INVESTIGATING DRIVERS OF STORMWATER FLOODING IN COASTAL COMMUNITIES: A CITIZEN SCIENCE PROJECT Grant uri icon

abstract

  • Citizen scientists are increasingly being sought to collect environmental data across various temporal and spatial scales in many parts of the world. Although citizen scientists may provide an opportunity to collect various types and quantities of data, questions remain about the quality of the collected data. We propose to assess the reliability, validity and trustworthiness of data collected by citizen scientists by investigating the drivers of flooding following storm events on Bogue Banks, a barrier island off the coast of North Carolina. Coastal communities on Bogue Banks frequently experience flooding after significant precipitation events. Town managers on the island are therefore intent on employing engineering solutions to alleviate the effects of stormwater flooding events. However, any engineering solutions may be inadequate if the drivers of the flooding are not entirely understood. We hypothesize that a shallow water table on Bogue Banks quickly rises to the surface during storm events, preventing infiltration and exacerbating the storm-based flooding. Owing to the dune and swale topography on the island, the water table may be very close to the ground surface in areas with low elevations. Therefore, any recharge to the ground water system is likely to connect the groundwater to the surface water thereby increasing the runoff that the stormwater system must convey. We propose to involve citizen scientists in investigating the drivers of stormwater flooding on Bogue Banks by recruiting and training volunteers (n = 40) to (a) measure and record groundwater levels in shallow groundwater monitoring wells, and (b) document areas prone to storm water flooding in coastal communities over a six month period. Researchers will deploy several automated water loggers (n = 10) in select wells to collect independent groundwater data with which to compare data collected by citizen scientists. The citizen scientists will also be asked to identify areas prone to stormwater flooding where staff gages will be installed by the researchers to measure surface water ponding during storm events. Over the course of the project, the citizen scientists will be tasked with recording the water level and taking photos of the staff gages in flooded areas using personal cameras and smart phones. The researchers will then use image processing/machine vision software to extract quantitative data from the photos for comparison with the data recorded by the citizen scientists. The Bland-Altman method will be used to evaluate the validity of measurements by assessing agreement between measurements from citizen scientists and the automated water level loggers or recorded from the photos. The intraclass correlation coefficient and the concordance correlation coefficient will be used to assess reliability of measurements of water levels collected by citizen scientists. The data collected by the citizen scientists will be used by the researchers to develop and evaluate models that relate groundwater level and precipitation data to stormwater flooding. Such models would be useful to water professionals/engineers in sustaining environmental systems impacted by stormwater flooding through the provision of information on anticipated flooding that is based on precipitation and depth to the water table.

date/time interval

  • August 2016 - October 2017