EPA/600/R-11/207
December 2011
HEALTHY WATERSHEDS INTEGRATED
ASSESSMENTS WORKSHOP SYNTHESIS
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The information in this document was funded wholly (or in part) by the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency under Contract EP-C-08-002, Task Order 0020 to the Cadmus Group, Inc. It has been subjected
to Agency review and approved for publication. Mention of trade names or commercial products does
not constitute endorsement or recommendation for use. The statements in this report reflect the
individual expert views and opinions of the workshop attendees. They do not represent analyses or
positions of the Office of Water, Office of Research and Development, or the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency.
This is contribution number AED-11-051 of the Atlantic Ecology Division, National Health and
Environmental Effects Research Laboratory, Office of Research and Development, U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency.
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This document represents a synthesis of the ideas discussed at the Healthy Watersheds Integrated
Assessments Workshop held in Estes Park, Colorado from November 2 through November 4, 2010. The
following workshop participants dedicated much of their time and effort to summarize and expand on
these ideas and are responsible for the content of this document.
Chapter 1:
Laura Gabanski, U.S. EPA Office of Water
Naomi Detenbeck, U.S. EPA Office of Research and Development
Chapter 2:
LeRoy Poff, Colorado State University
James Thorp, University of Kansas
Stephen Stanley, Washington Department of Ecology
Chapter 3:
Susan Julius, U.S. EPA Office of Research and Development
Doug Norton, U.S. EPA Office of Water
Marilyn ten Brink, U.S. EPA Office of Research and Development
Britta Bierwagen, U.S. EPA Office of Research and Development
Chapter 4:
Stephen Stanley, Washington Department of Ecology
Mike Kline, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources
Leslie Bach, The Nature Conservancy
Gary Whelan, Michigan Department of Natural Resources
Ted Walsh, New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services
Chapter 5:
Mike Kline, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources
Bob Benson, The Nature Conservancy
Ralph Abele, U.S. EPA Region 1
Stephen Stanley, Washington Department of Ecology
Chapter 6:
Naomi Detenbeck, U.S. EPA Office of Research and Development
Joseph Flotemersch, U.S. EPA Office of Research and Development
Susan Julius, U.S. EPA Office of Research and Development
Elly Best, U.S. EPA Office of Research and Development
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Disclaimer i
Acknowledgements ii
Table of Contents iii
List of Figures v
List of Tables vi
List of Acronyms vii
Executive Summary viii
Chapter 1 Background 1
Healthy Watersheds Initiative Background 2
Audience and Intended Use for Synthesis Document 2
Overview of Chapters 4
Chapter 2 Conceptual Model 5
A Hierarchical Perspective on Watershed Health 5
The Human Dimension of Watershed Health 8
Assessing Watershed Health 9
Lotic Systems 11
Lentic Systems 13
Depressional Wetlands and Lakes 13
Slope Wetlands 14
Riverine Wetlands 14
Tidal Fringe Wetlands and Estuarine Systems 14
Chapter 3 Watershed Resilience 16
Introduction to Ecological Resilience 16
Definitions 16
Benefits of Resilience 19
Challenges of Managing for Resilience 19
Indicators and Assessment Methods 21
Critical Concepts for Resilience Indicators and Assessment 22
Implementation 24
Examples 27
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Watersheds 27
Lakes 27
Coral Reefs 28
Monitoring for Resilience and Employing Adaptive Management 29
Summary of Resilience Challenges and Responses 30
Chapter 4 Integrated Assessments 31
Watershed Framework 32
Using a Tiered Approach 33
Other Factors to Consider - Data Quality and Accuracy of Results 34
Tiered Integrated Assessments 34
Watershed Scale, Tier 1 34
Waterbody Scale, Tier 2 35
Local Scale, Tier 3 35
Local Scale, Tier 4 35
Using Integrated Tiered Assessments to Identify Healthy Watersheds 36
Example of Tier I Assessment 39
Example of Tier 3 Assessment 40
Guidance for Interpreting and Applying Assessment Results 41
Integration of Assessment Components 43
Displaying and Communicating Results 44
Chapter 5 Implementation of Healthy Watershed Programs 45
Creating a Government Framework for Program Development 45
Developing Integrated Assessments and Strategic Plans 47
Establishing Effective Healthy Watershed Conservation and Protection Programs 50
Chapter 6 Data Gaps and Research Needs 53
Logic Model for Healthy Watersheds Integrated Assessments 53
SGI: Increase Protection of Healthy Waters 55
SG2: Enhance Watershed Resiliency 56
SG3: Restore Degraded Waters 57
References 58
IV
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Figure 2-1 Conceptual Model of a Watershed 6
Figure 2-2 Hierarchical relationship of ecosystem components 10
Figure 2-3 Hierarchical habitat structure in watershed 12
Figure 3-1 Conceptual illustration of how improving resilience delays onset of the transition period of
threshold change from before 2025 further outward toward 2050 19
Figure 3-2 Example of how reference station status can degrade over time due to climate-induced
increases in stream temperature 20
Figure 3-3 Importance and Impairment 25
Figure 3-4 A recovery potential screening assessment of healthy and impaired watersheds 27
Figure 4-1 Conceptual model from Chapter 2 showing the relationship of the "assessment tiers" to the
components of the model 33
Figure 4-2 Results of Tier 1 Assessment of water flow processes in Kitsap County, Puget Sound
Washington 39
Figure 4-3 Lewis Creek in Vermont 40
Figure 4-4 Interpreting and Applying Assessment Results 42
Figure 6-1 Sustainability Realization Process 54
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Table 3-1 Selected definitions of ecological resilience 17
Table 3-2 Example recovery potential screening indicators 23
Table 4-1 Types of data collected in four hierarchical tiers of watershed assessment 37
Table 4-2 Features and process-based components used in developing mapping products to protect
healthy watersheds 38
Table 5-1 The Active River Area framework 51
VI
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List of Acronyms
ACE Air, Climate, and Energy
AFWA Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies
ASIWPCA Association of State and Interstate Water Pollution Control Administrators
ASWM Association of State Wetland Managers
BCG Biological Condition Gradient
BMPs Best Management Practices
CWA Clean Water Act
ECOS Environmental Council of the States
ELOHA Ecological Limits of Hydrologic Alteration
EPA U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
EMAP Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program
FEMA Federal Emergency Management Agency
FPZ Functional Process Zone
GDE Ground water Dependent Ecosystem
GIS Geographic Information System
HGM Hydrogeomorphic
HUC Hydrologic Unit Code
HW Healthy Watershed
HWI Healthy Watersheds Initiative
HWIA Healthy Watersheds Integrated Assessments
IBI Index of Biotic Integrity
LCC Landscape Conservation Cooperatives
MD Maryland
MN DNR Minnesota Department of Natural Resources
NFHB National Fish Habitat Board
NFIP National Flood Insurance Program
NGOs Nongovernmental Organizations
ORD Office of Research and Development
OW Office of Water
SES Social-ecological system
SGs Strategic Goals
SGI Strategic Goal 1
SLICE Sustaining Lakes In a Changing Environment
WA DE Washington Department of Ecology
WSWC Western States Water Council
VII
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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, in partnership with others, is embarking on the new Healthy
Watersheds Initiative to protect our remaining healthy watersheds, prevent them from becoming
impaired, and accelerate our restoration successes. In November 2010, a Healthy Watersheds
Integrated Assessments Workshop brought together technical experts and practitioners to advance the
state-of-the-science on integrated healthy watersheds assessments and to consider the role of green
infrastructure (i.e., networks of natural land cover) in maintaining watershed health and resilience. The
focus of the workshop was on the technical matters of conducting, and the state-of-the-science
supporting, healthy watershed assessments, and not on the policy issue of the approach for watershed
assessment appropriate for environmental decision making. This document synthesizes, and builds on,
the ideas discussed at the Workshop. It represents the ideas and views of the contributors, and should
be considered as a starting point for further exploration. This document is not EPA policy nor is it EPA
guidance; rather it reflects the further development of ideas by some of the workshop participants.
Watershed function and aquatic ecological integrity are dependent on the interaction of multiple
processes and conditions across many spatial and temporal scales. Organizing these multiple processes
and conditions into a coherent set of relationships is necessary to better understand the functions that
support a healthy watershed, and to guide management actions that sustain ecological integrity of
aquatic ecosystems. "Health" can be viewed as a relative measure of the deviation from some "natural"
or baseline condition, and it is usually measured by some static indicator(s), such as an index of
biological integrity or landscape condition (e.g., connectivity). However, it is the underlying watershed
process regimes that generate the necessary dynamic conditions that maintain ecological integrity, so a
measure of "health" would more appropriately be based on the extent to which watershed process
regimes are modified relative to the baseline, or their natural ranges of variation. Key to protecting
healthy watersheds is understanding how particular conditions and process regimes within a watershed
should be managed to maintain the ecosystem in some desired state within the natural range of
variation. When disturbances, changes, and shocks occur within a watershed, processes may be pushed
outside of their natural range of variability. In such cases, the system may recover because its adaptive
capacity has not been exceeded, or it could pass a threshold and change into another ecosystem state.
Increasing a system's resilience to pressures includes ensuring that watersheds retain their adaptive
attributes such as meander belts, riparian wetlands, floodplains, terraces, and material contribution
areas. For example, a disturbance may lead to temporary changes in the timing, volume, or duration of
flow that are outside the natural range of variability; but within a resilient watershed, these
perturbations will not cause a permanent state change because riparian areas and floodplains help to
absorb some of the disturbance.
