UMD Theses and Dissertations

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3

New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.

More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.

Browse

Filters

20181

Settings

Author: search.filters.author.Phillips, Tuana HilstSubject: search.filters.subject.Plant sciences

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    The stormwater retention benefits of urban trees and forests
    (2018) Phillips, Tuana Hilst; Pavao-Zuckerman, Mitchell; Environmental Science and Technology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    The use of urban tree canopies as strategies to mitigate stormwater runoff is limited in part by a lack of empirically observed data. This thesis quantifies soil infiltration capacity in 21 forest patches in Baltimore, Maryland, and reports results from a meta-analysis on urban tree transpiration. Results show that the degree to which soil infiltration and tree transpiration functions reduce stormwater runoff depends on soil physical properties, tree characteristics, and management drivers. Yet, results conservatively estimate that Baltimore forest patch soils are capable of infiltrating ~68% of rainfall. In addition, urban trees transpire ~1.7 mm of water per day in the growing season or ~0.8 mm of water per day on an annual basis, an amount of water that equals approximately 26% of the annual rainfall in the Baltimore region. Thus, urban trees and forests impact urban hydrology and are an important component of stormwater green infrastructure in built environments.