Stream discharge monitoring in seven watersheds on Mt. Desert Island, ME

Minogue, Will; Hall, Sarah; Henkel, Brian

From the abstract: "Continuous stream discharge measurements are necessary to answer questions about a watershed at a range of scales, from the entire drainage basin to a single stream reach or even an indirect location such as beach or near-shore environment. Similarly, discharge datasets are required to address the diverse needs and questions of many different social institutions: municipalities/government, academia, conservation groups, the private sector, around topics such as: water quality, long-term trends, non-point source pollution, watershed conservation, restoration projects, infrastructure planning, erosion and weathering processes, or land-use impacts. Ongoing and past surface water monitoring and sampling has been conducted on Mt. Desert Island (MDI) by the National Park Service at Acadia National Park (ANP), the United States Geological Survey (USGS), College of the Atlantic (COA), and by researchers from other academic institutions (e.g. University of Maine, Orono (UMO)). These groups have monitored rivers for various reasons including assessment of drinking water quality, watershed-scale studies, conservation projects, and also strictly for educational purposes. Through a recent student project, seven stream discharge monitoring stations were installed along streams within some of the major drainage basins of MDI, Cromwell/Kebo Brook, Duck Brook, Jordan Stream, Mill Brook, and Stanley Brook, in order to establish a baseline dataset of river discharge. Current students are working with COA faculty and Friends of Acadia personnel to continue collection and synthesis of the data, which will be available to the public through Acadia National Park. Preliminary discharge data collected during ~May-Sept 2016 from each watershed allow us to look with higher resolution at the seasonal and annual fluxes in discharge across the island. Further, when coupled with water chemistry data, the local precipitation record, and existing spatial datasets (e.g. permeability, lithology, soils, vegetation, land-use) we can isolate some watershed specific characteristics and temporal variations, often related to human activities within the watershed."