Hydrologic monitoring

Introduction

The diversity and multitude of hydrologic issues that emerge, submerge, and then re-emerge again unexpectedly throughout the greater Kissimmee-Okeechobee-Everglades and adjacent Big Cypress watersheds – only to rapidly retreat and later reappear yet again in the future with a new twist are truly unending and overlapping. We all know the stories as the ones that hog the headlines in our local papers. They also have the side effect of obscuring progress that that water management community has achieved over time. One case in point is hydrologic monitoring.

Consensus Opinion

Over the past decade a silent and often underappreciated technological revolution has swept through the South Florida Water Management District monitoring networks. Floridians have marveled for decades at the technologic wizardry of space flight being launched at nearby Cape Canaveral to explore those unknown universes. But many also remember a day when the vast stretches of unending Everglades were seemingly impenetrable, similarly mysterious, and weirdly more clearly seen from photographs taken from space then from plain sight on the ground.

Monitoring was once an arduous activity whose light at the end of the tunnel always seemed to be just that. The routine of strapping on the swamp boots, donning flight gear, or climbing up in an airboat or buggy for the long haul into the remote corners of the swampy wilderness – or even in the case of just driving out on a dusty limerock road at the far end of the county; for the purpose of downloading data and maintaining operational function of the hydrologic monitoring sentinels was less immediate gratification than an exhaustive exercise in long-term record keeping. Keep in mind that the trip back from the stations were equally as long, with only raw data in hand that still needed to be processed, and that was at best a month-old or more – or even worse, with no data at all because the station was knocked out by an equipment failure or a lightening strike requiring yet another trip out to repair it.

In truth, the above travails are a big part of the allure behind south Florida’s hydrology, and have no doubt that all hydrologic stations require TLC to keep them up and running even today. But more and more and more, the old methods of monitoring and data collection have been upgraded and simplified with the advent of telemetry.

The District (including the Big Cypress Basin in Southwest Florida), National Park Service, Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Geological Survey, Fish and Wildlife Service, and others have taken on the initiative of not only automating data collection, but taken the additional step of telemetering stations to remotely transmit the data right to our fingertips (nearly as fast as a snap of the same fingertips). Through the magic of telemetry, data is streamed into computer databases and onto our computer screens as quickly as they unfold on the ground and in our watersheds.

From a utilitarian level, telemetry gives us the ability to detect station problems in real-time, as they occur, allowing us to fix the problem sooner, and making sure we have the right tools in hand when we trek out there by helicopter, airboat, swamp buggy or foot to those often remote stations. More broadly, telemetry systems allows us more than ever to work across agency lines through partnerships and collaborations to bring out the best in use as institutions and individuals in our shared missions to steward our watersheds.

We should not lose sight of that telemetry is a people revolution as much as it is technological. There are unsung heroes behind the scenes making these systems work, investing in their maintenance, and interpreting their results. We are literally knocking at the door of the utopian watershed dream of decoding our position in the perpetual parade of south Florida’s constantly-evolving water cycle. As Floridians we are well aware of the bounty and scarcity of our water, and the tremendous responsibility that we bear to steward our water resources wisely.

Recommendations

Now that we’ve made this quantum step forward, what baby steps are left in the Big Cypress area to inch farther along along the path of progress? Here are three ideas that top the list.

(1) Add telemetry to obvious places. There are still existing stations, many of them with long histories of data and many of them in critical parts of our watersheds, that are not yet telemetered. High priority sites include one at the headwaters of Camp Keais Strand (Keais 846). Two others are located at critical transition zones in the Okaloacoochee Slough (OKAL 858 and OK29).

(2) Comprehensively review water monitoring network. There is a need to comprehensively assess the regional water monitoring network in Southwest Florida in order to maximize its effectiveness and efficiency. Similar efforts are underway in the main footprint of the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP), but Southwest Florida and the Big Cypress areas are under-represented in this effort. The recent move to equip our region’s stations with telemetry and imminent arrival of new Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDLs) being handed down from Tallahassee make this an opportune time to perform a comprehensive review. Collectively and individually, we need to justify locations and parameters of importance; and clearly elucidate how these additions will complement the existing network and our stewardship missions.

