Recipient Organization
UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS
(N/A)
FAYETTEVILLE,AR 72703
Performing Department
Biological & Agr Engineering
Non Technical Summary
JUSTIFICATION: In 1964, Congress passed the Water Resources Research Act, establishing water research institutions likeAWRC at land-grant universities throughout the United States. AWRC, located at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, ispart of a network of 54 water institutes. AWRC, in cooperation with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the NationalInstitute for Water Resources (NIWR), has helped local, state and federal agencies learn to manage Arkansas' water resourcesfor more than 30 years. The AWRC Water Quality Laboratory will exist primarily to efficiently support the on-going researchprojects associated with the Arkansas Water Resources Center, Animal Sciences Department, Biological and AgriculturalEngineering Department, Biological Sciences Department, Crops, Soils and Environmental Sciences Department, GeosciencesDepartment and other departments across the UA campus engaged in studies of water quality issues, which might require theanalysis of water samples. This lab is certified through the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality for the analyses ofwater samples specifically related to projects funded through the 319 Nonpoint Source Program of the Arkansas NaturalResources Commission, and this will be the only accredited lab on campus for the analyses of water samples on a per-samplefee basis aimed at simply recovering analytical equipment, supply and labor costs.PREVIOUS WORK: Each year several research faculty participate in AWRC projects with the help of students who gainvaluable experience doing environmentally related work across the state. AWRC research projects have studied irrigation andrunoff, innovative domestic wastewater disposal systems, ground water modeling and land use mapping, erosion and pollution,water quality, and ecosystems. Each year the AWRC solicits grants proposals from faculty within the University of Arkansassystem, or even private institutions, and these proposals are ranked by the AWRC Directors and its Technical AdvisoryCommittee on the basis of scientific merit and need to address state water issues. With the provided federal programmaticfunding, the AWRC provides project funding to support two to three proposals each year and the project duration is one-year.The AWRC holds an annual watershed and research conference at the UA Global Campus in Fayetteville, Arkansas, wherecurrent research is high-lighted in oral and poster presentations. The conference generally has more than 250attendees everyyear, and the participants represent Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ), Arkansas Department of Health(ADH), Arkansas Department of Agriculure, Arkansas Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), USGS,USDA Forest Service, local municipalities (e.g., Fayetteville, Fort Smith, Rogers and Springdale), UA Cooperative ExtensionService, UA Division of Agriculture research faculty, and UA campus research faculty. The conference also draws inenvironmental consulting firms, equipment companies, and non-governmental organizations. among other entities. Theconference last about two and half days, and the themes vary from year to year depending upon state and regional priority issues.The AWRC works with regional water districts (e.g., Beaver Water District) and nonprofits organizations to conduct water quality monitoring and provide watershed-basedresearch; the number of projects and funding vary annually, but the AWRC and its WQL provide the majority of water qualitysampling, analysis and interpretation within northwest Arkansas. Currently, the AWRC is monitoring 20+ sites in northwestArkansas where water samples are collected on a weekly basis at a minimum. These samples are logged-in at the AWRCWQL, and then analyzed for parameters specified within the Quality Assurance Project Plan (QAPP). The AWRC providetechnical support calculating constituent loads in streams and analyzing water quality trends over time.For more information, visit our research web page at:https://awrc.uada.edu/
Animal Health Component
80%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
20%
Applied
80%
Developmental
(N/A)
Goals / Objectives
The Center's statewide mission is to: 1) Arrange for competent research that addresses water problems andenhances our understanding; 2) Aid the entry of new research scientists into water resources fields; 3) Help to train futurewater scientists and engineers; and 4) Transfer results of sponsored research to water managers and the public. The ArkansasWater Resources Center (AWRC) and its service Water Quality Lab (WQL) provides the technical capabilities to monitor waterquality, analyze water samples, and determine constituent loads and trends over time. The overall goal of its WQL is to providehighly accurate, repeatable results in a reasonable amount of time to clients following acceptable methods.
Project Methods
The various methods of the funded faculty and student project will be project specific and clearly defined in the proposals.This proposal is for water quality sampling, analysis and annual load estimation at numerous sites across the state. Watersamples will be collected manually from the bridge access at these sites or from within the stream channel. The water sampleswill be collected using an Alpha style horizontal sampler or a Kemmerer type vertical sampler near the vertical centroid of flowi.e., in the middle of the channel where water is actively moving. The water samples will be collected at these sites startingOctober 2024and 30 samples will be collected at each site per year (on average) through project duration. The monitoringprogram will be adjusted to insure that a sufficient fraction of the collected samples represent storm event or surface runoffconditions following episodic rainfall events, including small and large storm events.All water samples will be delivered to the Arkansas Water Resources Center Water Quality Lab (AWRC WQL) and analyzed fornitrate-nitrogen (NO3-N), chloride (CI), sulfate (SO4) soluble reactive phosphorus (SRP), total phosphorus (TP), total nitrogen(TN), total suspended solids (TSS), turbidity and conductivity. The AWRC WQL will use standard laboratory quality assuranceand quality control (QA/QC) measures during analyses. Duplicate samples will be collected at a frequency of 10% throughoutthe duration of the project, and these duplicate water samples will be collected in the same fashion as the original sample andthen analyzed at the AWRC WQL for the same parameters. All concentration data will be reported with field and laboratoryQA/QC data in the final report to funding agencies.Constituent loads will be estimated each year where the USGS or AWRC records streamflow data. Constituent loads (L) will beestimated using various statistical techniques, including weighted regression on time, discharge and season (WRTDS).All of these sites are at existing U.S. Geological Survey discharge monitoring stations, and this project relies on the use of thestream discharge data (available through the USGS Arkansas Water Science Center web site or its National Water InformationSystem NWIS database). The AWRC will work closely with the USGS to receive up-to-date data, and the use of provisionalUSGS data might occur during the final year of the project.This project will provide nearly twodecades or lessworth of monitoring data at many of the proposed sites and a decade ormore yearsof data at the newer sites, following consistent sampling program;this period of record is sufficient to evaluate trends inconstituent concentrations and loads for most sites. The trends will be determined using these three steps:1. Measured constituent concentrations and associated discharge will be log-transformed to account for the typical logdistributionof water quality data and to minimize the influence of outliers (Step 1)2. Log-transformed concentrations will be adjusted against log-transformed discharge using LOESS, a two dimensionalsmoothing technique; the residuals (or the observed value minus the LOESS predicted value) represent the flow-adjustedconcentrations (Step 2).3. Flow-adjusted concentrations (derived from the residuals of the log-transformed concentration and discharge relation) willbe analyzed for trends over the period of record using parametric regression analysis, LOESS smoothing, and possiblyregression tree analysis to determine how and when water quality is changing over time (Step 3).The LOESS analysis will be based on an optimized sampling proportion and a first order polynomial function, which has beentypically used in other studies evaluating water quality trends in Arkansas and other regional streams.The project will explore more advanced statistical approaches like WRTDS, but past analysis shows that the interpretation of trends is not different between simple and complex techniques. This project will analyze for trends from July 2009 through September 2029, where monitoring was conducted following thesame protocols across these sites.