WETLANDS AND URBANIZATION - Washington State

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WETLANDS AND URBANIZATIONImplications for the FutureFinal Report of the Puget Sound Wetlands and StormwaterManagement Research Program1997Edited by Amanda L. Azous and Richard R. HornerWashington State Department of Ecology, Olympia, WA.King County Water and Land Resources Divisionand theUniversity of Washington, Seattle, WA.

Table of ContentsSECTION 1 OVERVIEW OF THE PUGET SOUND WETLANDS AND STORMWATERMANAGEMENT RESEARCH PROGRAM, by Richard R. Horner.1SECTION 2 DESCRIPTIVE ECOLOGY OF FRESHWATER WETLANDS IN THECENTRAL PUGET SOUND BASIN.24CHAPTER 1 MORPHOLOGY AND HYDROLOGY, by Lorin E. Reinelt, Brian L.Taylor, and Richard R. Horner .26CHAPTER 2 WATER QUALITY AND SOILS, by Richard R. Horner, Sarah S. Cooke,Lorin E. Reinelt, Kenneth A. Ludwa and Nancy T. Chin.40CHAPTER 3 CHARACTERIZATION OF PUGET SOUND BASIN PALUSTRINEWETLAND VEGETATION, by Sarah S. Cooke and Amanda L. Azous .59CHAPTER 4 EMERGING MACROINVERTEBRATE DISTRIBUTION,ABUNDANCE AND HABITAT USE, by Klaus O. Richter and Robert W. Wisseman.77CHAPTER 5 AMPHIBIAN DISTRIBUTION, ABUNDANCE AND HABITAT USE, byKlaus O. Richter and Amanda L. Azous .94CHAPTER 6 BIRD DISTRIBUTION, ABUNDANCE AND HABITAT USE, by KlausO. Richter and Amanda L. Azous .109CHAPTER 7 SMALL MAMMAL DISTRIBUTION, ABUNDANCE AND HABITATUSE, by Klaus O. Richter and Amanda L. Azous .128SECTION 3 FUNCTIONAL ASPECTS OF FRESHWATER WETLANDS IN THECENTRAL PUGET SOUND BASIN.139CHAPTER 8 EFFECTS OF WATERSHED DEVELOPMENT ON HYDROLOGY, byLorin E. Reinelt and Brian L. Taylor .139CHAPTER 9 THE EFFECTS OF WATERSHED DEVELOPMENT ON WATERQUALITY AND SOILS, by Richard R. Horner, Sarah S. Cooke, Lorin E. Reinelt, KennethA. Ludwa, Nancy T. Chin and Marian Valentine .153CHAPTER 10 THE HYDROLOGIC REQUIREMENTS OF COMMON PACIFICNORTHWEST WETLAND PLANT SPECIES, by Sarah S. Cooke and Amanda L. Azous.171CHAPTER 11 EMERGENT MACROINVERTEBRATE COMMUNITIES INRELATION WATERSHED DEVELOPMENT, by Klaus O. Richter, Kenneth A. Ludwa andRobert W. Wisseman.190i

CHAPTER 12 BIRD COMMUNITIES IN RELATION TO WATERSHEDDEVELOPMENT, by Klaus O. Richter and Amanda L. Azous .199SECTION 4 MANAGEMENT OF FRESHWATER WETLANDS IN THE CENTRALPUGET SOUND BASIN.209CHAPTER 13 MANAGING WETLAND HYDROPERIOD: ISSUES ANDCONCERNS, by Amanda L. Azous, Lorin E. Reinelt and Jeff Burkey .209CHAPTER 14 WETLANDS AND STORMWATER MANAGEMENT GUIDELINES,by Richard R. Horner, Amanda A. Azous, Klaus O. Richter, Sarah S. Cooke, Lorin E. Reineltand Kern Ewing.222ii