VIII
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With an understanding of the hierarchical organization of the drivers, processes, and functions of
aquatic ecosystems, the appropriate framework for an assessment can be developed. A "tiered
approach" is one potential strategy for conducting an integrated watershed assessment that allows
users to address the range of management actions for a watershed within the limitations of available
time and budget. A truly integrated assessment will include an assessment at the broad or watershed
scale since it informs analysis at the subsequent finer scales. A watershed scale assessment can provide
information on key processes, stressors, and conditions within the landscape based on broad geographic
information and land use patterns. However, a broad scale analysis is limited primarily to issues
addressing planning level decisions that deal with land use patterns (e.g., zoning, designations, and
policies) and water use as it affects hydroecological requirements (e.g., instream flow, ground water
input, lake levels, hydrologic connectivity). Finer scale assessments (i.e., waterbody and local scale) are
performed within the context of the watershed scale and can address issues regarding reach and site
scale processes, and specific protection and restoration designs.
Tiered assessments create efficiency by using existing data for an initial screening. A healthy watershed
classification system based on large-scale remote sensing data may then identify where finer scale,
more intensive assessments should be prioritized. It may also reveal those development patterns that
are most protective of watershed processes and functions, and avoid costly environmental issues such
as flooding, ground water contamination, and low flow concerns that cannot be readily resolved with
site level actions. Smaller-scale assessments may be used to classify and map specific areas that are
important to protecting watershed processes and resiliency, and at the same time identify specific
stressors that may threaten or impede the recovery of healthy watershed functions.
As tiers of assessment are completed, and results are shared with the public, care must be taken to
explain what the data may or may not be telling us. To ensure the appropriate application of assessment
results, data has to be accessible in a manner that is appropriate to the user's goals, objectives, and
decision process. Without clear written and visual explanations of the basis and need for strategic and
prioritized watershed actions, public support will not be easily achieved.
A process-oriented approach of protecting the ecological processes that naturally create and maintain
habitats will enhance the traditional site-specific and stream reach surface water quality approach.
Further, the protection of ecological processes will benefit from a broader landscape approach of not
only maintaining stream buffers, but integrating watershed components such as meander belts, lake
shores, riparian wetlands, and floodplains into protection programs. All of this will require aquatic
resource managers to work at larger scales with a whole new set of partners concerned with land use
planning and management.
IX
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Land and water protection through non-regulatory and regulatory programs, conducted at all levels of
government in partnership with nongovernmental organizations and landowners, is central to
implementing the Healthy Watersheds Initiative. However, protection and restoration are often part of
an integrated approach, as many states consider opportunities to protect healthy watersheds and
restore impaired watersheds with a high recovery potential. A process-based approach that considers
watershed resiliency and sustainability is important for restoration success. In addition to restoring
natural flows, this could mean adding green infrastructure, removing constraints (e.g., dams), or working
to ensure that land-water ecosystems remain dynamically connected. To restore and protect dynamic
processes, planning should bring together different interest groups and provide opportunities and
incentives to bundle "project" components and achieve a net ecological benefit. Regulatory, technical
assistance, and funding program managers should strive to integrate land conservation; wetland,
riparian, and floodplain protection and restoration; urban stormwater and agricultural best
management practices; channel and shoreline management; and instream ecological flow protection
and restoration.
Protecting healthy watersheds is cost-effective in the long run. The goal of the Clean Water Act is to
restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the Nation's waters. Historically,
greater emphasis has been placed on the restoration element of the goal. A shift in emphasis from
restoration alone, to more of a balance between "avoidance" or maintenance of the integrity of the
Nation's waters and restoration, at all levels of government, would better achieve the integrity goal of
the Clean Water Act. Much can be done at very little cost, especially with support and coordination from
regional entities and federal agencies. Local and state Healthy Watersheds initiatives can get off to a fast
and efficient start by learning from the successes and failures of one another. EPA and other federal
agencies should consider working together to emphasize integrated assessments and Healthy
Watersheds protection in their research and grant programs, and support a web-based clearinghouse
where states are encouraged to post their accomplishments and success stories.
A number of research gaps and data needs relevant to Healthy Watersheds have been identified as
priorities. In order to increase protection of healthy waters, the following research priorities have been
identified: 1) Evaluate core metrics and methods for measurements of healthy watersheds; 2) Conduct
cost-benefit analyses to explore the long-term net benefit of protecting healthy watersheds, green
infrastructure, and processes sustaining healthy watersheds; 3) Identify characteristics of aquatic
ecosystems and their surrounding watersheds that make them resilient to changing land use and climate
for use in predictive models; 4) Understand interdependence of existing and proposed stratification
frameworks; 5) Develop regional models to predict natural and altered flow, ground water, and thermal
regimes; 6) Develop efficient and cost-effective methods for assessing status and trends in
geomorphology and material transport; and 7) Explore consistency of assessment results across
endpoints and spatial and temporal scales.
In order to enhance watershed resiliency, the following significant gaps in out scientific knowledge have
been identified: 1) Understand responses of aquatic systems to the effects of climate change; 2) Identify
the indicators and develop the sampling schemes needed to monitor and detect changes in condition or
drift in reference sites due to climate change; and (again) 3) Identify characteristics of aquatic
ecosystems and their surrounding watersheds that make them resilient to changing land use and climate
for use in the design of predictive models.
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Finally, recommendations for improving restoration of degraded waters include: 1) Enhance existing
monitoring approaches to include representative systems for Healthy Watersheds evaluation and
adaptive management; 2) Use Healthy Watersheds principles when coordinating protection and
restoration across multiple scales; and 3) Promote the establishment of partnerships to explore the
socioeconomic conditions that favor healthy watershed protection.
XI
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1
In partnership with states, tribes, local governments, nongovernmental organizations and others, the
Healthy Watersheds Initiative (HWI) is intended to protect our remaining healthy watersheds, prevent
them from becoming impaired, and accelerate our restoration successes. Healthy watersheds are
protected using a holistic, integrated, systems approach to protecting aquatic ecosystems that
recognizes their dynamics and interconnectivity in the landscape. This includes not only protecting
aquatic biota and habitat, but also the key hydrologic and geomorphic processes and landscape
conditions that sustain them.
A healthy watershed (HW) is one in which natural land cover maintains hydrologic and geomorphic
processes within their natural range of variation, habitat of sufficient size and connectivity supports
native aquatic and riparian species, and water quality supports healthy biological communities. An
interconnected network of natural land cover throughout a watershed, and especially in the riparian
zone, provides critical habitat and supports maintenance of the natural flow regime and fluctuations in
water levels. It also helps to maintain natural geomorphic processes, such as sediment storage and
deposition, which form the basis of aquatic habitats. Connectivity of aquatic and riparian habitats, in the
longitudinal, lateral, vertical, and temporal dimensions, helps to ensure that biotic refugia are available
during floods, droughts, and other extreme events. Part of the definition of a healthy watershed is
resilience to disturbances. Resilience is related to the concepts of adaptive capacity (ability to adjust
without degrading) and recovery potential (ability to recover after a temporary degradation) discussed
in Chapter 3.
The HWI is intended to be proactive and strategic in its implementation. Its key elements are (US EPA
2011g):
1. Establish partnerships to identify and implement protection of healthy watersheds;
2. Identify healthy watersheds and intact components of altered watersheds state-wide
through integrated assessments;
3. Implement state-wide strategic protection plans and programs based on vulnerability and
other opportunities;
4. Implement local protection programs based on priorities from state and local assessments;
5. Provide information to inform ecological recoverability and help set priorities for restoration
of impaired waters; and
6. Provide information to the public on healthy watersheds, including the socio-economic
benefits of their protection.
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The purpose of the Healthy Watersheds Integrated Assessments Workshop was to bring together
national experts and practitioners to advance the state of the science on integrated healthy watersheds
assessments and to consider the role of green infrastructure (i.e., networks of natural land cover) in
maintaining watershed health and resilience. At the state level, integrated assessments are beginning to
be used to identify healthy watersheds and intact components/processes in other watersheds for
protection and restoration prioritization decisions. Watershed components examined in integrated
healthy watersheds assessments include green infrastructure, biota, habitat, water quality, and the key
processes that determine their natural state: hydrology, fluvial geomorphology, and natural disturbance
regimes. Thus far, most of the integrated assessment approaches developed by states have combined
assessments of various watershed components in indices that are spatially displayed in a geographic
information system (GIS).
In addition to exploring the interrelation between watershed components and ways to capture that
integration in assessments, this workshop also sought to identify methods that could be used to assess
the resilience of healthy watersheds and strategies for building on existing resources to implement
integrated assessments in state, tribal, or regional programs. The utilization of existing resources in the
process of developing healthy watersheds lists was particularly emphasized. Data gaps and research
needs that may hinder the development of accurate healthy watersheds lists were also considered.
The goals of the Healthy Watersheds Integrated Assessments Workshop were to:
• Improve the healthy watersheds conceptual model1 to capture more accurately the
relationships among healthy watershed components (including green infrastructure);
• Improve the understanding of watershed resilience and resilience-based management;
• Identify potential state-level approaches to integrated assessments;
• Identify strategies for promoting HWI objectives through partnerships; and
• Identify existing data gaps and areas in need of future research.
The purpose of this synthesis document is to build on the discussions from the workshop to further
develop and synthesize ideas on a Healthy Watersheds integrated assessment conceptual model,
watershed resilience, integrated assessment approaches, applications of healthy watersheds
assessments, and data gaps and research needs. The ideas and views presented in this document are
not necessarily those of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), but rather those of the
individual authors and contributors. The ideas and approaches presented here should be considered as
a starting point for further exploration of concepts related to Healthy Watersheds Integrated
Assessments and protection programs.
1 Based on EPA Science Advisory Board's Essential Ecological Elements
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The target audiences for this synthesis document are scientists, program managers, and policy makers
at the state, federal, and local levels who have a technical understanding of the topics and will be
implementing management programs (Chapter 5). However, this document should not be interpreted as
program implementation guidance. This synthesis document will also inform future research to support
Healthy Watersheds Integrated Assessments, especially in EPA's Office of Research and Development
(ORD).
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This synthesis document is organized around five chapters, each addressing a different goal of the
Healthy Watersheds Integrated Assessments Workshop.
Chapter 2: Conceptual Model
What is a "healthy watershed?" This chapter presents a hierarchical framework of the relationships
among the interacting processes that govern watershed integrity and function. Selecting the appropriate
spatial and temporal scales for monitoring, management, protection, restoration and other actions is
necessary to capture the natural variability of a watershed's physical, chemical, and biological process
regimes and treat the causes, not the symptoms, of watershed impairment.
Chapters: Watershed Resilience
The purpose of this chapter is to explore concepts of ecological resilience and how they overlap with
healthy watersheds concepts. This chapter discusses the various ways in which disturbance, resistance,
and equilibrium can be used to identify resilient watersheds and develop management priorities.
Examples of characteristics of resilience and implementation of resilience-based management are
included.
Chapter 4: Integrated Assessment Approaches
This chapter provides an overview of possible approaches that can be used to conduct integrated
assessments of healthy watersheds. The assessment approaches emphasize the conceptual model of
interacting watershed processes discussed in Chapter 2. Tiered assessments are presented as an
approach to incorporating varying spatial and temporal scales. Equally important to data collection and
assessment approaches are methods for interpretation, display, and communication of results.
Chapters: Implementation of Healthy Watershed Programs
This chapter discusses strategies for setting up government programs to implement healthy watershed
programs in states. It discusses actions that could be taken to enable those programs to succeed.
Possible structures for coordination among federal, regional, state, and local agencies to jointly promote
healthy ecological, economic, and social systems are considered.
Chapter 6: Data Gaps and Research Needs
This final chapter uses a logic model to identify data gaps and research needs associated with Healthy
Watersheds Integrated Assessments based on desired outcomes. From the desired outcomes, long-
term, intermediate, and short-term goals can be derived. Three overarching goals are identified; the
inputs required to achieve these goals have been used to structure a list of data gaps and research
needs.
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Scientists understand that watershed function and aquatic ecological integrity2 result from the
interaction of multiple processes and conditions operating across many spatial and temporal scales.
Organizing these multiple processes and conditions into a coherent set of relationships is necessary to
allow a meaningful definition of watershed "health" and to guide management actions that can
maintain or restore watershed health and thus sustain ecological integrity of aquatic ecosystems.
In general, watersheds are land surface areas that function to deliver water, sediment, wood, chemicals,
and nutrients via gravity flow to streams and river networks, wetlands, lakes, and the sea. The delivery
of these materials shapes the physical, chemical, and biological characteristics of the receiving aquatic
systems. Watersheds are also influenced by ground water dynamics. Watersheds differ naturally in the
magnitudes, frequency, timing, and episodic nature of material inputs and dynamics in response to
regional climatic patterns, and to watershed land surface features. Therefore, it is important to adopt a
framework for defining natural watershed function and health that reflects this natural variation.
A hierarchical, nested framework can be used to organize the functional relationships between multi-
scale processes and conditions that define watershed function and aquatic ecological integrity, as shown
in Figure 2-1. Hierarchical constructs for depicting the organization of physical, chemical, and ecological
processes within watersheds are common for both habitat or landscape characterization (Frissell et al.
1984; Thorp et al. 2006, 2008; Beechie et al. 2010) and for ecological organization (Tonn et al. 1990;
Maxwell et al. 1995; Poff 1997; Higgins et al. 2005). A basic premise of the hierarchical approach is that
processes and patterns observed at one spatial or time scale are constrained by processes acting at a
larger spatial extent or time scale. For example, the frequency of local streambed movement or
disturbance in an individual stream riffle depends on both the watershed geology (e.g., the coarseness
of the bed particles and the local streambed slope) and on the regional climate (i.e., frequency of storm-
generated high flows). Thus, in a conceptual hierarchical perspective (Figure 2-1), climate is considered a
high level "driver" because temporal patterns of precipitation and temperature characteristic of a region
directly regulate the volume, seasonality, and form (rainfall vs. snowfall) of atmospheric water delivery
to any particular watershed. Climate acts to regulate watershed-scale processes such as water and
material flux between terrestrial and aquatic systems. Seasonal temperature patterns and extremes also
directly influence the types and productivity of terrestrial plants that help regulate watershed runoff, as
well as the types and abundances of aquatic organisms that comprise regional biological integrity.
Geographic variation in climate creates associated variation in watershed processes and ecological
patterns.
2 Defined as "the capability of supporting and maintaining a balanced, integrated, adaptive community of
organisms having a species composition, diversity, and functional organization comparable to that of the natural
habitat of the region." Karr and Dudley (1981).
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Within a climatic setting, watershed-scale "controls" such as physical and biological landscape elements
act to govern the rates and routes by which precipitation moves across or through the land surface to
discharge into aquatic ecosystems. These coupled climatic-landscape controls act to regulate the
structure and function of streams, rivers, wetlands, lakes, and tidal systems. These controls include the
geology, soils, and vegetative cover of a watershed, as these factors jointly determine rates of
infiltration and the balance of overland vs. subsurface water delivery to aquatic systems. Likewise, the
physiographic setting (topographic relief) of a watershed influences the propensity for overland flow
and thus runoff rates to receiving channels. The rates and routes of runoff interact with soils and surface
features to transport materials (soils, nutrients, wood) downhill to aquatic systems. Where topographic
relief is low and the geology favorable for high infiltration, ground water recharge occurs, and this can
contribute to ground water discharge in down-gradient wetlands, lakes, and stream channels. This
discharge delivers dissolved chemicals and nutrients and promotes a more dampened hydrograph (less
flow variability) in streams and natural water level fluctuations in wetlands and lakes. Ground water
discharge also helps to dampen seasonal temperature variations in rivers, lakes, and wetlands. In
summary, the combined climatic and geologic controls on runoff can help identify where watershed
hydrologic response varies at broad geographic scales (Winter 2001; Wolloch et al. 2004).
Watershed Conceptual Model
Climate Drivers
Interact with watershed
controls to create regimes
and conditions that set
context for biological
integrity of individual
watersheds
Precipitation & Runoff
Groundwater Recharge & Discharge
Tidal & Salinity Regime
Controls
Physical landsape
elements that govern
how landscape elements
function: geology, soils,
landcover, topography
Human Drivers
Transcale modifiers of
drivers, controls, regimes
and conditions, and
elements of biological
integrity (e.g., land cover
change such as forest
clearing, impervious
surfacing, levees in
tidal marshes)
Figure 2-1 Conceptual model of a watershed showing the hierarchical relationship of drivers such as climate and human
activities and physical landscape controls in a watershed such as geology, soils, and land cover to processes that govern key
regimes and conditions acting to regulate the structure and function of watershed ecosystems (lentic, lotic and tidal).
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The interaction of watershed-scale controls with the climate signal drives key watershed processes that
are measured as time-varying fluxes of water, sediment and organic matter, heat and light, and
nutrients and chemicals. These "process regimes" act to regulate ecosystem structure and function,
aquatic habitat formation and dynamics, species and community composition, and, ultimately, aquatic
biological integrity (Figure 2-1).
These regimes may be viewed in terms of key components that drive ecological processes and species
performance and thus regulate biological integrity. For example, flow regime in streams and rivers (or
hydroperiod in wetlands) can be characterized in terms of critical components such as magnitude,
frequency, duration, timing, and predictability of ecologically critical flow and water levels (e.g.,
extremes in low or high flows) that directly influence ecological integrity (Poff et al. 1997) and thus can
form the foundation for ecologically relevant water management (Bunn & Arthington 2002, Poff et al.
2010).
Process regimes have characteristic or "natural" ranges of variation that reflect the interaction of
climate with the land surface or watershed controls, and this natural range varies geographically. For
example, runoff regimes will vary among watersheds having different climates, or within watersheds
(subwatersheds) where land surface controls vary substantially (e.g., contrasting geologic or land cover
controls on runoff) or climate conditions shift (e.g., high elevation snowmelt vs. low elevation rainfall
dominance). Many other watershed process regimes are tightly coupled with flow. For instance, nutrient
or chemical fluxes to receiving waters often occur in association with high flows that are generated by
intense precipitation or rapid snowmelt (Likens et al. 1970). Likewise, sediment inputs to aquatic
systems are associated with erosion-generating storms (Dunne & Leopold 1974).
