A Complete Water Balance of a Rain Garden

A bioinfiltration rain garden was retrofitted from an existing traffic island at Villanova University in 2001. It has been monitored continuously since 2003 at a five-minute timeseries resolution and with instrumentation that would enable a water balance calculation. This twenty-year dataset allows for an in-depth analysis of the hydrologic pathways and management in the rain garden. Using physical equations and modeled data (based on real-time measurements), a balance of all influent, stored, and effluent water within the rain garden was constructed.

The water balance data (totals of individual water balance components) of all storms used in assessing the rain garden’s performance in the study are provided in this dataset. This dataset is associated with the forthcoming publication: A Complete Water Balance of a Rain Garden (McGauley et al. 2023).