Question 1: Describe Those Areas in New Hope Area That Fall Into Each Class

Jen Winston

GEOG 591

Exercise 1

Question 1: Describe those areas in New Hope area that fall into each class.

As can be seen in the first map, most of the stream reaches with upstream drainage areas that are heavily urbanized are in the north central and northeast portion of the watershed. Unsurprisingly, this largely coincides with streams that are within or downstream from catchment areas that are at least partially urbanized.

As can be seen in the second map, the stream reaches that have local contributing catchment areas that exceed 20% urban are largely located in the same portions of the watershed. However, there are some reaches upstream of the cumulative urban stream reaches that fall within the urban, but not the cumulative urban categories. Similarly, some of the cumulative urban stream reaches extend further downstream than the urban stream reaches.

The third map identifies those stream reaches that have local contributing catchment areas that exceed 20% urban but that do not have upstream drainage areas that are heavily urbanized. As alluded to above, these are a bit further south within the watershed. This makes sense, as the most heavily urbanized parts of the watershed are in the far northeast cornerCumurban_nourban_stream is connected to Jordan Lake. In conclusion, New Hope area, one of the main drainage areas of Jordan Lake can be characterized as urbanized area when considering the whole upstream area of New Hope creek (-1.0).

Question 2: Comparing step 1 results, which urban areas correspond to high stream discharge areas? What does this mean in terms of water quantity and quality problems of not only the watershed itself but also Jordan Lake?

It appears that nearly all of the stream reaches that have local contributing catchment areas that exceed 20% urban discharge into high stream discharge areas. This means that the runoff from urban areas is moving into the watershed and into Jordan Lake at faster velocities than the runoff from other areas. This is likely to translate into water quality problems for the watershed and the lake because any contaminants in the water will not have time to be filtered by the soils in the watershed, but instead will flow directly into Jordan Lake.

(24/25)