TIDAL CREEK TEMPERATURE BEHAVIOR AND CONTROLLING FACTORS, WILMINGTON, NORTH CAROLINA

Understanding surface water hydrology is important for maximizing water resource availability and water quality in a watershed. In order to better understand the hydrology of a small tidal creek in Wilmington, North Carolina, we monitored temperature changes in the freshwater section of the creek for approximately one year. The monitoring revealed that though stream temperature was often correlated with diel temperature changes, as expected, storm events also had an impact on the temperature behavior of the stream. We hypothesized that these changes during storms could be due to factors such as stormwater pond discharges and surface runoff from different land cover types. These ideas were explored by measuring the temperature of stormwater ponds and the temperature of various land cover types. The results of this study will improve our understanding of the components of surface water discharge in a tidal creek ecosystem and the transient nature of perturbations caused by storm events.