David F. Kibler

Development of an Improved Approach for Selecting Storm-Water Best Management Practices

This paper discusses the development of a software-aided approach to best management practice (BMP) selection. Supported with input from a geographic information system (GIS), this software provides an algorithmic, mathematically based alternative to the inherently subjective approaches currently used to choose BMPs for management of storm-water runoff. The BMP selection software was applied to a study site located in the town of Blacksburg, Virginia. The software was utilized to identify BMP alternatives for a distributed storm-water management approach on the site. When compared with a base model with no runoff management, the traditional, detention-based management approach yielded 13.0% greater runoff rate reduction than did the distributed model. By contrast, the distributed storm-water management approach greatly outperformed the detention-based approach in removing pollutants from surface runoff. Although both runoff management strategies removed a significant portion of suspended sediment from the...

From Landscapes to Waterscapes: A PSE for Landuse Change Analysis

We describe the design and implementation of L2W – a Problem Solving Environment (PSE) for landuse change analysis. L2W organizes and unifies the diverse collection of software typically associated with ecosystem models (hydrological, economic and biological). It provides a web-based interface for potential watershed managers and other users to explore meaningful alternative land development and management scenarios and view their hydrological, ecological, and economic impacts. A prototype implementation for the Upper Roanoke River Watershed in Southwest Virginia, USA is described.

Hydrologic Evaluation of Alternate Land Settlement Patterns

In 1997 a group of investigators at Virginia Tech initiated a study, funded by the USEPA, to develop procedures for integrated assessment of environmental , economic, and biological impacts of alternate land development scenarios. The Upper Roanoke River Watershed (URRW) in southwest Virginia was chosen as the case study watershed. HSPF was selected as the hydrologic model because of its widespread use in evaluation of the hydrologic impacts of land use change. The model was applied to a 145 km 2 (56 mi 2 ) sub -watershed (Back Creek) of the URRW. Four different development tracts (i.e. high density, medium density cluster, medium density conventional, and low density) were defined for creating various hypothetical scenarios of residentia l development, both with and without a network of primary and secondary roads. Continuous hydrologic simulation was performed using data for water years 1995 -1998 to investigate the hydrologic effects of various spatial arrangements of development, measur ed in terms of effects on various error statistics. The entire effort was aided by the development of a macro-based scenario generator that partially automated the analysis of development scenarios.