Hydrologically Sensitive Areas, Land Use Controls, and Protection of Healthy Watersheds
Publication: Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 140, Issue 7
Abstract
Land use changes driven by urban development impose immediate threats to watershed health and sustainability of water resources. Municipalities can implement various land use controls to direct future urban development that has long lasting impacts on water resources. Hydrologically sensitive areas (HSAs) are the areas in landscapes that most actively contribute to runoff generation. This study establishes the connection between land use controls at a municipal level and protection of healthy watersheds through the concept of HSAs and assesses the effectiveness of five land use controls in protecting HSAs from future urban development in three selected municipalities in New Jersey. The five land use controls are steep slope ordinance, stream corridor ordinance, open space and farmland preservation, and wetlands protection. The results indicate the five land use controls protect 44–64% of municipal HSAs, which are only about 22–26% of the total area protected from urban development by those land use controls. The stream corridor ordinance is the most areally extensive, but wetlands protection is the most effective land use control in protecting HSAs in the three municipalities. These land use controls have significant potential to protect HSAs if additional protection criteria are incorporated into their implementation. The assessment provides practical guidance to land use planners and water resource managers who manage landscapes for water resource protection and environmental quality improvement.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
Acknowledgments
The views expressed in the paper are authors’ individual perspectives and not necessarily represent the positions of their affiliated institutions or agencies. The funding supports for the research are provided by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s National Center for Environmental Research (Grant Number RD-83336301-0) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (Project Number NJW-2011-03976).
References
Agnew, L. J., Walter, M. T., Lembo, A., Gérard-Marchant, P., and Steenhuis, T. S. (2006). “Identifying hydrologically sensitive areas: Bridging science and application.” J. Environ. Manage., 78(1), 64–76.
Alberti, M., et al. (2007). “The impact of urban patterns on aquatic ecosystems: An empirical analysis in Puget Lowland sub-basins.” Landsc. Urban Plann., 80(4), 345–361.
Arnold, C. L. J., and Gibbons, C. J. (1996). “Impervious surface coverage: The emergence of a key environmental indicator.” J. Am. Plann. Assoc., 62(2), 243–258.
Association of New Jersey Environmental Commissions (ANJEC). (1992). Freshwater wetlands protection in New Jersey: A manual for local officials, 2nd Ed., Mendham, NJ.
Beven, K. (1997). “TOPMODEL: A critique.” Hydrol. Process., 11(9), 1069–1085.
Buchanan, B. P., Falbo, K., Schneider, R. L., Easton, Z. M., and Walter, M. T. (2013). “Hydrological impact of roadside ditches in an agricultural watershed in Central New York: Implications for non-point source pollutant transport.” Hydrol. Process., 27(17), 2422–2437.
Davis, J. S., Nelson, A. C., and Dueker, K. J. (1994). “The new ‘burbs’: The exurbs and their implications for planning policy.” J. Am. Plann. Assoc., 60(1), 45–59.
de Alwis, D. A., Easton, Z. M., Dahlke, H. E., Philpot, W. D., and Steenhuis, T. S. (2007). “Unsupervised classification of saturated areas using a time series of remotely sensed images.” Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 11(5), 1609–1620.
Dunne, T., and Leopold, L. B. (1978). Water in environmental planning, W. H. Freeman and Company, New York, 818.
Easton, Z. M., Gérard-Marchant, P., Walter, M. T., Petrovic, A. M., and Steenhuis, T. S. (2007). “Hydrologic assessment of an urban variable source watershed in the Northeast United States.” Water Resour. Res., 43(3).
Gburek, W. D., and Sharpley, A. N. (1998). “Hydrologic controls on phosphorus loss from upland agricultural watersheds.” J. Environ. Qual., 27(2), 267–277.
Gomi, T., Sidle, R. C., and Richardson, J. S. (2002). “Understanding processes and downstream linkages of headwater systems.” BioScience, 52(10), 905–916.
Gupta, R. S. (1995). Hydrology and hydraulic systems, Waveland Press, Chicago.
Hasse, J., and Lathrop, R. (2010). Changing landscapes in the Garden State: Urban growth and open space loss in NJ 1986 thru 2007, Geospatial Research Lab., Dept. of Geography, Rowan Univ., Glassboro, NJ.
Heathwaite, L., Quinn, P. F., and Hewett, C. (2005). “Modelling and managing critical source areas of diffuse pollution from agricultural land using flow connectivity simulation.” J. Hydrol., 304(1–4), 446–461.
Heraty, M. (1993). Riparian buffer programs: A guide to developing and implementing a riparian buffer program as an urban best management practice, Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, USEPA Office of Wetlands, Oceans and Watersheds, Washington, DC.
Herron, N. F., and Hairsine, P. B. (1998). “A scheme for evaluating the effectiveness of Riparian Zones in reducing overland flow to streams.” Aust. J. Soil Res., 36(4), 683–698.
Hewlett, J. D. (1982). Principles of forest hydrology, Univ. of Georgia Press, Athens, GA.
