Impacts of Municipal Wastewater Irrigation to the Water Balance in a Forested Water Reuse System
In the southeastern U.S.A., coastal communities face various challenges from population growth, climate change, water resource use, and wastewater treatment capacity. In North Carolina, fifty-one municipalities irrigate forests with municipal wastewater to absorb nutrients, reduce direct effluent di...
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| Format: | Dissertation |
| Language: | English |
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ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
01-01-2019
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| Online Access: | Get full text |
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| Summary: | In the southeastern U.S.A., coastal communities face various challenges from population growth, climate change, water resource use, and wastewater treatment capacity. In North Carolina, fifty-one municipalities irrigate forests with municipal wastewater to absorb nutrients, reduce direct effluent discharge to surface waters, and recharge groundwater. Most facilities have land-applied wastewater for several decades, but there are no quantitative studies on the hydrologic impacts of this practice. This study developed a water balance for the largest forest land-application system in North Carolina which is designed to treat 34,068 cubic meters of wastewater per day with irrigation onto 9.4 square kilometers of a mixed-hardwood, loblolly pine forest. Twenty years of simulated evapotranspiration (ET) and water table depth (WTD), using a distributed hydrological model (MIKE SHE) and measured precipitation and irrigation data were used to calculate drainage (runoff and lateral flow) across the site. Irrigation impacted ET and WTD to the greatest extent for forest areas surrounded by irrigation fields but caused little change in annual ET. Forest water use was relatively unchanged by irrigation, and annual watershed drainage increased proportionally to irrigation input. The drivers of on-site drainage were rainfall and the amount of irrigation. In wet years, ET and groundwater levels remained constant while drainage increased in response to rainfall and irrigation. Extreme rainfall events, such as Hurricane Florence, resulted in high volumes of drainage but rapid recovery of groundwater storage. These unique forest systems offer insights to water balance dynamics in irrigated forests and forest resiliency to extreme hydraulic loading. |
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| ISBN: | 165841098X 9781658410984 |