Event mean concentrations for total phosphorus

Information: This page was updated October 31, 2019. Read table caption below.

Event mean concentrations for total phosphorus. This table was updated October 31, 2019. We retained data from the previous table, but we recommend using the median values from a literature review (3rd column). To see supporting information used to derive this table, link here.
Link to this table

Land cover/land use	Range (mg/L)	Median from literature review (mg/L)1	Recommended value (mg/L)1	Previous tabled value (mg/L)1
Commercial2, 3	0.20 - 0.34	0.20	0.34	0.22
Industrial2, 3	0.23 - 0.55	0.31	0.73	0.26
Residential3	0.26 - 0.38	0.36	0.38	0.30
High-density/Multi-family residential2, 3	0.28 - 0.40	0.28	0.28	0.27 to 0.32
Medium density residential	0.18 - 0.40	0.18	0.51
Low density residential	0.24 - 0.40	0.24	0.29
Freeways/transportation3	0.25 - 0.45	0.35	0.53	0.25
Mixed	0.25 - 0.45	0.29	0.89
Parks and recreation2				0.04
Open space2, 3	0.12 - 0.31	0.13	0.41	0.31
Conventional roof	0.05 - 0.20	0.09	0.27
Public/semi public (institutional)2, 3	0.18 - 0.40	0.26	0.42	0.18
Cropland2				0.32
Forest/shrub/grassland12				0.04
Open water2				0.01
Wetlands2				0.01 to 0.044
Farmsteads2				0.46
Forest	0.05 - 0.25	0.25	0.14

¹We recommend using the median from literature reviews and not the means or previous values.
² Minnehaha Creek Watershed district, 2003
³ Robert Pitt et al., 2004
⁴ Average for large wetlands and wetland complexes. Individual wetlands should be monitored to determine source/sink behavior.