(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2013-04)
Pruitt, Bruce A.; McKay, S. Kyle
Stream hydrology is often described based on five fundamental properties of a river’s flow regime: magnitude, frequency, duration, timing, and rate of change. Flow duration curves provide a powerful tool for integrating magnitude, frequency, and duration. Though flow duration curves have been well established at regional scales, the correspondence between in-stream flow duration and the duration of flood events onto adjacent floodplains has not been adequately explored especially at subwatershed and stream reach scales. By combining flow duration curves with channel geometry, site-specific stage duration curves and flood duration can be created. Herein, flow duration curves are used in conjunction with channel hydraulic geometry to estimate flood duration of southern Piedmont floodplains.
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2011-04)
McKay, S. Kyle; Pruitt, Bruce A.; Anderson, Christoper J.; Curran, Joanna; Del Arco Ochoa, Ana; Freeman, Mary C.; Rashleigh, Brenda; Trawick, E. Dean
Under rapid land use change, high demand on freshwater ecosystem services, and a growing appreciation for the value of functioning ecosystems, the Appalachian Piedmont has developed a multi-million dollar stream restoration industry. A comprehensive understanding of ecosystem structure, function, and process is necessary to effectively plan, design, monitor, and adaptively manage these projects. Furthermore, funding agencies must justify their restoration investments in terms of environmental benefits and ecosystem services provided by a single project as well as a suite of projects. To this end, this paper presents a Piedmont stream conceptual model mapping common system drivers and stressors to the ecosystem services they affect. We focus only on the supply of ecosystem services and not demand for those services. This paper will (1) discuss the role of conceptual modeling in stream restoration, (2) present a suite of conceptual models for Piedmont streams with increasing levels of detail, (3) briefly demonstrate application of the these models, and (4) highlight areas of need for future model development activities.