Regional Drinking Water Quality Monitoring Program

Arizona Statue University (ASU) has been working with regional water providers (Salt River Project (SRP), Central Arizona Project (CAP)) and metropolitan Phoenix cities since 1998 on algae-related issues affecting drinking water supplies, treatment, and distribution. The results have improved the understanding of taste and odor (T&O) occurrence, control, and treatment, improved the understanding of dissolved organic and algae dynamics, and initiated a forum to discuss and address regional water quality issues. The monitoring benefits local Water Treatment Plants (WTPs) by optimizing ongoing operations (i.e., reducing operating costs), improving the quality of municipal water for consumers, facilitating long-term water quality planning, and providing information on potentially future-regulated compounds. ASU has been monitoring water quality in terminal reservoirs (Lake Pleasant, Saguaro Lake, and Bartlett Lake) continuously from 1998 to the present for algae-related constituents (taste and odors, and more recently cyanotoxins), nutrients, and disinfection by-product precursors (i.e., total and dissolved organic carbon and organic nitrogen). Additional monitoring has been conducted in the SRP and CAP canal systems and in water treatment plants in Phoenix, Tempe and Peoria. During this work the Valley has been in a prolonged drought and recently one above average wet year, and this data provides important baseline data for development of new or expanded WTPs and management of existing WTPs in the future. The current work has improved the understanding of T&O sources and treatment, but additional research and monitoring into the future is necessary.

Reservoir monitoring is conducted once per month at Bartlett Lake, Saguaro Lake, and Lake Pleasant, and quarterly at Roosevelt, Apache, and Canyon Lakes. Samples are depth integrated in the epilimnion and hypolimnion. CAP will collect samples from Lake Pleasant. SRP will collect samples from Bartlett, Saguaro, Roosevelt, Apache, and Canyon Lakes (at no cost to ASU or cities). Field measurements for temperature with depth will also be collected. River samples (Salt River below Saguaro Lake @ Blue Point Bridge and Verde River at the Beeline Highway) will be collected once per month. Samples will be analyzed for carbon (TOC/DOC), total nitrogen, total phosphorous, arsenic, conductance and T&O compounds (MIB, Geosmin, Cyclocitrol). The purpose of the lake sampling is to provide early warning information on potentially large changes in water quality – due to algae production, lake destratification, and forest fire or other runoff events. Additional monthly sampling will be coordinated with USGS (Salt River above Roosevelt, Verde River at Tangle) and CAP (Lake Havasu).

Canal monitoring is conducted once per month (January through June) and twice per month as needed during periods of higher T&O production (i.e., July-December). Field measurements for temperature and pH will be made. Sampling will include the CAP, Arizona, and South canals at multiple locations. Monthly samples will be analyzed for carbon (TOC/DOC), total nitrogen, arsenic, conductance, and T&O compounds (MIB, Geosmin, Cyclocitrol). Bi-weekly samples will be analyzed only for T&O compounds. The purpose of the canal sampling is to identify hot-spots of T&O production and to make recommendations to the cities/SRP/CAP to perform some type of treatment (brushing, copper, etc.). Additional canal sampling will be scheduled to further identify canal hot spots or to provide more frequent process control information.

WTP raw and finished water is collected once per month (January through June) and twice per month as needed during periods of higher T&O production (e.g., July-December). WTP sampling will be conducted at two Tempe WTPs, one Peoria WTP, Glendale WTPs and other selected WTPs. Monthly samples will be analyzed for carbon (TOC/DOC), total nitrogen, arsenic, conductance, and T&O compounds (MIB, Geosmin, Cyclocitrol). Bi-weekly samples will be analyzed only for T&O compounds. The purpose of the WTP sampling is to provide continued evaluation of water quality produced at the WTPs.

Datasets

• Regional drinking water quality monitoring program: long-term monitoring of water quality in select canals, reservoirs, and treatment plants of the greater Phoenix metropolitan area drinking water system, ongoing since 1998

Save the date! CAP will be holding its 19th Annual All Scientists Meeting and Poster Symposium on January 13th at ASU’s SkySong facility in Scottsdale. Diane Pataki, Professor, Department of Biology at the University of Utah, will be the keynote speaker. Dan Childers will give us an update on CAP LTER and there will be presentations by the leaders of the research teams.

The program is available here

Welcome to Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability Micro Sites. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

The Ecological Society of America’s SEEDS initiative, which aims to increase diversity in the field of ecology, is recruiting undergraduate students from underrepresented groups for the SPUR fellowship program. This program places students at ecological research sites across the United States. Several LTER sites are part of the SPUR fellowship program this year: Central Arizona-Phoenix (CAP) LTER, Harvard Forest LTER, Baltimore Ecosystem Study LTER, Cedar Creek LTER, and Kellogg Biological Station LTER. An additional site is the Llado River Field Station in Texas.