The ecological integrity of streams, rivers, wetlands, lakes, and tidal systems therefore reflects the long-
term adjustment of ecological processes and species composition to prevailing watershed process
regimes. For example, watersheds in arid lands have naturally intermittent streams and are
characterized by relatively few species, which have adapted to harsh conditions (Dodds et al. 2004),
whereas watersheds in humid climates have perennial streams that sustain higher diversity, especially if
they are also hydrologically stable (Townsend 1989). Both of these situations are "healthy," but in a
specific regional and historical context. Accordingly, the biological metrics that comprise the aggregate
measure of ecological integrity can vary among major watershed "types." Similarly, climate interacts
with wetland morphology and landscape position to control water source and inundation regimes that
determine wetland-specific ecological integrity (Keddy et al. 1993). Coupled with lake morphometry
(patterns in depth), climate can regulate water depths and associated anoxia to determine species
composition and baseline ecological integrity (Tonn & Magnuson 1982).
The regulation of ecological integrity by the hierarchy of climate-watershed controls on process regimes
is an important perspective in understanding biophysical and ecological organization within and among
watersheds. Ecological integrity also depends on at least two other sources of natural variation that
differ significantly across the landscape: natural species composition and physical habitat connectivity.
First, biological composition of aquatic systems varies naturally at geographic scales due to differences
in species biogeography. Evolutionary processes have created distinct regional differences in flora and
fauna, such that species-level indicators of biological integrity can vary notably among watersheds that
have similar physical organization. This is particularly true for species having solely aquatic dispersal,
such as fish, which have diverged along drainage basin divides and in response to long historic isolation.
Indeed, fish zoogeographic zones can be constructed to delineate watersheds of intrinsically different
natural fish species composition (Maxwell et al. 1995) and provide a basis for biologically-based
watershed conservation (Higgins et al. 2005; Sowa et al. 2007).
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Second, a key regulator of biological integrity that is not easily captured by the climate-watershed-
control-process regime hierarchy is the condition of habitat connectivity in space and time. The
emergence of metapopulation theory (Hanski 1998) and metacommunity theory (Leibold et al. 2004)
has emphasized that local ecological processes and patterns are embedded in a broader regional
context where movement of organisms and materials across the landscape (or through the riverscape) is
key to understanding the spatial distribution of species abundance or community composition and
hence local biological integrity. In other words, the species composition or biological integrity of a
particular locality depends on the influx of organisms from other localities and hence reflects the extent
to which movement between localities is allowed by landscape structure. A simple example is provided
by fish. Watersheds with similar physical-chemical integrity may have naturally variable species
composition (and different baselines for biological integrity) if there is a natural barrier that prevents
movement into otherwise suitable habitat. This has been shown, for instance, in New Zealand streams
(Townsend & Flecker 1994) and Alaskan lakes (Hershey et al. 1999). Similarly, the connectivity of lakes
via streams is important in determining within-lake fish species richness (Jackson et al. 2001). In addition
to upstream-downstream or longitudinal connectivity, the lateral connectivity between a waterbody and
its adjacent terrestrial landscape can influence ecological integrity. Lateral connectivity between river
channels and floodplains is widely understood to be a key contributor to the integrity of river
ecosystems, both aquatic and riparian (Junk et al. 1989; Naiman et al. 2005).
The above relationships provide a context for characterizing watershed health from local habitat to
whole network scales across broad geographic extents, where climate and key landscape controls bound
watershed functions and define regionally based ecological integrity independent of human
intervention. Thus a "healthy" watershed can be defined by the degree to which climate-defined
watershed process regimes are intact (within a natural range of variation) and sustain naturally dynamic
physical, chemical, and biological components that are well connected from local to whole watershed
scales.
Human activities are an integral part of any definition of watershed health because humans have
extensively and intensively modified the landscape and thus disrupted most aspects of natural
watershed function. Incorporating humans into the hierarchical driver-process-regime framework for
watershed ecological integrity requires recognition that humans can modify all levels of the hierarchy
from the local to global scale, and over a range of time scales, as depicted in Figure 2-1. For example,
human modification of land surface features and climatic warming is elevating surface water
temperature in rivers (Kaushal et al. 2010) and lakes (Magnuson et al. 2000). Various watershed controls
have been extensively altered (e.g., land cover changes and land use practices that regulate runoff,
erosion, and nutrient/chemical inputs to receiving waters; Allan 2004). Human activities have pushed
many process regimes well outside their natural ranges of variation, from flow regimes (Poff &
Zimmerman 2010, Bunn & Arthington 2002) to thermal regimes (Olden & Naiman 2010) and sediment
regimes (Syvitski et al. 2005). Humans also diminish watershed health directly by modifying natural
aquatic connectivity (e.g., levee placement on rivers severs floodplain connections, and mainstem dams
fragment river networks; Nilsson et al. 2005) or by introducing non-native species that alter ecological
processes and species interactions (Rahel & Olden 2008). Thus, humans have "trans-scale" effects that
act to degrade ecological integrity and watershed health in myriad ways. For watersheds that have had
high human impact, attaining desirable levels of watershed health will require restoration of key
processes, regimes, and landscape conditions through active management.
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"Health" can be viewed as a relative measure of the deviation from some "natural" or minimally-altered
baseline condition. Indicators such as the Index of Biotic Integrity (IBI) use characteristics of biotic
assemblages to measure the relative integrity of freshwater ecosystems. This approach provides an
expression of the integration of all patterns and processes in freshwater ecosystems, but does not
indicate which specific patterns, processes, or dynamics are healthy or in need of restoration. Thus, to
maintain or restore watershed health, it is necessary to understand the underlying watershed process
regimes that generate the dynamic conditions that maintain ecological integrity. A key indicator or
measure of "health" can be based on the extent to which watershed process regimes are modified
relative to the unaltered baseline, or their natural ranges of variation (Wohl et al. 2005; Palmer 2008).
The key to successful protection and restoration of watershed health is in understanding how particular
conditions and process regimes within a watershed need to be addressed and can be protected or
managed to shift the ecosystem towards some desired state within the natural range of variation. This
requires knowledge of many individual processes and stressors, as well as their interactions.
Minimally altered watersheds are intrinsically healthy, because their key process regimes are, by
definition, within the natural range of variation. These systems can typically serve as reference
conditions for other, degraded watersheds that share similar climate, watershed controls, and species
pools. Watershed health, just like human health, includes a range of conditions rather than the simple
dichotomous states of "good" or "bad." Therefore, it does not follow that those watersheds with some
measure of degradation are, by definition, unhealthy. Indeed, just as with humans, watershed health
can be improved by diagnosing the cause of the impairment and taking action via watershed
management at the appropriate scale(s) to restore process regimes that will move the watershed to a
healthier state of greater ecological integrity. Science can provide a method for quantifying deviation
from baseline and offer understanding as to the relative efficacy of restoring the watershed to a
healthier state. The decision to achieve a given level of watershed health is based more broadly on
social and economic considerations.
The health of a watershed can be assessed using sample-based indicators of physical and biological
patterns and processes at multiple temporal and spatial scales and comparing them to a reference or
defined baseline conditions. Because stream, river, wetland, lake, and tidal systems are arranged in a
hierarchical organization of drivers, processes, and functions (Figure 2-1), assessments should consider
the influence of the broader scale controls and processes on intermediate and fine scale patterns and
processes, and vice versa will be of greater value. This hierarchical approach allows for selection of
those key processes or controls that act as limiting factors for successful restoration or enhancement of
ecological integrity. In other words, simply focusing restoration activities on the symptoms of watershed
degradation at the small scale is unlikely to lead to improved watershed health. For example, creation of
off-channel spawning habitat or anchoring of large wood at the local reach scale in a stream does not
address the larger issue of channel erosion caused by poor land use management at the whole
watershed or riparian zone scale (Palmer 2008).
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With an understanding of the hierarchical organization of the drivers, processes, and functions for lotic,
lentic, and tidal fringe systems, the appropriate framework for an assessment of watershed health can
be developed. Ideally, a framework can be implemented that matches spatiotemporal scales with
ecological variables and that is amenable to management action. Some useful frameworks for
freshwater classification have been developed (e.g., The Nature Conservancy's Freshwater Classification
Approach; Higgins et al. 2005), but a framework for healthy watershed management would ideally
capture the key dynamic processes and regimes that form the basis for watershed health. Figure 2-2
provides a general depiction of a process-based assessment framework applicable at the management
scale. For example, assessments at the watershed scale (Tier 1) can address management or planning
questions on the best location and type of new development by using indicators of the health of water
flow processes such as forest cover and impervious surfaces (Booth et al. 2002). Existing state and
national GIS data sets can be used at this landscape scale without the collection of additional data at
finer scales. However, management questions aimed at local habitat quality or community and species
composition would require assessment at the reach scale and data collection at the functional unit scale
(Tiers 3 and 4). Chapter 4 provides more detail of the type of assessment methods and sampling
required to address specific questions on watershed health at different scales. The following sections of
this chapter address these habitat and process scaling issues in three major types of systems: lotic
systems (streams and rivers), lentic systems (wetlands and lakes), and tidal systems.
Ecosystem Framework
I Hydrologic1 1
' ' : | Lotic/Lentic I Ec°IOglCal
Assessment Framework
Management I I Data II Scale/Data
I Assessment • •
Focus • • Collection • Resolution
Broad/Coarse
Subwatershed W Subwatershed
Small/Fine
1 Other processes are included but not shown, including movement of sediment, nutrients, large woody debris...
2 Water Level Fluctuations
3 Subwatershed scale (HUC 12) may be used for assessment of lentic systems; FPZ or functional process zones for
lotic systems
Figure 2-2 Depicts the hierarchical relationship of the ecosystem components (geomorphic, hydrologic and ecological) across
spatial and temporal scales for lotic and lentic systems, and the associated combination of assessment and data collection
elements. The "tier" levels refer to different levels of assessment discussed in Chapter 4 Integrated Assessments. (Figure
modified from Thorp et al., in review).
