Characterization of Ground Water Discharge to Hampton Harbor

The project goals were to assess inter-tidal groundwater discharge and concurrent nutrient loading to Hampton Harbor. This will include maps of suspected groundwater discharge zones and measurements of nutrient loading. The principal means of assessment was an aerial survey of the study area during low tide using thermal infrared (TIR) imagery. The TIR imagery was used to detect and locate upwelling groundwater discharge zones within the harbor. The location of groundwater discharge zones as it relates to upgradient land use can be instructive for water quality

Capacity as Aggregation: Promises, Water and a Form of Collective Care in Northeast Brazil

As the twenty-first century gets underway, people have been experimenting with many forms of political organization. In Northeast Brazil, that experimental spirit led to the creation of the Water Pact, a process involving more than eight thousand participants through a series of public promise-making rituals in which they made pledges to care for water, attending to the specificities of their own context. The Pact gathered those promises into a multi-scalar formation that, the organizers believed, would yield the necessary resources to address the state’s water problems. The Pact would break with an unsuccessful history of infrastructural and legal reforms concerning deep-water access in the state of Ceará. This article examines how that collective was produced, what its constituent units were and how the logic of aggregation guided practices leading to its coalescence. My purpose is to re-examine the aggregate as a quantitative form of capacity that should be qualitatively reconsidered

Inflow and Loadings from Ground Water to the Great Bay Estuary, New Hampshire

This final report presents the results of a study to evaluate groundwater inflow and nutrient loadings to the Great Bay Estuary, New Hampshire. The evaluation of inflow was accomplished independently by two methods: one, used thermal imagery, and the other, piezometric mapping. The thermal imagery method assessed groundwater that was observed to discharge within the intertidal zone of an inland estuary. The groundwater piezometric mapping method used bedrock wells around the bay to create an overall piezometric map of the near-bay area. Groundwater discharge was evaluated with respect to flow, concentration, and ultimately nitrogen loading to coastal waters. The results represent a snapshot for these variables, examined by a thermal infrared aerial survey in the spring of 2000, and water quality, specific discharge, and piezometric surface maps in the summer of 2001. Monitoring wells upgradient of the Great Bay were analyzed for nitrogen as an indicator of potential discharge source waters. Total groundwater discharge to the estuary was calculated as 24.2 cubic feet per second (cfs) with an average of 0.81± 0.89 mg dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN)/L, with a maximum value of 2.7 mg DIN/L (n=20). Nutrient concentrations, averaging 0.83± 1.34 mg DIN/L, with a maximum value of 10.2 mg DIN/L, were observed in upgradient bedrock groundwater analyzed from 192 wells. Nutrient loading was calculated to be 19.3±21.2 tons of N per year for the total Great Bay Estuary, covering nearly 144 miles of shoreline. The groundwater derived nutrient loading accounts for approximately 5% of the total non-point source load to the estuary. The thermal imagery method was found to be an effective and affordable alternative to conventional groundwater exploration approaches