Comparison of sampling strategies to monitor water quality in Prairie Watersheds
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Date
2014-07-18
Authors
Ross, Cody A.
Ali, Genevieve
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Abstract
Most water-quality monitoring programs are characterized by low-frequency sampling with variable intervals (Neal et al., 2012). In Manitoba, Conservation and Water Stewardship collects water from streams and creeks approximately four times a year with the intention of capturing seasonal water-quality fluctuations. This type of sampling is however unable to capture changes in water-quality attributes that take place at short timescales. Recent research suggests that significant fluctuations in water-quality occurr across a wide range of timescales (e.g., Kirchner, 2003; Feng et al., 2004; Kirchner et al., 2004; Halliday et al., 2012). Particularly, the diffuse transfer of nutrients in watersheds, particularly phosphorus, has been shown to occur on an hourly scale (Halliday et al., 2012). Additionally, in the Prairies, both snowmelt on frozen ground and intense thunderstorms are short-lived and tend to result in hydrological responses in a matter of hours rather than days or weeks, thus challenging the representativeness of water samples collected outside of these critical hydrological events (Zhao and Gray, 1997).
The general objective of this project was to compare sampling strategies for water-quality monitoring in Prairie watersheds. The comparison was guided by three specific research questions regarding:
1. Water quality parameter sensitivity
• Do specific water quality parameters range in sensitivity to hydrologic processes typical of Prairie landscapes?
2.
Sampling time
• Does sampling time impact the hydrochemical information obtained from water-quality analysis?
3.
Data representativeness
• Does an increase in sampling interval length necessarily result in the reduction of data representativeness?
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Keywords
2014, prairie, Catfish Creek Watershed, sampling strategy, water quality