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The Lake Worth Lagoon watershed encompasses about 450 square miles in Palm Beach County, and represents one of the most important estuarine areas in Florida
Anthropogenic activities beginning in the late 19th century and continuing through today have adversely affected the natural resources and aquatic biota of the lagoon. A major concern is the large deposition of muck sediment that has had a deleterious effect on seagrass growth. The major cause of these sediment deposits most likely is due to stormwater heavily laden with fluvial sediment, discharging through the S-155 control structure on the West Palm Beach (C-51) Canal. To address this problem, the U.S. Geological Survey and the Palm Beach County Department of Environmental Resource Management engaged in a joint partnership utilizing surrogate technology to develop rating curve estimators based on the relation between suspended sediment and different explanatory variables, including turbidity and discharge. To fulfill this objective, a continuous, instream water-quality monitoring station that records turbidity data in real time was installed upstream of structure S-155. Point samples were collected near the probe, and depth- and width-integrated samples were collected along the stream cross section. The water samples were collected over a range of seasonal and hydrologic conditions (from 2- to 85-percent exceedance on the flow-duration curve) and analyzed at a U.S. Geological Survey sediment laboratory. Four rating curve estimators were developed based on simple linear and multiple linear regression analyses to estimate suspended-sediment concentrations upstream of structure S-155 using the logarithms of turbidity, turbidity and discharge, and discharge. The coefficients of determination (R2) ranged from 0.75 to 0.90.
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