Study Area: Boston, Massachusetts

General Description:

The Boston study area is in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, and Connecticut in the northeastern USA. The population increased 6.7% from 1990 to 2000 in the Boston-Worcester-Lawrence, MA-NH-ME-CT Metropolitan Area and was about 5.8 million people in 2000 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2000). The study area is in the Northeastern Coastal Zone ecoregion (Omernik, 1987), which is characterized by low hills, forests, cropland and pasture, and urban lands and inceptisol soils (Flanagan and others, 1999). Elevation ranges from about 0 to 1,880 feet (0 to 573 meters) above sea level (U.S. Geological Survey, 2005). The climate is cool and humid, with mean annual temperature 48 degrees Fahrenheit (8.7 degrees Celsius) and mean annual precipitation of 48 inches (123 centimeters) (Daymet, 2005). Precipitation is evenly distributed throughout the year. Highest streamflows in all rivers occur in April as a result of spring runoff and snowmelt, and lowest streamflows occur in July through September (Flanagan and others, 1999). Streams in this region support warm-water biological communities (Flanagan and others, 1999).

Time of study:

Site selection 1999, data collection from spring 2000 to summer 2001.

Study design:

Thirty sites were selected with drainage basin areas between about 18 to 48 square miles (46 to 125 square kilometers) and had minimal natural variability among them. The land use gradient went primarily from forest to urban. Sites represented a broad range of urban intensity from low to high.

What urban looks like (maps and pictures)

Publications:

Coles and others, 2004; Cuffney and others, 2005; Meador and others 2005; Potapova and others, 2005; Short and others, 2005; Tate and others, 2005.

Reference:

Daymet, 2005, Numerical Terradynamic Simultion Group: Univeristy of Montana, accessed December 2005, at http://www.daymet.org.

Flanagan, S.M., Nielsen, M.G., Robinson, K.W., and Cole, J.F., 1999, Water-quality assessment of the New England Coastal Basins in Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island: environmental settings and implications for water quality and aquatic biota: U.S. Geological Survey, Water-Resources Investigations Report 98-4249, 62 p. http://pubs.usgs.gov/wri/wri984249/

Omernik, J. M., 1987, Ecoregions of the conterminous United States: Annals of the Association of American Geographers v. 77, 118-125 p.

U.S. Census Bureau, 2000, Census 2000 PHC-T-3, Ranking tables for metropolitan areas: 1990 and 2000, accessed January 2006, at http://www.census.gov/population/cen2000/phc-t3/tab03.pdf

U.S. Geological Survey, 2005, National Elevation Dataset (NED): U.S. Geological Survey, accessed December 2005, at http://ned.usgs.gov.

For more information about the study area http://nh.water.usgs.gov/projects/nawqa/sw_ulug.htm