Bushkill Creek Watershed Automated Instrumentation

Bushkill Creek Watershed
Automated Instrumentation
Lafayette College, Easton, PA

Contributors:

Dr. David Brandes, Civil & Environmental Engineering

Dr. Dru Germanoski, Geology & EnvironmentalGeosciences

Students:
Justin Hoffmann '02, Jeremy Lucas '03, Jim Mangarillo '03, Civil& Environmental Engineering
Charlie Springer '00 and Nate Hawk '02, Geology& Environmental Geosciences

Overview

Automated data acquisition equipment is necessary to obtain high resolution field data useful for research. Funding from the National Science Foundation and PADEP Growing Greener program is being used to develop a comprehensive network of automated stream, groundwater, and weather monitoring stations in the watershed. The resulting data will be used to support a program of research and education in watershed hydrology and water quality.

Until this project, there were no streamflow measurements available on the watershed. This data is a basic requirement in determining the water budget (that is, the distribution of rainfall into streamflow, evaporation, or groundwater storage), storm and drought response of the stream, and the possible effects of pollutant discharges to the stream. Consequently, the first step in this project (March 2000) was to install an automated discharge gaging and water quality station on an existing dam near the outlet of the stream(at 3rd Street in Easton). Secondly, an automated weather station was installed on campus in summer 2000 to monitor local weather conditions. Since then we have installed additional gages throughout the watershed (see the Hydrologic Information System page).

Each streamgage includes an electronic pressure transducer used to determine measure water depth. In addition, specific conductivity, temperature, and turbidity measurements monitor water quality. Conductivity gives a measure of the amount of dissolved ions (salts) in solution, temperature is a general water quality indicator related to dissolved oxygen content, and turbidity gives a measure of suspended material. A datalogger is used to record the data every 10 minutes, which are periodically downloaded to a laptop computer.

The spring hydrograph and water quality data from the outlet gage are shown below - these data will be used to develop and calibrate computer models of rainfall-runoff processes. This is the first time flow data have been available in the watershed.

Streamflow, temperature, and conductivity data for spring 2000 collected at the outlet of Bushkill Creek Watershed.
Precip data (in red) are from ABE airport.

Graph of TDS (estimated from conductivity data) and streamflow for two contrasting events in Dec 2000. The Dec 14 event was an ice storm for which the roads were heavily salted. The Dec 17 event was a large rainfall on mostly frozen ground.

Installation of Gage 1

High flow conditions following Hurricane Floyd, Sept 17, 1999 (prior to gage installation)
Note high backwater conditions from the Delaware River - the one disadvantage of our gage location.

Back to Front