The impact of artificially impounded, residential headwater lakes on downstream water temperature

In the southeastern United States, which has very few natural lakes, developers often impound headwater streams to create esthetic lakes as focal points in the residential landscape. Given the prevalence and increasing abundance of these water features, it is important to assess and quantify the spatial and temporal impacts these lakes have on headwater stream temperatures. Any changes in the downstream thermal regime may influence not only the biological functioning of a stream, but also important physical and chemical water quality characteristics. The purpose of this study was to quantify the magnitude and extent of the downstream temperature disturbance associated with three different, artificially impounded, residential headwater lakes in Greenville, South Carolina. Water temperature loggers were installed upstream, in-lake, and downstream of three surface-release residential lakes and monitored at 5-min intervals from July 2007 to April 2008. In July/August 2007, longitudinal stream temperature profiles were measured at 50-m intervals both upstream and downstream of each lake in order to assess the spatial extent of the lake’s temperature disturbance. The lakes altered the downstream thermal regime at all three sites, increasing temperature by as much as 8.4 °C and decreasing diurnal variability by as much as 3.9 °C within the period of record. Furthermore, the longitudinal profiles of all three stream-lake systems showed no significant signs of downstream recovery to the upstream temperatures. The ecological effects of such temperature disturbances on stream biotic communities were not quantified in this study, but are likely significant. This study considered lakes only in South Carolina, but the observed changes to the downstream thermal regime are presumably similar for impounded residential headwater lakes across the US Southeast given the similar climate regime and comparable design and construction of these lakes across the region.