Show All Changing Land Use Ground Water Monitoring — Current Project
Changing Land Use Ground Water Monitoring At a Glance:
- Installation of monitoring wells in areas undergoing land use changes.
- Eventual network of 50 monitoring wells
- Cooperative effort between MPCA, local officials and developers
- Analysis of Inorganics and Volatile Organic Compounds
- Actively seeking candidate site, Contact us if interested
Since 1980, Minnesota’s population has increased about 25 percent. Urban acreage increased at a similar rate. Each year, an area the size of Duluth converts to urban and suburban land.
Studies conducted by the MPCA and USGS in the past decade show that ground water beneath urban areas has higher concentrations of nearly all inorganic chemicals, higher detection frequencies for organic pollutants, lower recharge rates, and higher temperatures compared to undeveloped land. Although we know that urban land use affects ground water quality, we don’t know how fast water quality changes after land use changes, nor do we know how different urban management strategies impact ground water quality.
An important component of our statewide monitoring activity is to monitor water quality changes following urbanization. This study focuses on the following scenarios:
- conversion of agriculture, forest, pasture, or other land uses to urban land use, residential and/or commercial;
- in-growth of existing urban areas; and
- changes within an existing urban setting, such as unsewered residential areas being converted to sewered.
As with our statewide Condition Monitoring and Trend Monitoring Projects, the Changing Land Use network focuses on sensitive hydrogeology. Because of limitations to drilling deep wells or wells into bedrock, we are restricted to areas where shallow aquifers consist of sand and gravel. Although these aquifers occur throughout much of Minnesota, the most rapidly developing urban areas in Minnesota occur along the I-94 and US Highway 10 corridors extending northwest from the Twin Cities Metropolitan Area. These are indicated in the following figure.
To identify areas where land use is changing, we rely heavily on cooperative efforts with local resource managers and developers. They assist us in identifying development parcels that are undergoing a change to urban land use prior to development. By working with the developers and local officials, we can determine the appropriate places to drill monitoring wells.
The MPCA currently has funding to install 10 monitoring wells per year. The goal is to have a network of 50 monitoring wells. Once wells are installed, they will be sampled annually for five years. Subsequent sampling continues either at one or two-year intervals. Sampling is for a wide range of inorganic chemicals and volatile organic chemicals.
We currently have 11 wells in this network (see figure below) and are actively seeking partners. If you are a developer or local official/resource manager and know of areas that may be candidates for this study, please contact us.
