Groundwater Dynamics at Claytor Nature Center wetlands.

Wetlands are critical components of functioning at the interface between terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. They provide diverse habitat for species, filtration and storage of precipitation and runoff, and mediate dynamics of groundwater. The Claytor Nature Center has abundant and diverse wetlands that can provide a model of dynamics and function that could inform efforts to facilitate the development and conservation of proposed wetlands upon the draining of College Lake. This project records the fluctuation of groundwater levels in wetland monitoring wells along the Big Otter River at the University of Lynchburg’s Claytor Nature Center in Bedford County, Virginia. Hydrologic investigation of this area in the past could not correlate groundwater fluctuations to either local precipitation or fluctuations in level of the Big Otter River. This suggests groundwater level in this area may be a result of controlling hydrologic conditions elsewhere in the watershed. This project uses available climatological data from the surrounding area, and local weather data from the Claytor Nature Center Weather Station to correlate wetland groundwater dynamics to spatial patterns in regional precipitation