Project Number: 6612-61660-002-12
Project Type: Nonfunded Cooperative Agreement

Start Date: Feb 15, 2007
End Date: Feb 14, 2012

Objective:
1) Quantify concentration, load and forms of nutrients, particularly nitrogen, in an agricultural headwater stream. 2) Elucidate controls of transformations of N and redox-sensitive species in surface and subsurface environments. 3) Determine source, fate and transport of fecal indicator bacteria in an agricultural headwater stream. 4) Develop database for testing/validating models, and model fate and transport of contaminants.

Approach:
The North Unit at JPC is a 100-ha headwater watershed that offers an ideal field site for research into watershed processes. JPC has been developing it as an outside hydrologic laboratory. It is a typical Piedmont headwater watershed. Automated hydrologic (rain and runoff) monitoring and sampling equipment is currently in operation at two pastures 8 to 10 ha in size, a 2.6-ha cropped catchment, and a spring. A pond serving part of the headwater watershed is instrumented for automatic monitoring of water level and outflow. Eight monitoring wells and ten piezometers are used to measure groundwater depth on regular basis. These resources will be utilized to regularly monitor hydrologic variables and obtain water samples for analysis for nutrients and fecal indicator bacteria and determine spatial and temporal concentrations and loads. Laboratory experiments will be carried out at the cooperators NERL-ERD using environmental samples from the field site to document conditions under which processes proceed and quantify rates at which these processes function. These data will be subjected to thermodynamic and kinetic analyses. The underlying mathematical relationships will be established so that they can be incorporated into models.