Project Number: NH_2024_WaterQuality
Start Date: 2026-01-29 End Date: 2027-01-28
Principal Investigators:
Adam S. Wymore (Associate Professor)
Abstract: New Hampshire’s surface waters are central to the identity of the state and are comprised of over 1,300 lakes and 10,000 miles of streams and rivers. These freshwater systems are a valuable natural resource, contributing to the state’s economic base through recreation, tourism, enhanced real estate values, and drinking water supplies. It is estimated that freshwater recreation and public water supplies contribute $1.5 billion in sales annually to NH’s economy. Rapid population growth throughout New Hampshire threatens the state’s water supplies and ecosystem health. The proposed work will continue long-term documentation of changes to water quality in response to changing land use and management practices associated with population growth, and extreme climatic events. Long-term monitoring provides the only sustained information on the status of natural resources and is imperative to understand future trajectories of change. This project leverages a multi-component approach drawing on collaboration with local watershed monitoring groups and on-going research by UNH staff and students. Collectively, these efforts will lead to multiple spatially distributed long-term datasets of water quality in New Hampshire. These water quality datasets will support the development, testing and refinement of predictive models, accurately assess the impacts of watershed management practices on drinking water supplies, assess efforts to reduce surface water quality impairments, and provide potential early warning signs of dramatic changes to surface water quality in the region resulting from rapid development and changing environmental conditions.
