Narragansett Bay Environmental Monitoring

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Narragansett Bay Environmental Monitoring

• Li-Ling Yang
• Roger Williams University

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Research Focus

• What are seasonal fluctuations of nitrate in
  Narragansett Bay and the processes that may
  affect these fluctuations?

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Context

• Brief History of Narragansett Bay
• 1901- The Providence Sewage Treatment System is
  put into operation.
• 1910- Providence's sewage treatment plant begins
  to run into problems due to inadequacies of the
  chemical precipitation process and the continuing
  growth of the City.
• 1970's- In the absence of a continuous
  maintenance program, the condition of the Field
  Point plant declines to the point where nearly 65
  million gallons of untreated or partially treated
  sewage flow into Rhode Island waters everyday

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Context (Contd)

• Brief History of Narragansett Bay (Contd)
• 1973- The US EPA orders the City of Providence to
  address the chronic pollution problem associated
  with the aged Field Point WWTF and CSO
  discharges, which violate the Clean Water Act.
• 1979- Governor Garrahy creates a Governor's
  Sewerage Facilities Task Force to address the EPA
  mandates.
• 1999-2001- RIDEM reviews and approves the NBC
  Combined Sewer Overflow Abatement Plan, a
  3-phase, 20-year comprehensive project to end CSO
  discharges into Upper Narragansett Bay. 

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Context

• Significance of Monitoring Narragansett Bay
  Nutrient Concentrations and Water quality
• Tidal wetlands are dynamic ecosystems of high
  biological productivity that provide essential
  habitats for fish, birds, amphibians and many
  species of invertebrates. However, they are
  among some of the ecosystems most affected by
  human activities.
• Narragansett Bay, a bay and estuary on the north
  side of Rhode Island Sound which forms New
  England's largest estuary, is one such example.
• Successful restoration and preservation efforts
  therefore require a careful evaluation of
  historic patterns of change along with
  continuous, long-term monitoring programs.

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Method

• Define a problem to be investigated
• Get familiar and describe the study area by
  visiting Narragansett Bay Commission website
  http//www.narrabay.com/
• Hypothesis what processes may affect nitrate
  concentrations and transport in Narragansett Bay
• Locate the six monitoring stations in
  Narragansett Bay on the map by visiting the
  website of National Estuarine Research Reserve
  Systems Centralized Data Management Office
• http//cdmo.baruch.sc.edu/QueryPages/viewstations
  .cfm?Site_IDnar

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Method (Contd)

• Get familiar with the archived and near-real time
  water and nutrient data from the different
  stations
• Plot nitrate, water depth, salinity and
  temperature measured at one of the stations
  during 2006 for the following dates January
  9-14, March 9-14, June 9-14 and September 9-14.
• Examine the graphs and see if there is any
  rhythmic or consistent pattern. Pay attention to
  the differences in the trends observed between
  the different months.

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Data Summary A Sample
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Data Summary

• Temperature and nitrate charts display reverse
  trends.
• Salinity and Nitrate charts display somewhat
  similar trends.
• No clear relationship is shown between the depth
  and nitrate concentration.

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Conclusion

• Certain relationships could be found between
  nitrate concentrations and some water data in
  Narragansett Bay.

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Implications

• Based on the findings, predict and draw a map of
  how nitrate enters and circulates through the
  Narragansett Bay.
• Use the data set available in the website of
  National Estuarine Research Reserve Systems to
  support or refute your predictions. Redraw the
  map according to your findings.

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Educator Implications

• Walk students through the data cleaning process.
  Different data sets might have different formats,
  time ranges, etc.