simul. Comput., 11(3), 311–334.
Iman, R. L., and Helton, J. C. (1988). “An investigation of uncertainty and sensitivity analysis techniques for computer models.” Risk Anal., 8(1), 71–90.
Kreeb, L. B., and McCuen, R. H. (2003). “Hydrologic efficiency and design sensitivity of bioretention facilities.” Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD.
Lancaster, C. D. (2005). “A low impact development method for mitigating highway stormwater runoff: Using natural roadside environments for metals retention and infiltration.” Masters thesis, Washington State Univ., Pullman, WA.
Li, R. M., Stevens, M. A., and Simons, D. B. (1976). “Solutions to green-ampt infiltration equation.” J. Irrig. Drain. Div., 102(IR2), 239–248.
MATLAB [Computer software]. MathWorks, Natick, MA.
Mein, R. G., and Larson, C. L. (1973). “Modeling infiltration during a steady rain.” Water Resour. Res., 9(2), 384–394.
Minton, G. R. (2005). Stormwater treatment biological, chemical, and engineering principals, Sheridan Books, Seattle.
Morris, M. D. (1991). “Factorial sampling plans for preliminary computational experiments.” Technometrics, 33(2), 161–174.
Muñoz-Carpena, R., Garey, F. G., and Sabbagh, G. J. (2010). “Parameter importance and uncertainty in predicting runo pesticide reduction with filter strips.” J. Environ. Qual., 39(2), 630–641.
Muñoz-Carpena, R., Parsons, J. E., and Gilliam, J. W. (1999). “Modeling overland flow and sediment transport in vegetative filter strips: Model development and application.” J. Hydrol., 214(1–4), 111–129.
Muñoz-Carpena, R., Zajac, Z., and Kuo, Y. M. (2007). “Global sensitivity and uncertainty analysis of the water quality model VFSMOD-W.” Trans. Am. Soc. Agric. Biol. Eng., 50(5), 1719–1732.
Olson, N. C., Gulliver, J. S., Nieber, J. L., and Kayhanian, M. (2013). “Remediation to improve infiltration into compact soils.” J. Environ. Manage., 117, 85–95.
Philip, J. R. (1957). “The theory of infiltration. 1: The infiltration equation and its solution.” Soil Sci., 83(5), 345–358.
Pianosi, F., et al. (2016). “Sensitivity analysis of environmental models: A systematic review with practical workflow.” Environ. Modell. Software, 79(5), 214–232.
Pianosi, F., Sarrazin, F., and Wagener, T. (2015). “A MATLAB toolbox for global sensitivity analysis.” Environ. Modell. Software, 70, 80–85.
Pianosi, F., and Wagener, T. (2015). “A simple and efficient method for global sensitivity analysis based on cumulative distribution functions.” Environ. Modell. Software, 67, 1–11.
Saltelli, A., et al. (2008). Global sensitivity analysis: The primer, Wiley, Chichester, U.K.
Sarrazin, F., Pianosi, F., and Wagener, T. (2016). “Global sensitivity analysis of environmental models: Convergence and validation.” Environ. Modell. Software, 79(5), 135–152.
Singh, V. P. (2001). “Kinematic wave modelling in water resources: A historical perspective.” J. Hydrol. Process., 15(4), 671–706.
Singh, V. P. (2002). “Is hydrology kinematic?” Hydrol. Process., 16(3), 667–716.
St. Anthony Falls Laboratory Stormwater Research. (2018). “Stormwater management, assessment, and maintenance research.“ ⟨http://stormwater.safl.umn.edu/resources/roadside-swale-calculator⟩ (Feb. 23, 2018).
Stomph, T. J., De Ridder, N., Steenhuis, T. S., and Van De Giesen, N. C. (2002). “Scale effects of Hortonian overland flow and rainfall-runoff dynamics: Laboratory validation of a process-based model.” Earth Surf. Processes Landforms, 27(8), 847–855.
U.S. Department of Agriculture. (1980). “CREAMS: A field scale model for chemicals, runoff, and erosion from agricultural management systems.”, Washington, DC.
U.S. Department of Agriculture. (1986). “Urban hydrology for small watersheds.”, Washington, DC.
USEPA (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency). (2009). “Technical guidance on implementing the stormwater runoff requirements for federal projects under Section 438 of the Energy Independence and Security Act.”, Washington, DC.
Weiss, P. T., and Gulliver, J. S. (2015). “Effective saturated hydraulic conductivity of an infiltration-based stormwater control measure.” J. Sustainable Water Built Env., 1(4).
Winston, R., and Hunt, W. (2016). “Characterizing runoff from roads: Particle size distributions, nutrients, and gross solids.” J. Environ. Eng., 04016074.
Woolhiser, D. A., and Liggett, J. A. (1967). “Unsteady one-dimensional flow over a plane—The rising hydrograph” Water Resour. Res., 3, 753–771.
Yonge, D. (2000). “Contaminant detention in highway grass filter strips.”, Washington State Transportation Commission, Olympia, WA.
Young, B. (2006). “Mapping the rainfall event for stormwater quality control.”, Univ. of Kansas, Lawrence, KS.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 23 • Issue 6 • June 2018
Copyright
©2018 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jun 6, 2017
Accepted: Nov 7, 2017
Published online: Mar 26, 2018
Published in print: Jun 1, 2018
Discussion open until: Aug 26, 2018
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.