The Beargrass Creek watershed in Louisville, Kentucky is an urbanized watershed that has experienced decreased water quality and biotic integrity from increased stormwater volume due to impervious surfaces. After discussions with community stakeholders and utilities our group proposed a designed- experiment approach to accomplish multiple goals: 1) Increase needed headwater stream discharge monitoring through the use of low- cost open source sensors; 2) Restore headwater streams hydrology through green infrastructure implementation in headwater streams, thus reducing stormwater impacts by increased water retention; 3) Implement headwater stream monitoring programs; 4) Involve/ educate watershed groups, citizen scientists, and local students through an ‘adopt a stream gage program’; 5) Use collected data to evaluate the effectiveness of green infrastructure strategies by comparing discharge pre and post implementation. All headwater stream discharge data would be made available to the public.
Results/Conclusions
Using this designed- experiment approach, compared to only green- infrastructure implementation, we are able to answer questions regarding green infrastructure's effectiveness by comparing pre and post discharge measurements, whilst collecting valuable headwater discharge data.