Regional high-frequency monitoring revealed chloride concentrations in exceedance of ecological benchmarks in urban streams across the Delaware River Basin, USA.

ABSTRACT: Rising chloride concentrations pose critical risks to freshwater stream ecosystems in temperate regions like the Delaware River Basin (DRB), USA, where winter deicer applications (i.e., road salt) are common. Increasing chloride concentrations have been documented in the region, but the extent to which chloride exceeds regulatory benchmarks remains unclear because detection of exceedances requires continuous monitoring of chloride (i.e., hourly or daily). A network of 82 non-tidal continuous specific conductance (SC) monitoring sites, spanning varied land use and geological settings, was established across the DRB to address this research need. First, a cluster analysis was conducted to group sites based on their watershed characteristics. Next, regression models for sites and clusters wer

SUBMITTER: Fanelli RM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12394352 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature