The Sucker Brook Watershed Revisited

Abstract

Mitigation of soil and nutrient loss from the landscape continues to be a concern within watersheds of the United States and indeed worldwide. There are a number of reasons for this concern. Depletion of agricultural soil is counterproductive to good farming practices and crop productivity. Suburban, urban, and agricultural runoff and concomitant nutrient and soil loss to downstream aquatic ecosystems may produce undesirable effects including increased numbers of bacteria, algae, and macrophytes, increased siltation, and decreased aesthetics – in general, a deterioration in both surface (streams) and groundwater quality downstream resulting in cultural eutrophication of lakes and streams. In central New York, maintenance of the high quality of water in Canandaigua Lake has been a priority for over a decade. Sucker Brook at the north end of the lake was previously identified as delivering high levels of nutrients, chemicals such as sodium chloride (salt), and soil into Canandaigua Lake. In this report, we return to Sucker Brook to determine if these remediation efforts have had an impact on the stream waters of Sucker Brook. The approach taken was to monitor the nutrient and soil levels in the water at the base of the watershed at the Clark Street Bridge and compare current levels to concentrations observed from 1997 to 2000. With implementation of remediation efforts, a decrease in nutrient and soil loss would be expected. A second approach was to perform a segment analysis to determine if old sources still existed or new sources were present.