When rain falls, it picks up pollution from streets, farms and other manmade features as it winds toward the ocean.
When rain falls, it picks up pollution from streets, farms and other manmade features as it winds toward the ocean.
In the Broad Run watershed of Loudoun County, Virginia, runoff travels through an increasingly urbanized landscape before reaching the Potomac River and the Chesapeake Bay. In 2000, fewer than 170,000 people lived in the county. More than 400,000 people live there now.
The impact of that urbanization is the focus of a new study led by Nasrin Alamdari, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering, with colleagues from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Ohio State University and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). The research was published in the Journal of Cleaner Production.
The work is the first study in the Chesapeake Bay watershed to evaluate the combined effects of changes to climate and land use on runoff and pollutants in a rapidly developing watershed that is a tributary to the bay.
Read more at: Florida State University
