Burlington, VT Rainwater Runoff Changes

Runoff calculations based on effective curve values

The bolded values are the total number of inches in runoff within the study region. The figure above shows four different types of return storms that we used to calculate the runoff data.

The properties that I examined for the mapping assignment are located in a block of Burlington between Buell street and Pearl St. One of the buildings is where I live, the most southern apartment (41 S. Willard). After observing the aerial photographs between 1990 and 2018, there was a decrease in green space around the properties. Nevertheless, even in the 1990’s photo, there was not a lot of green space and mostly paved driveways and compacted dirt parking lots. Even after living at 41 South Willard for 2 years, I’ve noticed encroachments on our own lawn from the tenets below parking near and on it.

Over the 19 years between when these photographs were taken, green spaces have been depleted due to vehicles and creep of pavement. Therefore, infiltration rates have decreased from 1990 by a small factor. In turn increasing the amount of runoff that makes its way into the sewers stormwater system and eventually into the lake. However, when you compare the 1600’s model to the 1990’s and 2018 model there is a significantly more runoff due to decreased infiltration rates and green space within the neighborhood. The land has fundamentally changed since the arrival of Europeans, prior to that nothing or nobody had really altered the native forests of the Northeast. The 1600’s model is based off of a dense wooded forest, therefore it provides a great constant for us to compare our data to.