Moores Run Watershed Essay

Rapid urbanization of relatively small watersheds is the primary reason attributed to the reduced infiltration rate, increased runoff volume and the consequent flooding in the urban areas. This study focuses on selection of different Low Impact Development (LID) design options that can attenuate flood flows in urban areas. Watershed considered for this study is Moores Run watershed (8.8 Km2) located in Baltimore, Maryland. A basin scale curve number based hydrologic model was developed in HEC-HMS with the aid of ArcGIS and HEC-GeoHMS. USGS 01585230 at Radecke Avenue gauge was used for the calibration of hydrologic model. Design storms with different return periods, developed by NOAA, were routed through the watershed to produce the peak flood scenarios for current land use conditions. Further, the hydrologic …show more content…
The motivation behind the selection of this particular watershed arose from the fact that it experiences floods of unit specific discharge greater than 1m3/s/Km2 virtually once a month every year (Smith et. al., 2005). This basin study could provide an insight into the extremes resulted from intense storm event on small urban watersheds in US and around the world. Moores Run watershed is characterized by an urbanized settlement dominated by dense residential land use. Owing to its development more than 100 years ago, its surface drainage system consists of a single surface drainage channel at its downstream basin (Smith et. al., 2005). Whole watershed comprises of about 98% of medium residential settlement and 2% of forest and woody wetlands. Moores Run is accompanied by two USGS stream flow gaging stations; USGS 01585230 at Radecke Avenue and USGS 01585225 at a tributary of Moores Run, near Todd Avenue (Figure 1). Major source of Moores Run flow is the surface run-off during storms. Moores Run watershed, therefore, turns virtually dry except in the wet