SECTION 1 OVERVIEW OF THE PUGET SOUND WETLANDS ANDSTORMWATER MANAGEMENT RESEARCH PROGRAMby Richard R. HornerINTRODUCTIONThe Puget Sound Wetlands and Stormwater Management Research Program(PSWSMRP) was a regional research effort intended to define the impacts ofurbanization on wetlands. The wetlands chosen for the study were representative ofthose found in the Puget Sound lowlands and most likely to be impacted by urbandevelopment. The program’s goal was to employ the research results to improve themanagement of both urban wetland resources and stormwater.This overview paper begins by defining the issues facing the program at its inception. Itthen summarizes the state of knowledge on these issues existing at the beginning and inthe early stages of the program. The paper concludes by outlining the generalexperimental design of the study. Subsequent papers present the specific methodsused in the various monitoring activities.THE ISSUESThe PSWSMRP was inspired by proposals of stormwater managers and developers inthe 1980s to store urban runoff in wetlands to prevent flooding and to protect streamchannels from the erosive effects of high peak flow rates (see Athanas 1988 andMcArthur 1989 for discussion of the use of wetlands for runoff quantity control).Stormwater managers were also interested in exploiting the known ability of wetlands tocapture and to retain pollutants in stormwater, interrupting their transport to downstreamwater bodies (see Athanas 1988, Chan et al. 1981, Hickok 1980, Lakatos and McNemar1988, Livingston 1988, and McArthur 1989 for discussion of the use of wetlands forrunoff quality control).In response to proposals to use wetlands for urban runoff storage, natural resourcesmanagers argued that flood storage and pollutant trapping are only two of the numerousecological and social functions filled by wetlands. Among the other values of wetlandsare groundwater recharge and discharge; shoreline stabilization; and food chain, habitat,and other ecological support for fish, waterfowl, and other species (Office of TechnologyAssessment 1984, Zedler and Kentula 1986). Resource managers further contendedthat using wetlands for stormwater management could damage their other functions(Livingston 1988; Newton 1989; Brown 1985; Canning 1988; ABAG 1986). They notedthe general lack of information on the types and extent of impacts to wetlands used forstormwater treatment (Chan et al. 1981; Brown 1985; ABAG 1986; Canning 1988;Woodward-Clyde Consultants 1991).Several researchers have suggested that findings about the impacts of municipalwastewater treatment in wetlands are relevant to stormwater treatment in wetlands(Chan et al. 1981; Silverman 1983). In some cases, wastewater treatment in wetlandshas caused severe ecological disruptions (US EPA 1985), particularly when wastewaterdelivery is uncontrolled (Wentz 1987). A number of studies have raised concerns aboutpossible long-term toxic metal accumulations, biomagnification of toxics in food chains,0BSECTION 1 OVERVIEW OF THE PUGET SOUND WETLANDS ANDSTORMWATER MANAGEMENT RESEARCH PROGRAM1

nutrient toxicity, adverse ecological changes, public health problems, and other impactsresulting from wastewater treatment in wetlands (Benforado 1981; Guntspergen andStearns 1981; Sloey, Spangler, and Fetter 1978; Dawson 1989).Other researchers have reported negative impacts on wetland ecosystems fromwastewater treatment. Wastewater additions can lead to reduced species diversity andstability, and a shift to simpler food chains (Heliotis 1982; Brennan 1985). Wastewatertreatment in natural northern wetlands tended to promote the dominance of cattails(Typha sp.) (R. H. Kadlec 1987). In addition, animal species diversity usually declined.Discharge of wastewater to a bog and marsh wetland eliminated spruce and promotedcattails in both the bog and marsh portions (Stark and Brown 1988). Thirty years ofeffluent discharge to a peat bog caused parts of the bog to become monoculture cattailmarsh (Bevis and Kadlec 1978). Application of chlorinated wastewater to a freshwatertidal marsh reduced the diversity of annual plant species (Whigham, Simpson, and Lee1980). These findings on the effects of wastewater applications to wetlands haveprobable implications for the use of wetlands for stormwater treatment.Despite the controversy over use of natural wetlands for stormwater treatment, itbecame apparent in early discussions on the subject that wetlands in urbanizingwatersheds will inevitably be impacted by urbanization, even if there is no intention touse them for stormwater management. For example, the authors of a U.S.Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) handbook on use of freshwater wetlands forstormwater management (US EPA 1985) stated that the handbook was not intended tobe a statement of general policy favoring the use of wetlands for runoff management, butacknowledged that some 400 communities in the Southeast were already usingwetlands for this purpose. Moreover, directing urban runoff away from wetlands in aneffort to protect them can actually harm them. Such efforts could deprive wetlands ofnecessary water supplies, changing their hydrology (McArthur 1989) and threateningtheir continued existence as wetlands. In addition, where a wetland’s soil substrate issubsiding, continuous sediment inputs are necessary to preserve the wetland in itscurrent condition (Boto and Patrick 1978). Directing runoff to wetlands can help tofurnish nutrients that support wetland productivity (McArthur 1989).In its early years, the PSWSMRP focused on evaluating the feasibility of incorporatingwetlands into urban runoff management schemes. Given this objective, the researchersinitially viewed the issues more from an engineering than a natural science perspective.However, in later years, an appreciation of the fact that urban runoff reaches wetlandswhether intended or not led the researchers to shift their inquiry to more fundamentalquestions about the impact of urbanization on wetlands. Thereafter, the Program’s pointof view ultimately merged natural science and engineering considerations. Theinformation yielded by the Program will, therefore, be useful to wetland and otherscientists, as well as to stormwater managers.IMPACTS OF URBANIZATION ON WETLANDSUrbanization impacts wetlands in numerous direct and indirect ways. For example,construction reportedly impacts wetlands by causing direct habitat loss, suspendedsolids additions, hydrologic changes, and altered water quality (Darnell 1976). Indirectimpacts, including changes in hydrology, eutrophication, and sedimentation, can alterwetlands more than direct impacts, such as drainage and filling (Keddy 1983).Urbanization may affect wetlands on the landscape level, through loss of extensiveareas, at the wetland complex level, through drainage or modification of some of the0BSECTION 1 OVERVIEW OF THE PUGET SOUND WETLANDS ANDSTORMWATER MANAGEMENT RESEARCH PROGRAM2