10
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Climate, geology, soils, land cover, valley topography, channel geomorphology, and land cover interact
to determine the hydrogeomorphic (HGM) nature of the fluvial system. The natural flow regime and
geomorphic nature of the riverscape (primary and secondary channels and backwaters) influence
interactions with the floodscape (terrestrial floodplains, cutoff channels, lakes, and wetlands) within the
all-encompassing riverine landscape. The relative contribution of upstream and local riverine landscape
processes to the community structure (taxa richness, evenness, etc.) and ecosystem function (e.g.,
nutrient processing, system metabolism, carbon sequestration, food web complexity, and water
filtration) at the valley scale within a watershed will vary with the nature of the local HGM patch (Thorp
et al. 2006, 2008). Some of these community and ecosystem attributes are most affected at the reach
scale (10's to 100's of meters), whereas others are influenced at the valley scale (1000's of meters),
referred to as functional process zones (FPZs). The FPZs represent large HGM patches nested between
the reach and watershed scales as shown in Figure 2-3 (Thorp et al. 2006, 2008).
FPZs are repeatable from upstream to downstream and only partially predictable in position, especially
when comparing different ecoregions and physiographic regions. The degree of variation in community
structure and ecosystem processes from upstream headwaters to the river mouth and the predictability
of downstream change will vary directly with the HGM complexity of the total watershed ecosystem.
The variation in HGM structure from headwaters to the mouth of a river generally increases with
watershed size and the diversity of ecoregions and physiographic provinces within the watershed. In
very small watersheds, only a single FPZ may be present, and the focus of sampling should be on the
reach subunits of the valley. A GIS-based computer model for delineating FPZs has been developed
through collaboration between the University of Kansas and EPA's National Exposure Research
Laboratory in Cincinnati (Thorp et al. in review; B.S. Williams, pers. comm.).
The hierarchical structure of riverine habitat in a watershed can be used to provide an example of how
to match data scales with management questions (Thorp, pers. comm.). The three habitat sublevels
within a watershed depicted in Figure 2-3 are associated with different hydrologic and geomorphic
processes operating at separate temporal scales, as shown in Figure 2-2. Similarly, different ecological
processes and response variables are associated with these habitat sublevels, and these relationships
guide the appropriate types of ecological data that should be collected for a management question at a
particular habitat scale. As a general principle, for a management focus at a particular scale,
hydrogeomorphic and ecological assessment would occur at a scale one level below the management
scale (illustrated in Figure 2-2). The kinds of data that are needed to characterize the properties of the
habitat units at the assessment scale will vary with the assessment scale and focus (Figure 2-2), as
discussed more fully in Chapter 4.
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Watershed
Functional Process
Zone (FPZ)
Reach
Functional Set
Figure 2-3 Hierarchical habitat structure in watershed.
The connectivity of HGM habitat types within the watershed (longitudinally along river channels or
laterally between riverscape and floodscape components) is important for maintaining many ecological
processes that contribute to biological integrity. These include nutrient processing, overall community
structure, refuges from extreme events, and movement between habitats to reproduce or complete life
cycles.
Anthropogenic changes in the HGM structure of the riverscape, as well as alterations of the floodscape,
substantially alter community structure and ecosystem function, and thus modify biological integrity.
These include simplifying the channel structure with levees or dredging, building impoundments
(deepening and widening the river and changing interactions with the floodscape), and altering
sediment load (which can change channel structure). Loss of sediment and wood storage processes (i.e.,
material sorting and distribution) and alteration of riparian conditions result in reduced shelter, feeding,
and reproductive habitats for aquatic and some semi-terrestrial and terrestrial species. Urbanization is a
particularly pervasive type of land surface modification that alters hydrogeomorphic processes and
associated ecological responses (Booth et al. 2002, 2004; Walsh et al. 2005).
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Lentic systems include low energy aquatic ecosystems, such as wetlands, springs, and lakes, located in
depressions or low gradient areas on the landscape, or areas of ground water discharge. These systems
are formed and maintained within the same framework of climate, geology, soils, land cover, and
topography (Figure 2-1) as lotic systems. Lentic systems depend on natural regimes of water, nutrients,
and sediments, and at the same time have an influence on hydrologic response and delivery of wood,
nutrients, and sediment within the watershed. Similar to lotic systems, lentic systems can be classified
based on hydrogeomorphic setting (Mitsch & Gosselink 2000). These different types of lentic systems
provide different ecosystem service functions and are affected differently by anthropogenic impacts.
Anthropogenic changes in watershed conditions that affect these natural processes can have significant
effects on the structure and function of lentic systems, with associated effects on other systems. Lentic
systems serve as habitat for a diversity of plants and animals, including many endangered or threatened
species. Lentic systems host a variety of plant communities that are uniquely adapted to their hydrologic
and water quality conditions. This vegetation in turn supports numerous animal species including birds,
amphibians, and fish.
Within a landscape context, depressional wetlands and lakes provide several functions important to
humans, including reduction of downstream flooding and water quality improvement. The storage of
water by wetlands and lakes contributes to desynchronizing runoff and reducing the frequency and
duration of downstream flows in streams (Stanley et al. 2009a). The lower energy of these systems
(predominately vertical hydrodynamics) also affords significant water quality benefits by allowing the
filtering and settling of sediments and the adsorption of phosphorus and associated toxics to those
sediments. Additionally, denitrification occurs in the anoxic zones of these aquatic areas (Hruby et al.
1999, Sheldon etal. 2005).
Draining and filling of depressional wetlands and alteration of the hydrology of lakes directly affect
habitat availability and quality, as well as downstream hydrology of streams and wetlands (Sheldon et al.
2005). Other impacts, such as direct trampling due to overuse by cattle, can result in reduced wetland
extent and function, with corresponding effects on ecological integrity. Land cover changes in the
watershed, such as clearing of native cover (e.g., forests, scrub-shrub) and paving with impervious
surfaces, can increase the range of water table and water level fluctuations within depressional
wetlands and lakes. This increased fluctuation in water levels reduces the habitat function of wetlands
and can change community structure and species richness. For example, increased water level
fluctuations reduce amphibian richness and allow for establishment of invasive plant species (Richter &
Azous 1997; Azous et al. 1997). Additionally, changes in sediment, nutrient, and chemical loads within
the watershed can significantly alter the water quality of depressional wetlands and lakes, potentially
leading to major changes in community structure and function.
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Slope wetlands (also areas of "springs") are typically found at breaks in slopes or at the base of valley
walls and play an important "landscape" role in contributing return flows to riparian ecosystems and
streams. Direct impacts to slope wetlands include ditching and draining, which intercepts ground water
flow and routes it away from downslope wetlands (e.g., riverine, lacustrine) and towards discharge
points further downstream (Stanley et al. 2009b). This can increase the temperature of stream waters
and reduce seasonal low flows critical to the survival of stream invertebrates and fish. Watershed
impacts include the reduction of recharge in areas that contribute to discharge areas (Morgan & Jones
1999). Other landscape impacts to slope wetlands include ground water extraction and routing of water
outside of watersheds by stormwater and sewer systems (Stanley et al. 2009a), and ground water
contamination by pesticides, nutrients, and other toxic chemicals.
Riverine wetlands include depressional wetlands located within the floodplain of streams, where the
source of hydrologic inputs includes a combination of ground water and overbank flooding. Riverine or
floodplain wetlands are dominated by downstream, surface water flow during flood events, but by
ground water flow during and after the receding leg of flood events. As such, they play an important
landscape role as a storage component and contribute to the reduction of downstream erosion and
flooding (Sheldon et al. 2005). These are also important areas for ground water discharge that
contribute to water quality functions such as denitrification and temperature regulation (Cox et al.
2005). Most significantly, these areas of ground water discharge help maintain adequate low flows
during warmer, drier months when fish survival is most critically threatened.
Direct impacts to riverine depressional wetlands can result in substantial changes in water quantity,
quality, and habitat functions. The most common impact is disconnecting a stream from its floodplain
through either channelization or channel incision (Kline & Cahoon 2010). Overbank flooding processes
are hereby prevented, which in turn eliminates most of the related water quality functions. Activities
that reduce the spatial extent or storage capacity of these areas during peak flow events can increase
the volume of water and the rate at which it reaches aquatic ecosystems (Gosselink et al. 1981; Reinelt
and Taylor 1997; Sheldon et al. 2005). This increases the need for additional channelization.
Tidal fringe wetlands (Brinson 1993) are located at the interface of freshwater and marine ecosystems
and are primarily influenced by the bidirectional movement of tides. They include both tidal freshwater
and salt marshes. Tidal fringe systems are generally included within estuaries and can occur in habitats
ranging from the narrow edges of rocky shorelines to broad coastal plains, bays, and river mouths. This
includes coastal plain wetlands along the east coast and Gulf of Mexico, as well as large delta systems
and estuarine marshes formed at the mouths of rivers, on small deltas, and in large bays (e.g., San
Francisco) along the west coast (Mitsch & Gosselink 2000).
14
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Because of their coastal location, many tidal systems are complex mixing zones for fresh and saline
waters that govern both the distribution of plants and marsh productivity (Seliskar & Gallagher 1983).