(3) Maximize efforts to translate data into useable forms. Numbers are empowering, but they need to be translated into non-numerical forms to truly unleash their full potential. How can we best harness the never-ending stream of data to paint the pictures that need to be painted for viewing hydrologic trends and patterns. There’s probably no one answer or tool to this question. Data can be decoded into different formats to answer different questions. Telemetry definitely puts the ball in our respective agency and individual courts to rise to this challenge.

Suffice it to say that telemetry isn’t the end of the station. Telemetry ushers in a new world, but also puts us back on track for a new destination point ahead. Reaching that next station will require ever-increasing amounts of technology, partnerships across agency lines, and an ability to see the watersheds that transcend jurisdictional boundaries. It’s exciting to have made such large strides down the path of progress, now decades in the making, but telemetry is only a tool to help us rise to new challenges and fulfill greater expectations.

Team Discussion Points

A. Advancement towards hydro-ecological models. How can we raise ecological criteria on par with hydrologic aspects of modeling and monitoring efforts? Output from hydrologic models are already used to calculate Habitat Suitability Index (HSI) for various ecological parameters, but HSIs are more of a post-model assessment ranking than the coveted holy grail of a fully-blown hydro-ecological model. Do such hydro-ecological models exist or are they even possible? The U.S. Geological Survey uses ATLSS (Across Trophic Level System Simulation) models in the Everglades proper to assess ecological responses to natural and managed changes to the hydrologic cycle. Another example to draw from is the use of indicator regions (IRs) and performance measures (PMs) developed by the RECOVER (Restore-Coordinate-Verify) Team for the Everglades Proper authorized under CERP and similar efforts in the Southwest Florida Feasibility Study.

ATLSS models, HSIs, PMs, and IRs represent starting points for envisioning what is needed to best synthesize hydrologic and ecologic criteria in surface-water modeling efforts here in southwest Florida – and making this information available to relevant stakeholders and the interested public.

We should not lose sight that ecological data can serve as valuable (and insightful) model calibration parameters. But how can ecological data be collected in a way that is cost effective and regionally robust enough to either be incorporated directly into models and/or used to better calibrate models. Spatial delineation of algal blooms can be used to better delineate impacts from freshwater flow discharges through our estuaries, and affiliated nutrient loads. The presence and absence of certain species can be used to calibrate flooding regimes in deep-water refugia at more refined scales than gridded in the hydrologic model. Water quality parameters can also complement surface-water modeling refinement.

B. Address Gaps. Monitoring gaps are often thought of as geographic holes in the network. They can occur at political boundaries or in far-flung reaches of the watershed. However, filling needs is ultimately a better approach than filling geographic gaps. Here’s points to think about.

(1) Models are great tools for guiding where and what type of monitoring is needed. Missing links in the hydrologic network are often not spread evenly across the spatial landscape.

(2) The role and geographic differences in evapotranspiration needs more attention. Evaporatranspiration is comparable to the black matter of the south Florida water cycle. It accounts for a full half of the annual water budget, but it is often relegated to a forgotten and underappreciated parameter.

(3) Surrogate parameters for water quality can serve as powerful and cost-effective ways to track water quality. Sampling water quality with grab samples has the benefit of being lab-certifiable, but spatial and temporal distribution (and costs) limit the overall utility of this approach for addressing nutrient loading and contaminant transport issues. Surrogate parameters for nutrients such as total dissolved solids can be measured more cheaply, in more places, and often hooked up to telemetry. This approach has to be carefully balanced by an awareness of sampling limitations and periodic quality control with grab samples or other methods.

