Scott A. Sheeder

Water Quality Summaries for National Park Service Units within the Eastern Rivers and Mountains Network

The National Park Service Vital Signs Monitoring Plan provides guidelines for park networks with respect to the Clean Water Act. Each Vital Sign Network should identify and discuss the status of each water that is quality impaired, and should address how each water will be monitored. Accordingly, the primary goal of this research is to review and synthesize multiple sources of water chemistry and hydrologic information to aid in the development of the Vital Signs monitoring strategy for the Eastern Rivers and Mountains Network. More specifically with respect to aquatic resources, synthesis of regulatory information (303d, etc.), designations (coldwater fishery, special protection waters, etc.), water quantity and quality information, and watershed characteristics (landcover, etc.) will provide interested parties with the information required to prepare a monitoring strategy that will protect the ecological integrity of the parks in the ERMN.

National Park Service management policies state, "Natural systems in the national park system, and the human influences upon them, will be monitored to detect change. The Service will use the results of monitoring and research to understand the detected change and to develop appropriate management actions." To aid in the fulfillment of these objectives, a baseline of water-quality information for all key water bodies within two NPS units: Johnstown Flood National Memorial and Allegheny Portage National Historic Site, are being developed. Key water bodies are those that are essential to the cultural, historical, or natural resource management themes of the unit or that provide habitats for threatened or endangered plants and animals. The basic chemical and biological characteristics of waterbodies at these two NPS properties are being analyzed.

The Little Juniata River originates in the town of Altoona, PA. From this point the river flows downstream through small communities, and agricultural and forest lands before entering joining the Frankstown Branch to form the Juniata River. While the Little Juniata is of high quality throughout much of its course, the upper reaches are listed on the 303(d) list for impariments due to urban runoff and municipal point sources. These impairments are being analyzed using a combination of watershed and in-stream modeling procedures and field assessment techniques. Results of this analysis will be used to design an appropriate stream rehabilitation strategy.

Hydrologic modeling systems have been developed to assess environmental conditions at two generally different spatial and temporal scales. Watershed-scale modeling systems have been developed to quantify the condition of an entire river basin as measured by the export of nutrient and sediment loads at the outlet. These loads are typically reported as a load (kilograms) over some summary period (monthly, annually). In contrast, in-stream water quality models have generally been constructed to evaluate pollutant concentration under a specific flow regime (i.e. the lowest seven day flow over a ten year period, referred to as 7Q10) at one or multiple points along a comparatively short section of the aquatic system. With respect to the TMDL process, watershed models are commonly used to assess conditions in streams predominantly impaired by non-point source pollution while in-stream water quality models are applied in point source dominated systems. In Pennsylvania, many water bodies are impaired due to a combination of point and diffuse sources of pollution. To aid in the investigation of these situations a simple, first-order decay, in-stream water chemistry model is being incorporated into the Generalized Watershed Loading Functions (GWLF) model. Merging these two hydrologic modeling frameworks will allow for the analysis of both point and non-point source pollution loads in complex watersheds.