The Climate Change Challenge
This action addresses the climate challenge of water quality. Increased frequency of high intensity rainfall, increased stormwater runoff and pollutants, and prolonged droughts lead to changes in hydrology within cranberry bog systems and an increased water quality impact to freshwater ecosystems. The potential climate impacts identified in the 2023 ResilientMass Plan addressed by this action include:
- Infrastructure Sector
- Reduction in clean water supply
- Natural Environment Sector
- Freshwater ecosystem degradation
- Loss of biodiversity, habitats and native species due to climate change impacts
Project Alignment with ResilientMass Plan Priority Actions
This project is directly related to DER 2023 ResilientMass Plan Action “Understanding groundwater flow and associated water quality benefits of cranberry bog restoration projects and practices”.
Climate Resilience Project Scope
The project seeks to complete hydrologic and geochemical studies to better understand how effective cranberry bog restoration projects and practices are at improving water quality, specifically looking at nitrogen. The project focuses on the Marstons Mills River Bog Ecological Restoration Site in Barnstable, MA, which is located within the watershed of the Three Bays Estuary. The water quality of Three Bays system is impaired due to nitrogen from wastewater, resulting in algal blooms, fish kills, and impacts to both recreational and commercial interests. The project includes installation of 46 separate monitoring wells across the project site that will help characterize current conditions and allow for future monitoring of changes in groundwater and surface water flows, and associated nitrogen fluxes over time as the Marstons Mills site is restored to a naturally functioning wetland. Ultimately, this is a long-term study that will require more than 5 years to understand the potential climate change impact.
Metrics and Results
This phase of the project was limited to installation of 46 groundwater monitoring wells and surface water staff gages to support future evaluation of the project site. Future monitoring will include collection of groundwater / surface water samples, and hydrologic data (i.e. water levels, hydraulic conductivity) to evaluate nutrient removal potential in restored cranberry bog wetlands. Ultimately, the project will report the change in nitrogen resulting from the restoration of the cranberry bogs and may be further refined to identify change resulting from specific design elements.
Best Practices and Lessons Learned
This phase of the project was limited to installation of groundwater monitoring wells and surface water staff gages to support future evaluation. Ultimately, the data from this project will help determine if/how restored cranberry bogs reduce nitrogen loading and what restoration actions might be applied to other sites for that purpose.
Further Action
Future monitoring of groundwater and surface water characteristics will be completed through existing project partnerships and a variety of project funding sources. The Barnstable Clean Water Coalition is in the process of initial groundwater characterization sampling and groundwater and surface water flow modeling and has established a mesocosm study of three study cells simulating nutrient removal under different conditions (installed less than a month ago as of this report).