Hewlett, J. D., and Hibbert, A. R. (1967). “Factors affecting the response of small watersheds to precipitation in humid areas.” Forest hydrology, W. E. Sopper and H. W. Lull, eds., Pergamon Press, Oxford, 275–290.
Kaushal, S. S., and Belt, K. T. (2012). “The urban watershed continuum: Evolving spatial and temporal dimensions.” Urban Ecosyst., 15(2), 409–435.
Kennen, J. G., Kauffman, L. J., Ayers, M. A., Wolock, D. M., and Colarullo, S. J. (2008). “Use of an integrated flow model to estimate ecologically relevant hydrologic characteristics at stream biomonitoring sites.” Ecol. Model., 211(1–2), 57–76.
Kennen, J. G., Murray, M. R., and Beaulieu, K. M. (2010). “Determining hydrologic factors that influence stream macroinvertebrate assemblages in the Northeastern U.S.” Ecohydrology, 3(1), 88–106.
Lyon, S. W., Gérard-Marcant, P., Walter, M. T., and Steenhuis, T. S. (2004). “Using a topographic index to distribute variable source area runoff predicted with the SCS-curve number equation.” Hydrol. Process., 18(15), 2757–2771.
Lyon, S. W., McHale, M. R., Walter, M. T., and Steenhuis, T. S. (2006). “The impact of runoff generation mechanisms on the location of critical source areas.” J. Am. Water Resour. Assoc., 42(3), 793–804.
Merwin, I. A., Stiles, W. C., and Vanes, H. M. (1994). “Orchard groundcover management impacts on soil physical-properties.” J. Am. Soc. Hort. Sci., 119(2), 216–222.
Nelson, A. C. (1992). “Characterizing exurbia.” J. Plann. Lit., 6(4), 350–368.
New Jersey Dept. of Environmental Protection (NJDEP). (2010b). Land use land cover classification system (2007): NJDEP modified Anderson system, Trenton, NJ, 〈http://www.state.nj.us/dep/gis/digidownload/metadata/lulc07/anderson2007.html〉 (Mar. 1, 2014).
New Jersey Dept. of Environmental Protection (NJDEP). (2010a). “Surface water quality standards.” N.J.A.C. 7:9B, Trenton, NJ, 〈http://www.nj.gov/dep/rules/rules/njac7_9b.pdf〉 (Jan. 4, 2010).
Qiu, Z. (2003). “A VSA-based strategy for placing conservation buffers in agricultural watersheds.” Environ. Manage., 32(3), 299–311.
Qiu, Z. (2009). “Identifying critical source areas in watersheds for conservation buffer panning and riparian restoration.” Environ. Manage., 44(5), 968–980.
Qiu, Z., Hall, C., and Hale, K. (2009). “Evaluation of cost-effectiveness of conservation buffer placement strategies in a river basin.” J. Soil Water Conserv., 64(5), 293–302.
Qiu, Z., Walter, M. T., and Hall, C. (2007). “Managing variable source pollution in agricultural watersheds.” J. Soil Water Conserv., 62(3), 115–122.
Schueler, T. R., Fraley-McNeal, L., and Cappiella, K. (2009). “Is impervious cover still important? Review of recent research.” J. Hydrol. Eng., 309–315.
Steenhuis, T. S., and Muck, R. E. (1988). “Preferred movement of nonadsorbed chemicals on wet, shallow, sloping, soils.” J. Environ. Qual., 17(3), 376–384.
U.S. Dept. of Agriculture (USDA). (2009). Summary report: 2007 national resources inventory, Natural Resources Conservation Service, Washington, DC, and Center for Survey Statistics and Methodology, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, 〈http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/technical/NRI/2007/2007_NRI_Summary.pdf〉, 123.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA). (2010). Identifying and protecting healthy watersheds: A technical guide (draft), EPA Office of Wetlands, Oceans, and Watersheds, Washington, DC.
Walter, M. T., et al. (2003). “A simple estimation of the prevalence of Hortonian flow in New York city’s watersheds.” J. Hydrol. Eng., 214–218.
Walter, M. T., Brooks, E. S., Walter, M. F., Steenhuis, T. S., Scott, C. A., and Boll, J. (2001). “Evaluation of soluble phosphorus loading from manure-applied fields under various spreading strategies.” J. Soil Water Conserv., 56(4), 329–335.
Walter, M. T., Steenhuis, T. S., Mehta, V. K., Thongs, D., Zion, M., and Schneiderman, E. (2002). “A refined conceptualization of TOPMODEL for shallow-subsurface flows.” Hydrol. Process., 16(10), 2041–2046.
Walter, M. T., Walter, M. F., Brooks, E. S., Steenhuis, T. S., Boll, J., and Weiler, K. (2000). “Hydrologically sensitive areas: Variable source area hydrology implications for water quality risk assessment.” J. Soil Water Conserv., 55(3), 277–284.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 140 • Issue 7 • July 2014
Copyright
© 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Sep 22, 2012
Accepted: May 8, 2013
Published online: May 11, 2013
Published in print: Jul 1, 2014
Discussion open until: Sep 4, 2014
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.