The primary productivity and detrital food web of these tidal fringe systems supports a large range and
number of benthic invertebrates, marine and freshwater fish, aquatic birds, and mammal species. In
addition, terrestrial fluxes of sediment, nutrients, wood, and fresh water play a significant role in the
structure and functions of these systems. As a result, land use activities within the contributing basin
can have major effects on estuaries. For example, channelization and armoring of upstream riparian
areas causes a significant reduction in movement of wood downstream into tidal marshes. Large woody
debris plays a significant role in creating habitat structure in tidal marshes (Hood 2007).
Some of the most significant direct impairments to tidal marshes include removal of tidal influence
through an extensive dike/levee and tide gate system. This effectively drains the tidal marsh and also
reduces the tidal channel complexity seaward of the dike/levee system (Hood 2004). These drained
areas are typically used for agricultural purposes and in some areas have a high potential for restoration.
More damaging is the filling of tidal marshes for residential, commercial, and industrial development
(e.g., San Francisco Bay) or the dredging of tidal marshes for port and marina development. The
installation of levees and dikes also has other significant effects upon the tidal marsh food web. Levees
and dikes increase the velocity of flood waters in main channels, which in turn prevents migrating fish,
such as salmon smolts, from seeking refuge in lower velocity distributary channels. This is believed to
increase their mortality. In addition, the diked areas of the marsh are no longer available to salmonid
smolts for feeding and physiologic adaptation.
An estuarine system can be defined as "a semi-enclosed coastal waterbody with restricted circulation, or
coastal marine waters influenced by significant freshwater inflow during at least part of the year" (US
EPA 2010a). In addition to the high level climate drivers for all water body types, influences of oceans on
estuaries should not be ignored. Oceanic influences are often categorized according to oceanic
ecoregions (Bailey 1998) or coastal/estuarine provinces (Cowardin et al. 1979) based on ocean
circulation patterns (Bailey 1998), while inland climatologic influences on coastal systems can be
characterized by hydroclimatic zones (Saco and Kumar 2000). The same watershed controls (geology,
soils, topography) influencing upstream water bodies and rivers also moderate the effect of climate on
estuaries. In addition, estuarine morphometry is a critical factor because it influences tidal exchange
(and thus freshwater residence time), the probability of stratification, and the light environment (Kurtz
et al. 2006). Many of the same process regimes that influence freshwater systems are important for
estuaries. However, two-way exchanges are also important in estuaries. Thus, normal tidal and salinity
regimes are an important component of protecting estuarine systems (Figure 2-1). Finally, upstream-
downstream connectivity and oceanic connections are both important for migratory species while
circulation patterns may be critical for recolonization following disturbance. Impacts on estuaries related
to watershed activities include hydrologic/hydrogeomorphic changes (channelization, dredging,
draining, fill, alteration of estuarine mouth dimensions, shoreline armoring), eutrophication, thermal
pollution, toxic discharges and contaminated sediments, ocean acidification, and change in volume
and/or timing of freshwater inputs and associated materials.
Thus, the "health" of a tidal ecosystem is dependent on many of the same interacting factors that are
governed by upper watershed drivers and controls for lotic and lentic systems and their alteration by
human activities. Restoration of a tidal marsh should not be based solely on creating a set of physical
habitat features such as importing large wood, but upon understanding at the landscape scale why that
wood is missing from the system and taking action to restore that limiting factor (e.g., remove armoring
on key channel migration zones; Simenstad et al. 2006).
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The previous chapter focused on the components and regulation of ecological integrity that determine
watershed health, including the need to incorporate human activities into that determination. This
chapter focuses on understanding how to incorporate resilience into that determination since human
activities will continue to modify watersheds through land use changes, development pressures, invasive
species, climate change, and other stressors. The chapter begins with a review of the ways in which
resilience has been defined, and the benefits and challenges of employing this concept in watershed
management. Next, indicators and methods to assess resilience are discussed along with ways to
incorporate it into watershed management. Several examples are then provided of how resilience has
been incorporated into watershed management planning for several ecosystems. The chapter ends with
a discussion of how to monitor and adaptively manage for watershed resilience in the future.
The concept of ecological resilience was first discussed almost four decades ago (Moiling 1973) and is
important in its consideration of system dynamics, variability, and uncertainty. This is in contrast to a
static view of ecosystem conditions as a predictable response within an envelope of defined
environmental conditions. Moiling (1973) suggests that natural systems, even in the absence of human
disturbance, are often in transient states rather than in a single equilibrium condition, making
application of the static equilibrium concept much less useful for describing ecosystem condition.
Resilience has been defined in numerous ways, with differences being largely related to assumptions
about whether there are single or multiple equilibria possible in a system, and whether the system is
near equilibrium or not (Gunderson 2000) (see Table 3-1 for example definitions). Moiling (1973)
characterizes resilience as a dynamic condition, representing the naturally high capacity of many
ecosystems to absorb disturbance without substantially altering ecosystem state or the variables and
processes that control structure. Carpenter et al. (2001) treats resilience similarly, as the amount of
disturbance a system can tolerate before moving to another region of state space controlled by a
different set of processes. Ecological resilience has similarly been characterized as the ability of a system
to maintain its identity in the face of both internal and external drivers (Cumming et al. 2005). Based on
these definitions, Walker et al. (2002) highlights resistance as one of several critical attributes of
resilience. Resistance is defined as the ability of an organism or a system to remain unimpacted by major
disturbance or stress.
The theme that runs through many of these definitions is the consideration of resilience in terms of the
ability to absorb disturbance while remaining within a characteristic state with particular structures,
functions, and controls (Gunderson & Moiling 2002; Folke et al. 2004; Walker & Salt, 2006). These usages
focus on the concept of resilience as the ability of a system to persist as a recognizable unit that can be
described based on a range of structural and functional characteristics, suggesting that the appropriate
measure of resilience would be the magnitude of disturbance that forces a system into a different state
or condition (Carpenter et al. 2001).
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Two examples of ecosystem state changes illustrate why resilience is so important to sustaining healthy
watersheds, where 'healthy' is defined as falling within natural ranges and maintaining natural
functions. In the absence of resilience, perturbations, which can be either natural or anthropogenic, may
lead to a persistent shift in function. The first example is when slight shifts in river stage height lead to
threshold changes in the river from a benthic-algae-based food web to a phytoplankton-based food web
(M.D. Delong (pers. comm.). The second is when multiple environmental changes (such as nutrient input
from septic systems, sea level change, a lack of hurricanes, drought, water diversions and removal of
grazers) cause a major shift in a shallow estuary from an oligotrophic clear water system in which
primary production is dominated by seagrasses to a more turbid system in which production is
dominated by phytoplankton blooms (e.g., Florida Bay; Gunderson & Moiling 2002).
Table 3-1 Selected definitions of ecological resilience.
Definitions
Measure of the persistence of systems and of their ability to absorb change and
disturbance and still maintain the same relationships between populations or state
variables
The magnitude of disturbance that can be absorbed before the system changes its
structure by changing the variables and processes that control behavior
The capacity of a system to experience shocks while retaining essentially the same
function, structure, feedbacks, and therefore identity
...capacities i) to absorb disturbances, ii) for self-organization, and iii) for learning and
adaptation
To apply the concept of resilience, it must be defined or specified as resilience "of what
to what"
The ability of the system to maintain its identity in the face of internal change and
external shocks and disturbances
References
Moiling 1973
Gunderson &
Moiling 2002
Walker & Salt
2006
Walker etal. 2002
Carpenter et al., 2001
Gumming et al. 2005
Since resilience is understood as the ability to absorb disturbance while remaining within a characteristic
state, it must by necessity incorporate the concept of thresholds. An ecosystem functioning within a
particular range of conditions (or stable domain, or stable state, or regime) has limits to its resilience to
perturbation (i.e., its ability to rebound from large or episodic events). Groffman et al. (2006) defined an
ecological threshold as the point at which there is a big change in an ecosystem property or
phenomenon, or where a small additional change in a driver produces a large response in the
ecosystem.
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There are many threshold-based environmental problems (e.g., many pollution and nutrient loading
questions), as well as interest in managing ecosystems to avoid dramatic regime changes. Three ways to
think about the threshold concept (Groffman et al. 2006) are as: 1) a dramatic shift in state due to a
small change in a driver; 2) a 'critical load' of a pollutant that can be absorbed before causing a change
in ecosystem state or function; and 3) an 'extrinsic factor threshold/ representing a larger scale change
in a variable that impacts the relationship between drivers and responses at a smaller scale. The first
way of applying the concept of threshold entails identification of key response variables and the
disturbances that influence them, as well as the temporal scales at which driver and response variables
operate. Then the identified human-related stresses (e.g., runoff and flow) are managed to increase
resilience in the face of phenomena that cannot be controlled (e.g., storms and droughts). The second
application of the concept of threshold, critical loads, requires development of control strategies to
prevent discharge of pollutants (e.g., nitrogen, sulfur) above levels that lead to threshold changes based
on scientifically defensible quantitative evidence of where those thresholds exist. The third application
involves identification of the level or intensity of key extrinsic factors that lead to alterations in
ecosystem structure or function, or in the rate of an ecological process. For example, in urban
ecosystems, extrinsic thresholds are identified in environmental impacts associated with amounts of
impervious surface that constrain the structure and function of stream and riparian ecosystems.
As described in Chapter 2, attributes of a healthy watershed include the intactness of many processes
such as hydrologic flow regime, sediment transport, processing and transport of organic materials,
establishment and maintenance of connectivity, water quality, thermal regime, and energy transport.