units in a group of closely spaced wetlands, and at the level of the individual wetland,through modification or fragmentation (Weller 1988). Over the past several decades, ithas become increasingly apparent that untreated runoff is the primary threat to thecountry’s water quality. There has, consequently, been substantial research about therelationship between urbanization and runoff quality and quantity. However, thePSWSMRP focused primarily on the impacts of runoff on wetlands themselves, and noton the effects of urbanization on runoff flowing to wetlands.Runoff can alter four major wetland components: hydrology, water quality, soils, andbiological resources (US EPA 1993; Johnson and Dean 1987). Because impacts towetland components are not distinct from one another but interact (US EPA 1993), it isdifficult to distinguish between the effects of each impact or to predict the ultimatecondition of a wetland component by simply aggregating the effects of individual impacts(Hemond and Benoit 1988). Moreover, processes within wetlands interact in complexways. For example, wetland chemical, physical, and biological processes interact toinfluence the retention, transformation, and release of a large variety of substances inwetlands. Increased peak flows transport more sediment to wetlands that, in turn, mayalter the wetlands’ vegetation communities and impact animal species dependent on thevegetation.SOURCES OF IMPACTS TO WETLANDSBrief consideration of how urbanization affects runoff illustrates the potential for dramaticalteration of wetlands. Hydrologic change is the most visible impact of urbanization.Hydrology concerns the quantity, duration, rates, frequency and other properties of waterflow. It has been called the linchpin of wetland conditions (Gosselink and Turner 1978)because of its central role in maintaining specific wetland types and processes (Mitschand Gosselink 1993). Moreover, impacts on water quality and other wetlandcomponents are, to a considerable degree, a function of hydrologic changes (Leopold1968). Of all land uses, urbanization has the greatest ability to alter hydrology.Urbanization typically increases runoff peak flows and total flow volumes and damageswater quality and aesthetic values. For example, one study comparing a rural and anurban stream found that the urban stream had a more rapidly rising and fallinghydrograph, and exhibited greater bed scouring and suspended solids concentrations(Pedersen 1981).Pollutants reach wetlands mainly through runoff (PSWQA 1986; Stockdale 1991).Urbanized watersheds generate large amounts of pollutants, including eroded soil fromconstruction sites, toxic metals and petroleum wastes from roadways and industrial andcommercial areas, and nutrients and bacteria from residential areas. By volume,sediment is the most important nonpoint pollutant (Stockdale 1991). At the same timethat urbanization produces larger quantities of pollutants, it reduces water infiltrationcapacity, yielding more surface runoff. Pollutants from urban land uses are, therefore,more vulnerable to transport by surface runoff than pollutants from other land uses.Increased surface runoff combined with disturbed soils can accelerate the scouring ofsediments and the transport and deposition of sediments in wetlands (Loucks 1989;Canning 1988). Thus, there is an intimate connection between runoff pollution andhydrology.0BSECTION 1 OVERVIEW OF THE PUGET SOUND WETLANDS ANDSTORMWATER MANAGEMENT RESEARCH PROGRAM3

