Potential Impacts on Nutrient Export, Concentration, and Runoff from Changing Precipitation and Land Use in the Catskill/Delaware Watersheds

New York City relies on forest cover in the Catskills Mountains to protect its drinking water. However both loss of forests to development and variability in precipitation in these watersheds are projected to increase with the potential for more annual precipitation and storms. My objective was to determine how these potential losses of forests to development and changes in precipitation could affect nutrient export, concentration, and runoff in these watersheds. I examined TP and NO3NO2-n export, concentration, and runoff in subwatersheds with a gradient of forest cover in a dry and wet year to provide some insight to this question. I found that catchments with higher precipitation, and more shrub forest (old agricultural lands) had higher nutrient export. This highlights the importance of mitigating losses of forest to development, perhaps especially those in an early regrowth stage, or in higher elevation parts of the watershed which may have more precipitation.