Course Syllabus revised January 4, 2006
Winter 2006
CEE 547, 3 credits for grade
Lake & Watershed Management
MWF 11:30-12:20 More 219
This course will be run as a combination workshop/discussion group to investigate critical lake (or estuary) water quality management issues from a watershed perspective. In the first five weeks of the course we will meet three times a week to discuss a range of journal articles covering coastal zone hypoxia, and nitrogen loading and transport related issues. During the sixth week we will review/critique of past group project reports (see below).
For each class session we will pick one long or two short papers to discuss. I will email you PDF versions of these articles one week ahead of time. Students will be responsible for presenting and critiquing these papers. Discussions will be active ÒdebatesÓ of the topics assigned and the strengths, weaknesses, unresolved issues, and future directions suggested by the journal articles. Each assigned journal article will be introduced by a 10 minute summary from one or two class participants. Once a week, students will write a brief Òpeer reviewÓ (or critique/evaluation) of one of the assigned papers. For this assignment please use Times New Roman 12 point font with 1.5 spacing and 6 inch wide text. Each 3 page assignment should be ~ 1000 words (~ 3 pages) in length. These writing assignments will be due by the next Tuesday class meeting. Students can choose which paper they want to ÒcritiqueÓ and whether this paper comes from the Tuesday or Thursday discussion.
During the last four weeks of the course we will split up into groups of 3 students and work on individual components of the Hood Canal nitrogen mass balance. Figuring out the critical nitrogen sources to Hood Canal is one of the most important objectives of the multi-agency Hood Canal Dissolved Oxygen Program (http://www.hoodcanal.washington.edu/). These projects will also be tied into the framework provided by the hydrologic component of PRISM (Puget Sound Regional Synthesis Model) to explore how anthropogenic activities affect Hood Canal water quality through non-point source pollution. These class projects will attempt to characterize the key nitrogen sources to Hood Canal as well as identify key gaps in the current knowledge base of N loading to this system (i.e. missing data or large uncertainty). The class will break into groups and each group will work independently on one of these problems for the remaining several weeks. These groups will meet with the course instructor at regular intervals and will report their results to the rest of the class every week. The final presentation will be during finals week.
Office Phone Email Hours
Instructor:
Assoc. Prof. Michael Brett 301 More 6-3447 mtbrett@ M-W 230-420
Prerequisites: One course in general or applied limnology or oceanography.
Grading:
Weekly critiques/reviews 50%
Group project 50%
Course Reading Materials
Jan. 6th
Coastal zone hypoxia: Case studies (Baltic Sea and North Carolina)
Conley, DJ; et al. 2002. Hypoxia in the Baltic Sea and Basin-Scale Changes in Phosphorus Biogeochemistry. Environmental Science & Technology 36: 5315-5320.
Buzzelli, CP et al. 2002. Estimating the spatial extent of bottom-water hypoxia and habitat degradation in a shallow estuary. Marine Ecology Progress Series 230: 103-112.
Jan. 9th
Coastal zone hypoxia: Case studies (Gulf of Mexico)
Rabalais NN et al. 1996. Nutrient changes in the Mississippi River and system responses on the adjacent continental shelf. Estuaries 19: 386-407.
Jan. 11th
Nutrient loading mass balance studies
Valiela, I. et al. 1997. Nitrogen loading from coastal watersheds to receiving estuaries: New method and application. Ecological Applications 7: 358-380.
Jan. 13th
Atmospheric nitrogen transport and loading
Paerl, HW et al. 2002. Atmospheric Deposition of Nitrogen: Implications for Nutrient Over-enrichment of Coastal Waters Estuaries 25: 677-693.
Jan. 18th
Land use impacts on Nitrogen loading to coastal zones
Mitsch, WJ et al. 2001. Reducing nitrogen loading to the Gulf of Mexico from the Mississippi River Basin: Strategies to counter a persistent ecological problem. Bioscience 51: 373-388.
Jan. 20th
Peterson, BJ et al. 2001. Control of nitrogen export from watersheds by headwater streams. Science 292: 86-90.
McClelland, JW; Valiela, I, 1998. Linking nitrogen in estuarine producers to land-derived sources. Limnology and Oceanography 43: 577-585.
Jan. 23rd
Septic system nutrient inputs to surface waters
Harris, PJ, 1995. Water quality impacts from on-site waste disposal systems to coastal areas through groundwater discharge. Environmental Geology 26: 262-268.
Cogger, C. 1988. On-site septic systems: The risk of groundwater contamination. Journal of Environment and Health 51: 12-16.
Jan. 25th
Using tracers to follow septic system nitrogen movement
Charette, MA; Buesseler, KO; Andrews, JE, 2001. Utility of radium isotopes for evaluating the input and transport of groundwater-derived nitrogen to a Cape Cod estuary. Limnology and Oceanography 46: 465-470.
Portnoy JW, et al. 1998. The discharge of nitrate-contaminated groundwater from developed shoreline to marsh-fringed estuary. Water Resources Research 34: 3095-3104.
Jan. 27th
Nitrogen release from forest soils
McHale, M.R. 2002. A field-based study of soil water and groundwater nitrate release in an Adirondack forested watershed. Water Resources Research 38, NO. 4, 1031, doi:10.1029/2000WR000102.
Creed, I.F. et al. 1996. Regulation of nitrate-N release from temperate forests: a test of the N flushing hypothesis. Water Resources Research 32: 3337-3354.
Jan. 30th
Hood Canal studies
Hull, TE and A Bryan. 2005. Solving Hood Canal's low oxygen problem, the onsite system factor.
Feb 1st
Fagergren, D., Criss, A., Chirstensen D. 2004. Hood Canal Low Dissolved Oxygen - Preliminary Assessment and Corrective Action Plan. Puget Sound Action Team Publication # PSAT04-06.
Feb 3rd
PSAT04-06 cont'd