Falling Creek Reservoir

Falling Creek Reservoir (FCR) is a small (8.5 ha surface area, zmax = 9.3 m), warm monomictic system in southwestern Virginia, USA (Vinton, Roanoke County) that provides drinking water for local residents.  This eutrophic reservoir represents an exciting new site for research within the GLEON network because of two engineering systems installed within the water column that allow us to manipulate both oxygen concentrations and stratification.  In the past several years, the Western Virginia Water Authority (WVWA), which owns and operates FCR, has increasingly observed cyanobacterial blooms in the reservoir that have been associated with taste and odor problems.  In collaboration with the WVWA, we deployed and tested a hypolimnetic oxygenation system in FCR during the spring and summer of 2013.  We will be activating the destratification system installed in FCR in spring 2014.