EVALUATING IMPACTS OF CEMETERIES ON SURFACE WATER QUALITY IN THE FINGER LAKES WATERSHED

Cemetery, as an urban green space, provide ecosystem functions to the urban watershed, e.g., enhancing precipitation infiltration. However, a limited number of studies have been done to evaluate whether and to what extent cemeteries might have deteriorated water quality in urban watershed, especially at a regional or larger scale. Under the guidance of Professor Tao Wen (Twen08@syr.edu), we compiled surface water quality data as well as cemetery location information to explore the impact of cemetery-related human activities on the nearby surface water quality on a multi-site and regional scale. In this study, we focus on the Finger Lakes Watershed which overlays 17 New York counties.

This project consists of two phases. In Phase I: we first compiled water quality and cemetery GIS data from various sources before performing further data processing and data analysis. We then aggregated water quality and cemetery datasets by county to evaluate the county-level relationship between the number/density of cemetery and surface water quality. The preliminary results of county-level analysis showed statistically significant correlation between the number of cemeteries and concentrations of water quality parameters Nitrate, Sodium, Chloride, and Calcium. These parameters

In Phase II, driven by the above preliminary findings, further testing was done by reviewing nitrate and chloride concentrations closely at induvial sites. We used the ArcGIS software to manually select four cemeteries, in the vicinity of which both upstream and downstream surface water quality samples were Statistical tests were performed to compare the average upstream and downstream surface water chemistry at each cemetery.

At all sites, we observe an increase in chloride concentration downstream of the cemetery. This suggests that the cemeteries may be contributing additional chloride to the stream. At these four sites, nitrate concentration shows either little/no change or a decreasing trend from upstream to downstream to the cemeteries. This likely suggests that cemeteries do not incur a significant impact on the stream nitrate. Alternatively, other natural and human processes, e.g., precipitation dilution, might overshadow cemeteries’ impact with respect to nitrate. More work is needed to investigate the nitrate data in the future.