Date of Completion

2023

Document Type

Honors College Thesis

Department

Environmental Science

Thesis Type

Honors College

First Advisor

Beverley Wemple

Second Advisor

Eric Roy

Third Advisor

Kristen Underwood

Keywords

Wetland restoration, Lake Champlain, Phosphorus pollution, Dissolved oxygen content

Abstract

Currently, the amount of phosphorus entering Lake Champlain is exceeding the total maximum daily load (TMDL) established by the US EPA, leading to harmful algal blooms and negative impacts on the local ecosystem at large (Lake Champlain Basin Program, 2021). At the same time, some former farmlands adjacent to rivers are being restored to wetlands to meet various conservation goals and the potential benefits for water quality are unclear. Dissolved oxygen content in the water can affect the ability of phosphorus to adsorb to wetland soils, and therefore can influence phosphorus capture and storage in restored wetlands. In this study, sensors were placed in five restored wetland sites to monitor water temperature, dissolved oxygen concentration, and water level at 10-minute intervals from February 1st through May 9th, 2022. These data were divided into winter, spring, and summer groups, subdivided into filling and draining conditions, visualized using dot plots, and assessed statistically. The results illustrate diverse dissolved oxygen dynamics across the five sites, ranging from largely anaerobic to entirely well oxygenated. Light- and/or temperature-dependent biological processes (photosynthesis and respiration) and residence time of water on the wetland sites likely affect the degree to which a wetland can affect the dissolved oxygen concentration of the river water that passes through.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

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