Studying tropical storms is a risky business for scientists, says ShreeramInamdar, a University of Delaware professor who studies watersheds.
“When I say large storms, I mean 10 to 11 inches of rainfall. That makes things very challenging because depending on the flow of the streams and rivers, and it can rip off your instrumentation. And there goes all of your data, samplers and all your investments.”
Despite the challenges, Inamdar’s work is key to understanding how these intense storms can contribute to declining water quality. When tropical storms hit the coast, they erode land and transport large amounts of sediment through the waterways. These sediments contain nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus. Excessive nutrients can cause large fish kills, among other adverse impacts to wildlife.
When Inamdar’s team monitored the impacts from Hurricane Irene on a Maryland watershed, he was shocked by how much organic material entered the rivers and streams in just a couple days.
“When we did the computations, we were really surprised. With Irene, for example, we got nearly half the annual load in 59 hours," said Inamdar.
About 94 percent of Delaware’s waterways are already too polluted to fish in. Considering that scientists project the East Coast could get more intense storms in the coming decades, this doesn’t paint a pretty future for Delaware.
"For us in the Mid-Atlantic and the Northeast, we’re going to get more intense storms. And there’s going to be more runoff generated by these storms. And then we have to worry about these large loads that happen over one or two days. What impact does that have on the Chesapeake Bay? What impact does that have on other coastal waterbodies?" said Inamdar.
Inamdar’s team received $475,000 from the USDA to research the impacts of coastal storms on water quality. They plan to use the award to better understand how tropical storms affect watersheds in the short and long term.
