Date of Award

8-9-2014

Document Type

Open Access Thesis

Department

Environmental Health Sciences

First Advisor

Allan James

Abstract

Urbanization and increasing population are primary sources of water degradation, increased flood risks, and channel morphological instability. Impervious surface areas increase with urbanization and result in decreased infiltration capactities, increased stormwater runoff, and more rapid stormwater delivery, which in turn increase flood magnitudes and frequencies. Low impact development (LID) can provide volumetric detention storage to reduce flooding. This thesis reviews types of LID, their attributes and limitations, and examines how effectively they can abstract storm runoff volumes, reduce peak discharge, and delay stormwater arrival times for relatively frequent storm events in the Rocky Branch Watershed (RBW).

The RBW is 50% impervious, with some of the sub-watersheds as high as 73% impervious. The Gervais gage sub-basin, located in the headwaters of the Rocky Branch Creek, has an estimated peak discharge at the Gervais USGS gage site of 255 cfs. LID implementation provides stormwater volumetric abstractions by mimicking the preexisting natural landscape e.g., stimulating infiltration. LID volumetric abstractions within the Gervais gage sub-basin can potentially completely reduce peak discharge to zero cfs for the relatively frequent storm events; however, the purpose of this study is to mitigate the overbank flooding rather than eliminate natural flows.

Rights

© 2014, Brett Sexton

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