Creating A Stormwater Runoff Model For The City Of Oxford, Mississippi: When It Rains, Where Does That Water Go?

The city of Oxford, Mississippi (home of the University of Mississippi) has experienced, in recent years, a rapid growth of urbanization. This rapid increase creates more impervious cover, such as bridges, roads, parking lots, etc., which can cause a stress on the capacity of stream load and causes flooding. To correct this, storm water management is needed in the city. This stormwater runoff model uses data collected from rain gauges, soil data from ssurgo and published soil infiltration rates from a Lafayette County soil survey, impervious cover created from Lidar and Aerial Photography, published evapotranspiration rates, and storm drain locations provided by the city of oxford planning department. This model uses high resolution Lidar for a detailed topographic model. Impervious cover was modeled using methods using either 1) a conditional statement using zero, 2) a conditional statement using an optimized threshold value or 3) hand editing. The flow direction and a weighted raster, one that incorporates the values of rainfall, evapotranspiration, impervious cover, and soil infiltration rate, is used within the flow accumulation model to achieve a stormwater runoff model. Nine pour points were determined capture storm water outfalls from the city. It is found that there is a significant influx of water that flows into the city. The eight pout point (on Burney Branch Creek, to the south side of the city) has the maximum outflow was found to be from Burney Branch on the south side of the city. The second largest outflow was from Davidson Creek on north side of the city