INFLUENCE OF WETLAND AND WATERSHED CHARACTERISTICS ON IMPACTSTO WETLANDSWatershed and wetland characteristics both influence how urbanization affectswetlands. For example, impacts of highways on wetlands are affected by such factorsas highway location and design, watershed vulnerability to erosion, wetland flushingcapacity, basin morphology, sensitivity of wetland biota, and wetland recovery capacity(Adamus and Stockwell 1983). Regional storm patterns also have a significant influenceon impacts to wetlands (US EPA 1993). Hydrologic impacts are affected by such factorsas watershed land uses; wetland to watershed areal ratios; and wetland soils,bathymetry, vegetation, and inlet and outlet conditions (Reinelt and Horner 1990; USEPA 1993). It is apparent that any assessment of the impacts of urbanization on awetland should take into account the landscape in which the wetland is located.Whigham, Chitterling, and Palmer (1988), for example, suggested that a landscapeapproach might be useful for evaluating the effect of cumulative impacts on a wetland’swater quality function. The rationale for such an approach is that most watershedscontain more than one wetland, and the influence of a particular wetland on water qualitydepends both on the types of the other wetlands present and their positions in thelandscape.IMPACTS OF URBANIZATION ON WETLANDSHydrologic ImpactsThe direct impacts of hydrologic changes on wetlands are likely to be far more dramatic,especially over the short term, than other impacts. Hydrologic changes can have largeand immediate effects on a wetland’s physical condition, including the depth, duration,and frequency of inundation of the wetland. It is fair to say that changes in hydrologycaused by urbanization can exert complete control over a wetland’s existence andcharacteristics. A SWMM model run reported by Hopkinson and Day (1980) predictedthat urbanization bordering a swamp forest would increase runoff volumes by 4.2 times.Greater surface runoff is also likely to increase velocities of inflow to wetlands, whichcan disturb wetland biota and scour wetland substrates (Stockdale 1991). Increasedamounts of stormwater runoff in wetlands can alter water level response times, depths,and duration of water detention (US EPA 1993). Reduction of watershed infiltrationcapacity is likely to cause wetland water depths to rise more rapidly following stormevents. Diminished infiltration in wetland watersheds can also reduce stream baseflowsand ground water supplies to wetlands, lengthening dry periods and impacting speciesdependent on the water column (Azous 1991).Water Quality ImpactsDirect Water Quality Impacts -- Prior to the PSWSMRP study, there was very littleinformation specifically covering the impacts of urban runoff on water quality withinwetlands (Stockdale 1991). On the other hand, there have been extensive inquiries intothe effects of urbanization on runoff and receiving water quality generally. See, e.g., USEPA 1983, summarizing the results of the Nationwide Urban Runoff Program. Much ofthis information undoubtedly is suggestive of the probable effects of urban runoff onwetland water quality. There have also been numerous "before and after" studiesevaluating the effectiveness of wetlands for treatment of municipal wastewater andurban runoff. See, e.g., ABAG 1986; Brown 1985; Chan et al. 1981; Dawson 1989;0BSECTION 1 OVERVIEW OF THE PUGET SOUND WETLANDS ANDSTORMWATER MANAGEMENT RESEARCH PROGRAM4

Franklin and Frenkel 1987; Hickok et al. 1977; Hickok 1980; Lynard et al. 1980; Martin1988; Morris et al. 1981; and Oberts and Osgood 1988. Many of these studies havefocused on the effectiveness of wetlands for water treatment rather than on the potentialfor such schemes to harm wetland water quality.Nevertheless, data on the quality of inflow to and pollutant retention by wetlands arelikely to give some indication of the effects of urban runoff on wetland water quality.Studies on the effects of wastewater and runoff on other wetland components, such asvegetation, also may provide indirect evidence of impacts on wetland water quality. See,e.g., Bevis and Kadlec 1978; Brennan 1985; Chan 1979; Ehrenfeld and Schneider 1983;Isabelle et al. 1987; Morgan and Philipp 1986; Mudrock and Capobianco 1979; Starkand Brown 1988; Tilton and Kadlec 1979; and Whigham, Simpson, and Lee 1980. Anumber of researchers have warned of the risks of degradation of wetland water qualityand other values from intentional routing of runoff through wetlands (see ABAG 1986;Brown 1985; Canning 1988; Chan et al. 1981; Galvin and Moore 1982; and Silverman1983). Subsequent papers in this monograph describe the results of water qualityimpact studies performed by the program.Hydrological Impacts on Water Quality -- Hydrology influences how water qualitychanges will impact wetlands. Hydrologic changes can make a wetland more vulnerableto pollution (Harrill 1985). Increased water depths or frequencies of flooding candistribute pollutants more widely through a wetland (Stockdale 1991). How wetlandsretain sediment is directly related to flow characteristics, including degree and pattern ofchannelization, flow velocities, and storm surges (Brown 1985). Toxic materials canaccumulate more readily in quiescent wetlands (Oberts 1977). In a study on use ofwetlands for stormwater treatment, Morris et al. (1981) found that wetlands with a sheetflow pattern retained more phosphorus, nitrogen, suspended solids, and organic carbonthan channelized systems, which were ineffective.Changes in hydroperiod can also affect nutrient transformations and availability(Hammer 1992) and the deposition and flux of organic ma

relationship between urbanization and runoff quality and quantity. However, the PSWSMRP focused primarily on the impacts of runoff on wetlands themselves, and not on the effects of urbanization on runoff flowing to wetlands. Runoff can alter four major wetland components: hydrology, water quality, soils, and

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