Suspended Sediment Concentrations Downstream of a Harvested Peat Bog: Analysis and Preliminary Modelling of Exceedances Using Logistic Regression
2006
St-Hilaire, André | Courtenay, Simon C | Díaz Delgado, Carlos | Pavey, Bronwyn | Ouarda, Taha B.M.J. | Boghen, Andrew | Bobée, Bernard
Acting as natural filters, peatlands are important wetland ecosystems in many northern countries, including Canada. To harvest peat, the vegetation must be removed and the harvested area ditched to drain and dry the peat. Drainage ditches are often designed to route water to settling ponds prior to releasing runoff into nearby water bodies. The present study investigated one key water quality variable, suspended sediment concentration (SSC), downstream of settling ponds in an actively harvested peatland. Time series of SSC for two spring seasons (2001-2002) were recorded at two sites using optical back scatterometers (OBS) calibrated in situ. SSC values exceeded the New Brunswick provincial guideline of 25 mg/L between 53.6 and 86.0% of the time. Even when the threshold was raised to relatively high values such as 500 mg/L, the percentage of exceedance remained relatively high (between 11 and 60%). A statistical model of SSC exceedance, based on logistic regression, was tested to investigate which hydrological forcings may explain high SSC values. Various independent variables were used in conjunction with an autoregressive component and were compared using different goodness of fit criteria. For a threshold of 500 mg/L, the best fit among all the logistic regression models tested included lag 1 and 2 autoregressive terms, as well as five-day cumulative precipitation, air temperature and three-day lagged discharge. The model was able to correctly predict 82% of exceedances.
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