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Landscape Treatments to Manage the Damaging Effects of Salt

Idea Submitted by:
Diomy Zamora
List your MnDOT Office,District,City, County, Univ. or Other:
University of Minnesota
Idea Champion - Who at MnDOT/LRRB? :
Dan Gullickson-MnDOT

Why is this a priority for the State/County/City? : Road de-icing salt, primarily sodium chloride (NaCl) is used to clear roads of snow and ice for motorist safety and to improve the timeliness of getting to ones destination during adverse winter driving conditions. When snow and ice melts, the salt goes with it, washing into roadside ditches that can carry it into the watershed. Wind currents can also carry salt off the travel lanes onces it dries and is dislodged by vehicles. Chloride from the salt affects water quality and when concentrations are high enough can harm fish and plant life. Increases in sodium and chloride can also increase the mobility of metals located in the soils along major highways. In Sweden, a strong relationship was seen between trace metals Cadium, Copper, Lead, and Zinc mobilization and application of deicing salts. In the Twin Cities Metro Area, 70% of the chloride is retained in the watershed resulting in chloride accumulating in lakes, wetlands, and ground waters each year. Roadside landscape vegetation treatments can serve as a natural barrier that can trap blowing snow and increase pavement temperatures allowing for less salt to be applied to achieve bare pavement thus reducing the amount of salt entering the watershed. Plants can also clean up soil and water due to their ability to contain, degrade and eliminate metals and other harmful chemicals through a process called phytoremediation. The ultimate outcome of this study is the development of roadside landscape planting recommendations to enhance the biological function of roadsides that reduces the harmful effects of salt (chloride) from entering our waterways.

Project Type - MnDOT or LRRB / Research, Implementation or TRS:
MnDOT Research
Idea Status (moderator):
Re-scope for February 27 TRIG meeting

The overall objectives of this study are to:

1) assess the salt use reduction potential (by reducing the need to apply salt after blowing snow events) by identifying faster growing plant species, like hybrid and native willow, with optimal living snow fence properties,

2) quantify the potential to protect water quality in our lakes, streams, wetlands, and groundwater from road salt that is displaced by wind and/or surface water runoff that could be captured through various roadside vegetation planting regimes,

3) update the salt tolerance research for roadside andscape plant material, that is currently based on research conducted by the University of Minnesota in 1975, to assess the salt tolerance of new plant cultivars, as well as, roadside plant tolerance to the newer anti-icing chemicals.

Comment

Submitted by daniel.gullickson 11 months ago

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Comments (2)

  1. tara.carson

    I am very excited about this research propossal. We need to know if there are new cultivars that have been developed in the last 37 years that would work well for attenuating road salt. Further exploration of maximizing living snow fences is also very important. The only comment I had was that I was a little confused how objective 1. was stated..."assess the potential by identifying faster growing species." It seems that those are two different objectives:

    1. identify faster growing LSF spp

    2. assess the potential of LSFs to reduce the amount salt that needs to be applied (would this be testing the road condition after different amounts of salt are applied in areas with LSFs and areas without?)

    Or, maybe I read too much into it

    9 months ago
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  2. Moderator Comment
    Moderator

    This project will receive funding to implement fast-growing willow species as living snow fence.

    1 month ago
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