The use of low-impact development (LID) storm-water management facilities will grow with gains in understanding of their performance based on field tests. An innovative flow measurement system was designed and tested for monitoring of an interconnected system of underdrained LID components forming a site management strategy. Pressure transducers housed in stilling wells provided in-line flow measurements in pipes connecting the LID components. A combination of laboratory experiments, field measurements, and computer simulations was used to calibrate the flow measurement system to translate depth measurements to estimates of flow. The monitoring system is well suited for high-resolution temporal monitoring and provides important information for evaluating LID component performance. The measurement system is limited to open-channel flow, but calculations indicate that surcharge conditions are expected to occur at the case study site only under conditions more extreme than the 100-year storm event.

Vertical-flow constructed wetlands were investigated for ammonium and nitrate removal from synthetic wastewater in bench-scale wetland columns. Total ammonia and nitrate were measured as wastewater and fed through planted and unplanted columns over three 4-week phases: downflow, upflow, and downflow-upflow in series. Mass balance results showed that downflow columns removed >90% of influent ammonium, regardless of vegetation. Unplanted downflow columns removed 15% of nitrate and 14% of total nitrogen. Planted downflow columns removed only 1% of nitrate and total nitrogen. Unplanted upflow columns removed 55% of ammonium, 50% nitrate, and 31% of total nitrogen, whereas planted upflow columns removed 59, 60, and 40% of nitrogen species, respectively. For downflow-upflow columns in series, unplanted columns removed 79% of the ammonium, 1% of nitrate, and 4% of total nitrogen. In-series planted columns removed 93, 62, and 59%, respectively. These results suggest that downflow wetlands may be more appr...

Remote sensing techniques can be used in the characterization of landscapes for assessing groundwater resources. Digital terrain analysis has been used broadly for study subsurface geology, especially analysis of topographic features and their relationship to tectonic and structural phenomena. Structural discontinuities such as faults are expressed in a DEM as a linear feature, representing the intersection of a fracture plane and land surface. Besides, lineaments, faults originate morphotectonic structures such as depressions, asymmetric slopes across valleys and ridgelines axis. There are morphological evidences of tectonics that are represented by a point feature that may have a spatial continuity due to the same origin. This could happen especially on soft rocks that do not easily record deformations. Geophysical surveys are especially appropriate for confirming the presence, extent, and orientation of geological lineaments, as well as for detecting the presence of water in the fractures. The use of 2D resistivity profiling is widespread as a tool to identify aquifer layers in sedimentary rocks and volcanic terrains and also to detect water bearing fractures The VLF method has been applied successfully to map the resistivity contrast in fractured zones. Based on the RS lineament mapping, complemented with the digital morphological analysis and geophysics, fracturing patterns were characterized for the Plateaus region of the Quito Aquifer System (QAS). The aquifer is located in the Central Inter-Andean Valley of Ecuador, a region affected by active volcanism and faulting and characterized by basins filled with series of volcanic deposits and primary and reworked sedimentary rocks. By combining our results with those from previous geological studies and hydrogeological data, the impact of topography and fracturing on the hydrogeology of the plateaus was assessed.