NSF Award
2345649
Tropical systems such as hurricanes, have the potential to generate extremely high winds and can also generate heavy and substantial rainfall for several days, over large spatial scales. When these storms pass over agricultural landscapes in karst, which are carbonate rock environments, they can have profound impacts on the quality and quantity of the ground water that recharges the karst aquifers. This is significant because karst are unique environments where easier to dissolve bedrock creates characteristic porosity that can respond to changes in surface water dynamics rapidly. In karst agricultural landscapes, where nutrients are leached and mobilized by heavy flooding from hurricane size storms, their impact on groundwater quality can be profound. However, the impact of extreme storms, such as hurricane Idalia, on nutrient and agricultural solute mobilization in karst aquifers has not received much attention. Therefore, it is unclear what immediate, short, and long-term effects of these tropical storms are on the quality of groundwater and receiving surface water bodies. The researchers will investigate mobilization of polluting nutrients in a karst agricultural system in northern Florida. Outcomes will contribute to improve water quality management and inform hydrologic and solute transport modelling that support the restoration of agriculturally impaired water systems. <br/><br/>The researchers will monitor nutrient and solute concentrations and quantify groundwater recharge from Hurricane Idalia in the karstic Floridan Aquifer System (FAS) in northern Florida. They will collect water samples at different spring basins impacted by the Hurricane and at the terminus of the Suwannee River, at the Gulf of Mexico, to monitor the extent of nutrient loadings to the Gulf. In addition to their measurements, they will use legacy data to quantify excess nutrient and solute loading compared to average conditions. These investigations will inform answers to questions about the impacts of tropical systems on nutrient and solute loading to receiving water bodies. The project outcomes will be shared with Suwannee River Water Management District and also in the education of undergraduate students in hydrology at the University of South Florida.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