Students accepted as SPUR fellows will engage in a research project at one of these research sites under the mentorship of a faculty member, senior graduate student, or post-doctoral fellow. SPUR fellows will receive funding for travel and housing as well as a subsistence stipend.

To view the application requirements and apply, interested undergraduate students should visit the SPUR fellowship page on the SEEDS website. Applications are due January 15, 2016.

A group of high school girls in Mesa Public Schools spent their fall break learning to code in R, a computer language used for statistical analysis. This workshop was the brainchild of Jessica Guo, a CAP graduate student, who is passionate about coding and determined to bring more girls into STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). A graduate of Mesa Public Schools herself, Jessica is part of the ASU/NASA Space Grant program.

In the workshop that Jessica led, girls accessed large, publicly-available datasets and used coding to analyze the data and to create graphs, which they presented to their peers. Among the datasets that the girls used were ones created by LTER Network sites.

Light pollution is a critical ecological issue in the city, which has gotten little attention. CAP is co-sponsoring the International Dark Sky Association’s (IDA) annual meeting in Scottsdale, November 14-15, which is focusing on “Impacts of Artificial Night Lighting on Fish and Wildlife Resources and the Mitigating Role of Emerging Lighting Technologies.” IDA advocates for the reduction of light pollution and promotes the use of lighting products that have lesser impacts on biota and the environment.

A recent ASU News article on the role of trees and lawns in urban heat island featured CAP scientists Ben Ruddell, Ariane Middel, and Nancy Selover. Shade provided by trees has been long acknowledged as providing some relief from high daytime temperatures in the Valley of the Sun. The team of ASU scientists has worked to quantify the effects of different types of shade on urban microclimates and how much shade is needed to reduce daytime temperatures. This is very useful information for homeowners, designers, architects and others wanting to know just how much shade they need.

Attention all Post-docs! Looking for a LTER fellowship? Apply for a two year postdoctoral fellowship today with The National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC) in collaboration with the National Science Foundation’s Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) program beginning August 1st, 2016.
-Prescreening application deadline is October 26, 2015, 5 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time (EDT).
-Collaborating Mentor application deadline: October 26, 2015, 5 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time (EDT).
-Collaborating Mentor selection and commitment deadline: November 16, 2015, 5 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (EST).
-Fellowship application deadline: December 7, 2015, 5 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (EST).
Click here to find more information on SESYNC-LTER and the fellowship criteria.

Anthony Brazel, Emeritus Professor in the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning, and V. Kerry Smith, Emeritus Regents’ Professor and Emeritus Professor of Economics, WP Carey School of Economics, were recently honored for their contributions to urban socioecological research in the CAP LTER research program.

Dr. Brazel, an urban climatologist, has been the driving force behind research on the Phoenix urban heat island, collaborating across disciplines with faculty and students at Arizona State University as well as with colleagues at the Baltimore Ecosystem Study, CAP’s sister urban LTER site. His research has led to Phoenix being the most studied urban heat island in the United States, and his former students now staff numerous climate-related agencies.

Dr. Smith is a renowned  environmental economist whose work with CAP has focused on the economic valuation of environmental amenities and ecosystem services, contributing important new perspectives to CAP’s research program. He has also collaborated on the Phoenix Area Social Survey and has been an important mentor to students interested in entering the economics field.

Spring brings a lot of things, including thesis and dissertation defenses. The following have either successfully completed or will be completing their defenses this spring:

• Thomas Bleasdale defended his dissertation, “Gardens of justice: Food-based social movement in south and west Phoenix,” on April 16^th (Sharon Harlan, Chair; Bob Bolin and Kevin McHugh, committee members)
• Hannah Heavenrich will defend her thesis, “Soil biogeochemical consequences of a ‘sustainable’ urban grassland to shrubland transition,” on May 13^th (Sharon Hall, Chair; Kelli Larson and Diane Pataki, committee members)
• Jeffrey Ackley will defend his dissertation, “Rich lizards: How affluence, land cover, and the urban heat island effect influence desert reptiles persisting in an urban landscape,” on May 15^th (Jianguo Wu and Brian Sullivan, co-chairs; Soe Myint, Dale Denardo, and Michael Angilletta, committee members)

• CAP REU student, Jessica Jia, successfully defended her Honor’s Thesis, “Quantifying the trade-off between landscape vegetation height, surface temperature, and water consumption in single-family residential houses for a desert city,” this spring (Kelli Larson and Elizabeth Wentz, co-chairs).

Congratulations to all of these students!