Presenter: Lauren McPhillips, Assistant Professor, Civil & Environmental Engineering and Agricultural and Biological Engineering
Urbanization is increasing across the United States and the world and we are struggling to meet the needs of our growing population without compromising environmental integrity. In recent years there have been increased efforts to develop land-scapes using Best Management Practices (BMPs) or Low Impact Development (LID), with the intention to enhance resilience to flooding and mitigate degradation to aquatic resources. I will discuss some work in upstate New York at the site level investigating function of different stormwater management strategies including detention basins and roadside ditches. I'll discuss how design elements like hydrologic regime and soil media composition can impact nutrient cycling and water quality benefits. Moving up in scale, I will discuss efforts to understand implementation of stormwater management strategies over time and in space across several US cities. Finally, I will mention some initial efforts related to planning for and monitoring of stormwater management strategies locally here in PA.