Quantifying hydrological interactions between precipitation, surface water runoff, and groundwater dynamics provides the basis for understanding sources and sinks for biogeochemical processes, and provides students with learning opportunities about the connectivity between different components along a gradient of urbanization in the Ala Wai watershed. In order to connect the coastal hydrodynamics in the Ala Wai with upland processes, a hydrological model will be developed and extended to the Ala Wai canal. A portion of the upper watershed (Manoa and Palolo Valley) has been modeled through a leveraged effort funded by the Water Resources and Research Center. A complete hydrological model of the Ala Wai watershed will provide necessary information on water fluxes at any given point and potentially describe the nutrient and sediment transport throughout the watershed. A successful hydrological model is driven by reliable meteorological data (e.g., precipitation and solar radiation) and the modeling output needs to be calibrated and validated with field observations, such as stream discharge, groundwater level, and corresponding loading/fluxes of nutrients, pesticides, and sediment. The proposed monitoring network will facilitate the capacity to achieve the necessary details in temporal and spatial scales of model development.
A student-led water quality observation and sampling network at the University of Hawaii