All Climate Events

June 30th, 2021. 2:00 PM. Road Salts and Freshwater Salinization Syndrome: An Emerging Water Quality Threat. Paul Mayer & Tammy Newcomer-Johnson, EPA; Sujay Kaushal & Joe Galella, University of Maryland College Park. Sponsored by the EPA. Register here.

Streams throughout the U.S. and world-wide have increased in salinity due to multiple processes, including road salt and human-accelerated weathering of impervious surfaces, reductions in acid rain, and other anthropogenic legacies. This freshwater salinization, in turn, mobilizes chemical cocktails via ion exchange and other biogeochemical processes.

This webinar will examine fate and transport of salts and chemical cocktails, describe environmental impacts, and discuss the use of real-time sensor data to characterize trends of nutrients and metals using long-term data from urban streams in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. In addition, approaches to managing this growing environmental and health problem will be discussed.