These processes are assumed to have a natural range of variability that may be exceeded when
disturbances, changes, and shocks occur to a system. In such cases, the system may still recover because
its adaptive capacity has not been exceeded, or it could pass a threshold and change into another
ecosystem state. Increasing a system's resilience to such pressures includes ensuring that watersheds
have adaptive attributes such as meander belts, riparian wetlands, floodplains, terraces, and material
contribution areas. For example, a disturbance may lead to temporary changes in the timing, volume, or
duration of flow that are outside the natural range of variability; but within a resilient watershed, these
perturbations would not cause a permanent state change because riparian areas and floodplains would
help to absorb some of the disturbance.
Some definitions of resilience also address the linked human-environment system (Berkes 2007),
recognizing that resilience is affected by complex interactions between human and ecosystem functions
over multiple spatial and temporal scales. Simply considering human and ecosystem functions
separately may not be adequate to understand system resilience because integrated socioeconomic and
ecological systems can behave differently than their separate parts (Albert! & Marzluff 2004). These
considerations are important to explicitly address in the context of healthy watersheds where both
human and ecological systems are needed to maintain or restore watersheds.
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Benefits of Resilience
Resilience of both ecological and human systems provides the basis for maintaining healthy watersheds
and the needed level of ecosystem services they provide into the future. Resilient societies are those
that manage their resources appropriately, foster stability and adaptation to unforeseen circumstances,
and provide equitable and fair access to resources. Resilient ecosystems remain stable in the face of
chronic and acute stresses and events (e.g., maintain functionality), and can also provide such services
as protection against extreme events (floods, droughts, storm surges) in addition to more common
provisions of food, fiber, and recreation. Some benefits of ecosystem resilience are monetary/economic
(e.g., costs avoided through flood protection from wetlands, or benefits accrued through commercial
production of fish or grains), and some are intangible and noneconomic (e.g., psychological benefits of
beautiful scenery or cultural benefits of archeological sites). However, with drivers of ecological change
such as population growth, urbanization, and climate change, it is inevitable that the trajectory of
natural succession will be affected in ways that are not entirely predictable, and some ecosystems will
cross thresholds and experience substantial alterations. Enhancing resilience enables ecosystems to
persist in their current state despite increasing pressures, thus delaying the onset of successional or
threshold changes (Figure 3-1). This potential delay allows more time for understanding those states
into which ecosystems may change, how best to manage transitions into new states, and how to sustain
ecosystem service flows throughout (West et al. 2009).
Business
as Usual
Year
Current Condition
(degradation/change)
nsition Period (threshold
change)
2000
Managing for
Resilience
2025
•ent Condition
degradation/change)
2050
207J
2100
ition Period (threshold
change)
Figure 3-1 Conceptual illustration of how improving resilience delays onset of the transition period of threshold change from
before 2025 further outward toward 2050. This allows time for increased understanding and both human and ecosystem
adaptations.
Challenges of Managing for Resilience
Understanding and assessing resilience is complex for a number of reasons. First, the resilience of both
societies and ecosystems is very likely going to differ in response to natural versus anthropogenic
stressors. These stressors themselves will differ in spatial and temporal extent, in magnitude, and in
duration. Some stressor pulses may be able to be absorbed by some systems, unless the timing between
pulses is shorter than the recovery time frame. This will lead to degradation and push even resilient
systems across a threshold into a different state. Similarly, a system may be adapted to a particular
disturbance regime, but anthropogenic influences can modify this regime and push the system into a
different state from which it can no longer provide the same ecosystem functions. Complex interactions
between resilience of one process and that of another can also engender uncertainty that must be
considered when both processes are affected by management decisions.
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Second, degraded systems may appear more resilient to prolonged stressors than natural systems due to
baseline conditions in which sensitive functional ecological components have already been lost. It is
possible that, whereas natural systems may be resilient to a range of stressors and have a large capacity
to absorb shocks or disturbances, large or prolonged stressors may lead to more severe changes in
natural systems than in impaired systems that have already crossed a threshold. The surviving traits of
already altered systems may have a great capacity to absorb the next series of large or prolonged
stressors, and those very traits may also serve to impede restoration and recovery efforts. For example,
streams that are currently classified as degraded or impaired may show very little effect due to climate
change (e.g., changes in stream temperature or flow), because the current species assemblage is highly
tolerant. Evidence of this phenomenon comes from modeling species losses due to climate change in
North Carolina streams in the Blue Ridge Mountain ecoregion (U.S. EPA 2011a). The scenarios use the
current composition of macroinvertebrate species, and then assume the loss of 50% and 100% of
coldwater-preference taxa. Resulting species assemblages are then used to calculate the condition of
each site. Results show large shifts in status for stations classified as Excellent through Good-Fair and
almost no shifts in status for those stations classified as Fair through Poor (Figure 3-2). Therefore, any
activities promoting resilience should be aware of the initial state of the system so that any measures of
resilience do not reward already degraded systems.
North Carolina Blue Ridge Mountain ecoregion stations
• currentbentnic community composition
a lose 50% of cold-preference EPT taxa
• lose 100% of cold-p reference EPT taxa
Excellent
Good
Good-Fair
Classification
Fair
Poor
Figure 3-2 Example of how reference station status can degrade over time due to climate-induced increases in stream
temperature.
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Third, interactions among stressors can lead to outcomes that are difficult to predict, creating an even
more uncertain management context. For example, as mentioned earlier, temporal and spatial changes
in such factors as human population and development patterns, climate, and other drivers of change
will continue, and they will affect watersheds significantly, but are highly uncertain and difficult to
predict. Impervious cover in watersheds is a well documented source of aquatic ecosystem impairment.
Based on Bierwagen et al. (2010), a higher rate of population growth coupled with greater suburban and
exurban development will result in increases in impervious surface cover that cause significant shifts of
watersheds into lower categories of condition. This assumes, however, that current relationships
between population growth and impervious surface remain the same in the future. Changes in
technology and human behavior could alter these relationships, making predictions based on historic
relationships inaccurate.
Finally, more knowledge is needed about where thresholds exist and what indicators would give
sufficient advance warning to truly inform management decisions. If more information were available
on reliable indicators of resilience and approaching thresholds, monitoring systems could be modified
appropriately. One caveat is that resilience is interpreted comparatively through the lens of societal
values. This means that increasing the resilience of one system against crossing a threshold may be a
higher priority than increasing the resilience of another system that is equally at risk, ultimately causing
that system to cross a threshold. Thus, the science and management of ecosystems depends largely on
society's answer to increasing the resilience "of what, to what."
Assessing watershed resilience at statewide or major basin scales can be a time-consuming task
involving hundreds or thousands of watersheds. This type of analysis will only become common practice
if highly efficient, rapid screening tools and available data sources are made readily accessible. Using an
indicator-based approach, measures could be developed of specific, resilience-relevant watershed
attributes that have a basis in the literature and practice and are easily measurable using common and
consistent data. These indicators could be assembled into multi-metric indices. How universal are
measures associated with resilience? Results from efforts such as EPA's development of a biological
condition gradient (BCG) suggest that some physical and community properties consistently reflect
watershed condition despite regional ecological differences (Davies & Jackson 2006). Development of
condition gradients also allows historical information, when available, to be used for determining a
baseline. The existence of these common physical and community properties suggests the feasibility of
developing a general framework to characterize watershed resilience. Such a framework will require
flexibility and professional judgment to select from an array of assessment metrics as varying program
goals and state-to-state ecological differences may warrant.
As we consider the potential role of resilience in healthy watersheds assessment and watershed
protection and restoration programs, key questions include:
• What are the key indicators and methods for assessing and predicting watershed resilience?
• What can we learn from existing indicator work (e.g., recovery potential) that can be translated
to assessments of resilience in watersheds?
• How could predicting differences in resilience in the face of climate change and increasing
development pressures be applied to healthy watersheds assessment?
• Which methods are most useful and appropriate for applying an understanding of resilience to
improve watershed management decision making?
• What indicators capture both system resilience and sub-components of special interest?
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One useful approach for assessing and applying resilience in watershed programs is to examine not only
resilience traits themselves, but also the broader array of factors that influence resilience. Resilience is
an inherent property of ecosystems and watersheds; thus, many ecological, physical structure, and
process characteristics evidently related to resilience are of interest. In addition, the pressures of
numerous additional factors such as development, agricultural and silvicultural land conversion, climatic
changes, and other stressors are of interest since they affect a watershed's current resilience and may
significantly reduce its capacity for resilience in the future. Since resilience in one factor may rely on
interactions with other factors, potential cumulative effects need to be addressed. The societal context
- the community behavior and values, laws, economics, and other drivers - that forms an external
backdrop for these pressures and responses is capable of further influencing resilience and ultimately
watershed condition; in fact, human communities exhibit resilience characteristics of their own. All of
these factors may not be encompassed in watershed resilience, but clearly can influence it and thus
should be considered in assessment approaches.
Recovery potential screening (Norton et al. 2009) has explored the development and application of
indicators of watershed restorability for use in rapid, comparative screening assessments across large
areas, and may provide some insights for resilience indicators and assessment approaches. In a review
of restoration literature and practice that compiled evidence of watershed attributes associated with
increased or reduced restorability, investigators found numerous factors that had a plausible
relationship to recovery and were measurable from commonly available GIS or water quality monitoring
data sources (Table 3-2; U.S. EPA 2009a). These factors were organized into three classes that arguably
represent the major drivers of restoration success: ecological capacity to regain function, stressor
exposure, and social context and process. Development and refinement of ecological, stressor, and
social indicators from these factors enabled the development of multi-metric indices in each of the
three classes as the basis for a comparative, 'three-dimensional' recovery potential screening
methodology. By generating sub-indices, restorability could be characterized in terms of three major
types of driving factors as an alternative to masking the unique influences of each in a single, overall
score. Many of the recovery potential indicators and related literature are available at a recovery tools
and resources website (Norton et al. 2011).
