Skip Links

Data Series 837

Prepared in cooperation with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Franklin County Soil and Water Conservation District Data

Visualization of Soil-Moisture Change in Response to Precipitation Within Two Rain Gardens in Ohio

By Denise H. Dumouchelle and Robert A. Darner

Thumbnail of and link to report PDF (4.73 MB)Abstract

Stormwater runoff in urban areas is increasingly being managed by means of a variety of treaments that reduce or delay runoff and promote more natural infiltration. One such treatment is a rain garden, which is built to detain runoff and allow for water infiltration and uptake by plants. Water flow into or out of a rain garden can be readily monitored with a variety of tools; however, observing the movement of water within the rain garden is less straightforward. Soil-moisture probes in combination with an automated interpolation procedure were used to document the infiltration of water into two rain gardens in Ohio. Animations show changes in soil moisture in the rain gardens during two precipitation events. At both sites, the animations demonstrate underutilization of the rain gardens.

First posted April 21, 2014

For additional information, contact:
Director, Ohio Water Science Center
U.S. Geological Survey
6480 Doubletree Avenue
Columbus, OH 43229-1111
http://oh.water.usgs.gov/

Part or all of this report is presented in Portable Document Format (PDF). For best results viewing and printing PDF documents, it is recommended that you download the documents to your computer and open them with Adobe Reader. PDF documents opened from your browser may not display or print as intended. Download the latest version of Adobe Reader, free of charge.

Viewing of animations in this product requires an application capable of playing .avi files. Such players are available for download free of charge from various Internet sources.


Suggested citation:

Dumouchelle. D.H., and Darner, R.A, 2014, Visualization of soil-moisture change in response to precipitation within two rain gardens in Ohio: U.S. Geological Survey Data Series 837, 9-p. pamphlet, 2 video files, https://dx.doi.org/10.3133/ds837.

ISSN 2327-638X (online)



Contents

Abstract

Introduction

Purpose and Scope

Methods

Data and Visualization

Reference Cited