Improving Soil Infiltration of Runoff and Pollutants Along Road Edges by Soil and Vegetation Management Strategies

One key ecological problem to solve in roadside management is how to reduce detrimental effects of increased runoff from paved surfaces ("hydromodification"), that increase sediment movement, destroy aquatic habitat, and redistribute road-source pollutants. The Advanced Transportation Infrastructure Research Center (ATIRC) is a newly-built facility at University of California (UC) Davis that offers unique opportunities for collaborative and integrative research that can potentially improve sustainable management of the state's vegetated road-edge environment. This proposal builds on a 2003 California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) study, Roadside Vegetated Treatment Sites (RVTS) that estimated infiltration and contaminant adsorption into road-edge soil as a function of slope length for five California road edge locations, but measured only the top 2 inches of soil. Our proposed study has two objectives: 1. to utilize the ATIRC facility to create infiltration treatment plots under highly controlled conditions, using soil treatments, native vegetation treatments and rainfall simulations to test runoff and pollutant adsorption; 2. to provide a detailed analysis of soil texture and infiltration at RVTS sites as a basis for modeling potential strategies for remediating hydromodification. This project is a cooperative effort bringing together expertise in soil science, vegetation, soil hydrology modeling, roadside maintenance technology, and transportation-derived non-point source pollution.

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Active
• Funding: $60766.00
• Contract Numbers:

  DTRT06-G-0022

  R04-1

• Sponsor Organizations:

  California Department of Transportation

  1227 O Street
  Sacramento, CA  United States  95843
• Performing Organizations:

  Sustainable Transportation Center/ITS-Davis

  ITS-Davis
  University of California, Davis
  Davis, CA  United States  95616
• Principal Investigators:

  Berry, Alison

• Start Date: 20091001
• Expected Completion Date: 0
• Actual Completion Date: 20110930
• Source Data: RiP Project 28170

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Drainage; Hydrology; Infiltration; Pollutants; Roadside flora; Roadside improvement; Runoff; Soil science; Soils; Vegetation control
• Geographic Terms: California
• Subject Areas: Highways; Hydraulics and Hydrology; I15: Environment;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01468033
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: University of California Transportation Center/Institute of Transportation Studies
• Contract Numbers: DTRT06-G-0022, R04-1
• Files: UTC, RIP, STATEDOT
• Created Date: Jan 3 2013 3:44PM