Date of Graduation
5-2025
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Science in Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences
Degree Level
Undergraduate
Department
Crop, Soil and Environmental Sciences
Advisor/Mentor
Speir, Shannon
Committee Member
Wood, Lisa
Second Committee Member
Runkle, Benjamin
Abstract
As the urban world expands, the construction of impervious surfaces increases erosion and runoff into nearby streams. Urbanization also adds waste from human activity into the environment. One of these wastes is runoff from road salt application in winter months, which can increase stream salinization and interfere with other important ecological processes, such as denitrification. Therefore, the objective of this study was to compare nitrate removal via denitrification between two urban streams to understand the role of road salts in freshwater salinization. We compared conductivity measurements between the streams to see how background conductivity (a proxy for salinity) influences resilience of denitrification to salinization. We also compared how typical road salts and road salts with beet juice (an “eco-friendly” alternative) have different effects on denitrification, to understand the impacts of road salts in urban streams. In addition, we collected samples and ran analyses in winter and summer to understand if seasonal salt holdover impacts denitrification rates. We nitrogen transformation rates were significantly different between the two streams with different background conductivities (p0.1). Our work sheds light on the potential road salt impacts on important ecological processes, as well as assessing if “eco-friendly” alternatives have unexpected impacts on ecosystem functions. These data and results can inform road salt usage, as well as protection and conservation efforts towards urban streams.
Keywords
Urbanization; denitrification; salinization; road salt; runoff; stream ecology
Citation
Beck, B. (2025). Quantifying Freshwater Salinization Impacts on Nitrate Removal via Denitrification in Urban Streams. Crop, Soil and Environmental Sciences Undergraduate Honors Theses Retrieved from https://scholarworks.uark.edu/csesuht/48