C. Taking data to the next level. The regional telemetry network can brings data to our fingertips, but decoding the numbers into useable forms that we can read is really what empowers us. There are a number of models and graphical interfaces that can be used to help us see through the numbers into the wonderland of how the system is behaving – both historically and in real-time – and for the purpose of refining our models and monitoring network.

It is unlikely that their will be a one-shoe-fits-all-size approach. Many entities and individuals will make contributions to translating the data. A number of tools already exist for this – including the District’s radar derived rainfall display, US Geological Survey Everglades Depth Estimation Network (EDEN), District’s real-time water level site, USACE real-time water basin reports – and the list will grow. For example, the Big Cypress Basin is in the preliminary stages of collaborating with a consulting firm on a next-generation model that will help us visualize how the space between monitoring points – such as canals, structures, flood prone areas, and natural flow ways – are responding in real time.

Minority Opinion

Telemetry is great – it’s a powerful tool for bringing data instantaneously to our fingertips – but it is expensive. We should not be lulled asleep by the ease to which telemetric data is delivered, become complacent into thinking it will answer all the questions, or use its high cost as an excuse for not to getting out in the field today and on a regular basis to collect hydrologic and ecological data.

Weekly readings can go a long way to answering very many a resource question and building long-term record. It is as simple and cheap as getting some rulers from a hardware store and nailing them to a post. Ed Carleson from Corkscrew Sanctuary collected weekly readings from 1953 to 1974 by hand which kept the water monitoring torch burning until chart recorders were installed in the mid 1970s. And most of all don’t forget the important step of gathering exploratory data that serves as a pre-cursor for determining the best place to put long-term monitoring.

Critical to all monitoring is the need to archive and review the data at regular intervals. The ethic of regular data review and analysis not only keeps us on top of the resource as it unfolds, but also puts us in a position to see how data gathering can be refined and improved to better answer our questions. That’s a responsibly we all need to hold ourselves to.

Belle Meade Flows

Introduction

In the early 1980s the Big Cypress Basin developed a blue-print for water management and hydrologic restoration of the Belle Meade- Royal Palm Hammock area to make room for the eastward ho expansion of Naples into the county’s inland interior. Fast forward a quarter century later to where we are today in 2007: the restoration of its neighbor, the Southern Golden Gate Estates (SGGE), is on its way for completion in 2009, but Belle Meade still stands at the starting gate. The good news is that there is a new plan in hand for replumbing water flows through Belle Meade – just recently completed by the Big Cypress Basin (in affiliation with Parsons) in 2006.

Consensus Opinion

With the new plan in hand, what can we do to move forward on this new roadmap to prevent it, like its predecessor plan in 1980, from collecting dust and losing opportunities to burgeoning development that surrounds it? Let’s get the ball rolling by answering a few questions.

First, what is meant when we say hydrologic restoration of Belle Meade?
The goal of this Generation X master plan of the Belle Meade area is to bring right amount and timing of water to Rookery Bay and adjacent estuarine water bodies – in part by restoring the remnant historic flowways and also by retrofitting existing canals. The study is a storm-water plan and environmental assessment that considered a range of alternative strategies. The study recommends seven strategic plan elements:

1. Diversion of Golden Gate Canal flows into APAC Lake
2. Diversion of Golden Gate Canal flows to Henderson Creek via the I-75 culvert near the toll booth,
3. Enhanced conveyance of sheetflow across Sabal Palm Road
4. 66 Acre STA near US41
5. Manatee Road Area improvements
6. Fiddler’s Creek Spreader channels
7. Flowways through future 6L area developments
8. Tomato Road Diversion and Enhanced conveyance under SR92

The diversion at APAC Lakes will serve as a valuable overflow valve for reducing point discharges of freshwater to Golden Gate Canal’s tailwater confluence with Naples Bay. Freshwater diversions into Belle Meade will also recharge aquifers, lengthen hydroperiods to water-starved wetland communities in the western Picayune forest, and help re-establish distributed freshwater discharge to downstream Ten Thousand Islands.

