Enhancement and Validation of a Stormwater Pond Assessment Tool

Abstract

The Pond Assessment Tool (beta version) is a spreadsheet-based tool that was originally developed for the evaluation and management of stormwater ponds, as part of the Janke et al. (2023) study assessing phosphorus retention in stormwater ponds and wetlands treating stormwater runoff. The Tool was developed to provide pond managers with a toolbox to evaluate ponds in a straightforward and inexpensive manner. The Tool can perform screening and assessment of stormwater ponds at risk of poor phosphorus performance using readily available spatial, water quality, and pond data, thereby providing a low-cost method for assessing a large number of stormwater ponds for phosphorus water quality functionality. The original version of the Tool, however, was not validated. The primary objective of this project was to update and validate the original version of the Pond assessment Tool, so that conditions indicative of poor phosphorus retention in ponds, i.e., high TP, low dissolved oxygen, and high sediment phosphorus release, could be evaluated