Second, what makes Belle Meade different from the Southern Golden Gate Estates project?
Rebuilding a natural watershed in the defunct Southern Golden Gate Estates area has benefited by being included as part of the nationally-sponsored Everglades Restoration Plan. By that merit, land-ownership for SGGE was acquired by a complex, and at times controversial, eminent domain process. For the SGGE area, the restoration emphasis has been largely focused on returning the area to its natural pre-drainage state – with important, but relatively minor, considerations to upstream and downstream urban infrastructure.

In comparison, rebuilding Belle Meade’s watershed is constrained to a much greater degree by water management needs of upstream, adjacent, and downstream urban areas. At its headwater source, APAC Lake has been designed to handle an order of magnitude less of water (~400 cfs) than adjacent Southern Golden Gates project (~4000 cfs). At its tailwaters, watershed flows in Belle Meade will be weaved through a fairly dense cluster of urban development. Importantly, land is being acquired through a willing-seller process in the Belle Meade plan.

Third, how do we move forward on hydrologic restoration of Belle Meade?
To summarize, (1) a new plan is complete – a quarter century after the original, (2) it delineates a roadmap for a socially-responsible re-plumbing of flows in the Belle Meade geographic expanse, and (3) the plans specifically calls for completion of seven project elements.

Noticeably missing from the plan are organizational assignments and time tables for who and when the plans various components will be completed. The sum result of the recommended plan is envisioned to be larger than its individual parts – but the prospect of sequentially and faithfully adding these parts to equate into its intended sum will require a spirit of cooperation and collaboration between its funders and builders; most notably the Big Cypress Basin, Collier County, and the large-land developers in the project area’s footprint.

Plans are roadmaps for the future, but also have a shelf life of relevancy. Let’s bring relevant members of our community together in ensuring that this important watershed rebuilding and replumbing project located at the critical dividing line between our urban and wild areas lives up to its full societal potential.


Team Discussion Points

If models exist, let’s make sure they are useful. We should not lose sight of the fact that the updated plan for Belle Mead is essentially a storm-water plan. That means that the study did not employ a regional-scale hydrologic flow model to evaluate flow regimes entering into, through, or downstream of Belle Meade. Hydrologic inputs from an existing Mike She model were used as inputs for storm-water planning purposes, but alternatives of flow regimes, and evaluation of their effects on the Belle Meade area and downstream estuaries were not evaluated.

Rookery Bay is currently working with the University of South Florida to develop an estuary mixing model for downstream estuaries in Rookery Bay. This model may eventually help planners optimize freshwater flow releases to downstream estuaries, but we should not anticipate project-design guidance from such a model in the near future.

Our group recommendation is to utilize both Mike She and estuary mixing models as needed to help steer and refine project design and operation. However, we should not let lack or deficiency of any one model get in the way of common-sense, innovative, and timely decision making. It is also essential for modelers to be brought up to date on how their models can be better customized. Models can be great tools. But so often they aren’t “sharp enough” to address site specific needs of concern or lag behind the management curve. Let’s make sure that’s not the case with Belle Meade.

Unresolved flow issues that need more attention. To use a plumbing term, Belle Meade is the upstream “junction box” to a number of downstream water and wetland bodies. Waters currently short-circuiting to tide now stand a chance of being intercepted and redirected more beneficially. The question still lingers to what magnitude this is possible. Here’s some issues related to redirection of flows through Belle Meade.

(1) Estuarine outfalls: The Plan doesn’t alleviate extreme pulses or droughts to downstream estuaries. The Belle Meade storm-water plan shows APAC lake as being capable of intercepting 400 cfs of this flow. Another 200 cfs can be diverted down Collier Blvd canal. These diversions will help attenuate flow flows to Henderson Creek and alleviate some flooding to downstream Naples Bay, but it definitely doesn’t solve the problem for very large flows and drought conditions.

(2) Source of Belle Meade: APAC Lakes? At first glance APAC Lake appears to be the source of the Nile – but a couple of roadblocks may stymie its downstream passage. (1) Will flows cross under the I75 canal into southern Belle Meade (or sideways), and will the canal need to be modified? Our group noted that modifications to I75 canal were not a part of the Belle Meade plan. (2) What will be the impact of flow releases on flora and faunal populations, and human inholders?

(3) Using new flows through Belle Meade to recharge the shallow aquifer. Can flows be routed to the east down the I75 canal to recharge the shallow aquifer? Currently this is not possible, but could become a possibility with infrastructure improvements to that canal. Not only would this provide additional water storage, it also coincides with a need to maintain aquifer levels for water supply to public and private wells in that area. The recent drought has already increased community enthusiasm for adding groundwater monitoring wells in that area. Providing a way to recharge water to that area would be a next step.

(4) Using new flows through Belle Meade to recharge the deep aquifer (ASR).: What is the possibility of increasing capacity into Aquifer Storage and Recovery? Currently, the City of Marco uses a cluster of reservoirs at the NW intersection of US41 and Collier Blvd to stage water into and out of its ASR wells. To what degree can additional waters be added here, and what is the potential for ASR to absorb more surface flows in other parts of Belle Meade.


Inholder questions remain. The question was raised about how many and where inholders in Belle Meade were located. That’s an important number, as easements or acquisition of these properties would be required, but it is also somewhat of a mute point. Even if there’s only one landowner that means it can’t be flooded. This raised concern among our team regarding to what degree, if any, water could really be introduced into the Belle Meade area. For example, there is a relatively large community at the eastern outskirts of Belle Meade that was not acquired as part of the Picayune Strand Restoration. This community is undergoing some relatively minor drainage improvements to mitigate flooding concerns. How does introduction of new flows from Belle Meade effect this community and other inholders?

However, Belle Meade’s majority of inholders are large land owners, the area is already zoned as low density by the county, and the area contains favorable incentives for conservation and flow easements – all of which may simplify resolution on this issue.

Funding sources need to be coordinated. There are a number of funding sources and studies that include Belle Meade components in them. They include the following:

Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP). This project has $6 million earmarked for restoring attenuated flows to Henderson Creek. Where can this money be spent most effectively for Henderson Creek, and also in complement with the rest of the big picture prescribed for Belle Meade in the master plan? As it currently stands, Rookery Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve will be replacing Florida Department of Environmental Planning (DEP) as the state lead on this project.

Southwest Florida Feasibility Study. Currently on-going, his CERP-authorized study is looking across the entire Southwest Florida area to identify restorations needs for that area. It includes all major components of the Belle Meade storm-water plan.

Mitigation funds. The Belle Meade area is currently undergoing fairly rapid development. Part of the mitigation for these projects, and other nearby projects in which Belle Meade could serve as a sending area, should be tapped immediately and intelligently.

Minority Opinion

Is it unrealistic to expect all the pieces and potential of Belle Meade’s land conversion, replumbing, and restoration to fall together in a way that makes the sum larger than its parts? That’s not an outlandish question. Yes, flows can be diverted into APAC Lakes, but where do they go from there, how will they affect woodpecker populations and other wildlife, will inholders be impacted, and is it even possible, politically and hydrologically, to coax flow of water south of I75? These are issues that can be resolved for sure, but in whose favor – and will they openly and fairly be discussed in a way that brings out their full societal value, not just an “easy out” for the present day. A spirit of trial and error may be required over time to tweak flows down their optimal paths.

The plan is great, but it’s a very general blueprint. Many questions and details remain – if not fully unresolved – then not yet in sharp focus. We need a Belle Meade Czar who can navigate outside and inside the box – brokering deals, cultivating community consensus, and working through all the details on innovative ideas and thorny unresolved issues – in order to make Belle Meade the success after so many years of seeing status quo of future promises and lost opportunities for this area.