Similar to planning for restoration of impaired watersheds, resilience and the external factors that
influence resilience are critically important in healthy watersheds assessment and planning. Specific
indicators and the three sub-indices approach in general may be usefully adapted for assessing healthy
watershed resilience. In the ecological sub-index, indicators characterize resilience directly in terms of
physical structure and key natural processes by measuring properties of the water column and biota, the
channel, corridor, and watershed. Key metrics for this sub-index might include biotic community indices,
the integrity of channel form, a natural flow regime, and natural land cover in the river corridor and
watershed. Stressor indicators that negatively affect resilience, the second sub-index, focus on specific
stressors and their sources from water column to watershed scales, and could address hydrologic
alteration, biological stressors, fragmentation, and the severity and complexity of corridor and
watershed stressor sources. Social indicators relevant to resilience, the third sub-index, do not influence
watershed condition directly as do stressors, but rather affect resilience indirectly via societal context
and processes interacting with ecological condition or stressors. Social context factors with potentially
developable linkages to watershed resilience include natural resource protection mechanisms,
economics, complexity, certainty, community engagement and incentives, leadership, and critical mass
for effective action.
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Table 3-2 Example recovery potential screening indicators used to compare relative differences in restorability among
impaired waters or watersheds rely heavily on resilience traits and the external factors that also influence resilience.
60 Example Recovery Potential Indicators
Ecological Capacity
natural channel form
recolonization access
Strahler stream order
rare taxa presence
historical species occurrence
species range factor
elevation
corridor % forest
corridor % woody vegetation
corridor slope
bank stability/soils
bank stability/woody vegetation
watershed shape
watershed size
watershed % forest
proximity to green infrastructure hub
contiguity w/green infrastructure
corridor
aquatic community integrity
soil resilience properties
watershed % wetlands
Stressor Exposure
invasive species risk
channelization
hydrologic alteration
aquatic barriers
corridor road crossings
corridor road density
corridor % U-index
corridor % agriculture
corridor % urban
corridor % impervious surface
watershed % U index
watershed road density
watershed % agriculture
watershed % tile-drained
cropland
watershed % urban
watershed % impervious surface
severity of 303(d) listed causes
severity of loading
land use change trajectory
legacy land uses
Social Context
watershed % protected land
applicable regulation
fund ing eligibility
303(d) schedule priority
estimated restoration cost
certainty of causal linkages
TMDL or other plan existence
university proximity
certainty of restoration
practices
watershed org leadership
watershed collaboration
large watershed mgt potential
government agency
involvement
local socioeconomic conditions
landownership complexity
jurisdictional complexity
valued ecological attributes
human health and safety
recreational resource
iconic value
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In the context of protecting healthy watersheds, the goal is to maximize the resilience of watershed
functions when facing existing and anticipated stressors and their accompanying detrimental effects.
Implementation of management practices to enhance resilience within a specific watershed or area is
founded on: 1) an assessment of the current water-land-biota-human system (e.g., water flows,
habitats, biological communities, land use patterns, interaction processes, dynamics, and thresholds); 2)
identification of ecosystems and their services within a watershed that are of high value and high
priority to retain; and 3) consideration of current and future threats, pressures, and stressors within the
watershed social-ecological system (SES). The identification of options and selection of management
practices can then be guided by optimizing for resilience of the watershed components that support
high priority ecosystems and their services under anticipated stressor conditions, and for specific areas
and scales.
Managing to optimize resilience means retaining the ability to rebound from natural fluctuations, and
seeking increased capacity to both buffer against unwanted fluctuations in magnitude or frequency of
events and resist or slow transitions between states, beyond thresholds, or over tipping points. Where
ecological systems are high-functioning, conservation and protection from threats can maintain current
resilience. Where threats and stressors are expected to encroach on a currently robust system,
management practices can be put in place to reduce the impact. It is important to remember that
watersheds are comprised of both ecological and human systems and that processes are often linked
across these systems and across multiple scales. Techniques to frame decisions and to understand and
quantify factors are becoming increasingly available. For example, the Resilience Alliance (Resilience
Alliance 2010) provides a workbook for practitioners to assist in evaluating context, systems,
interactions, and potential adaptations.
Legislative or regulatory requirements for regional or watershed-scale management plans, such as those
for Washington (WA DE 2011), Minnesota (MN DNR 2010), the National Estuary Program (U.S. EPA
2011b), and the National Ocean Policy (CEQ 2010), can offer both structure and incentive to develop
and implement integrated, multi-issue resilience and sustainability plans. For example, a primary
purpose of enacting the Washington Watershed Planning Act (Revised Code of Washington 90.82) was
"...to develop a more thorough and cooperative method of determining the current water situation in
each water resource inventory area of the state and to provide local citizens with the maximum possible
input concerning their goals and objectives..." (WA DE 2011). Methods developed for Puget Sound can
easily be used elsewhere. With the focus on assisting local planners to optimize water flow and
retention (Stanley 2010), assessment data were incorporated into a model of degradation (or
impairment) that evaluates the watershed in its 'altered state' and considers the impact of human
activities on the water flow process. When combined with an importance model (the watershed in its
unaltered state), the results can be used to identify sectors suitable for management actions of
protection, conservation, restoration, or development, such that benefits of water supply, flood
protection, denitrification, and critical habitats are accrued (see Figure 3-3).
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Management Matrix for Restoration & Protection
a;
o
ro
High
I
Low
PROTECTION
Protection 2
ction 1
oration
Protection 3
CONSERVATION
Protection 2
Restoration
Protection 3
Restoration
Conservation 2
Restoration 1
Restoration 2
Restoration
With
Development
Development 2
RESTORATION
Restoration 2
Restoration
With
Development
DEVELOPMENT
High
Level of Degradation
Figure 3-3 This matrix (Figure 4 from Stanley 2010) shows how results of importance and impairment models can be
combined to identify potential watershed management approaches (e.g., identification of areas most suitable for protection,
restoration, development, or conservation). Numbers reflect prioritization, with 1 denoting the highest priority for
protection or restoration and 3 the lowest. For example, areas with high importance and low degradation (upper left corner)
are most suitable for protective actions, while undegraded areas of lesser importance (2 and 3) could be considered for less
protective conservation actions (lower left corner). Areas with low importance and high degradation are most suitable for
development, since land use changes will have the least impact on water flow processes in these areas
Resilience is desired to accommodate uncertainty in recognizing stressors, identify threats and
vulnerabilities, predict interactions, and evaluate risk. The uncertainty in knowledge and prediction are
compounded by variability in temporal and spatial scales, as well as linkages across scales. Indicators of
resilience specific to a process, system, or threat can be combined with assessments of functionality
(e.g., flow modulation) and importance (e.g., flood prevention) to target enhancement for resilience,
thus also reducing vulnerability. For example, if the combination of projected climate change and urban
growth is taken as the focus for a future scenario, then potential watershed management approaches
must consider resilience to stressors, such as increased flashiness, higher temperatures, power
demands, and habitat loss. Climate Readiness and Climate Action Plans (e.g., King County, WA 2007)
being developed by many municipalities and organizations incorporate considerations of resilience into
adaptation planning.
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Charge questions for discussion at the Healthy Watersheds Integrated Assessments Workshop included
two that were specific to resilience: 1) What are the key indicators for assessing watershed resilience?
and 2) What are the methods for assessing watershed resilience? Discussions around these two
questions took place in the context of other questions that were directed at developing, implementing,
and applying Healthy Watersheds Integrated Assessments (HWIA). A common view of general
sustainability and resilience strategies was articulated. Some noteworthy points included:
1. It is critical to develop a baseline from which to consider response and resilience, using
monitoring, mapping, and modeling indicators of landscape condition, biological integrity,
water quality, habitat, geomorphology, hydroecology, stressors, social conditions, regulation,
and vulnerabilities.
2. Legislative and stakeholder discussion and determination of goals and incentives are
instrumental in establishing targets to guide evaluation of risks and management options.
3. When local governments can access and integrate complex natural resource information, and
understand that healthy watersheds provide benefits to them socially and economically,
managing for resilience against disasters and threats to watershed functions and services
becomes a high priority.
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Examples
Watersheds
The State of Maryland used recovery potential screening to assess and compare differences in resilience
and overall restorability among non-tidal watersheds statewide, and specifically in their three
ecoregions. Their work demonstrates how a primarily restoration-oriented screening could easily be
adapted for protection screening purposes. The goal was to identify which impaired watersheds (black
circles in Figure 3-4) were the strongest prospects for successful restoration, but all of the state's
healthy watersheds (blue circles in Figure 3-4) were also screened with the same indicators. Despite the
main focus on impaired watersheds, the screening secondarily revealed many patterns about the
healthy watersheds that may also be relevant to their management. For example, the watersheds that
passed bioassessment but still show elevated stressor scores may be at risk. Further, wide differences in
social score imply that some of the healthy watersheds have far better social context for continued
protection than others. In addition, several of the impaired watersheds that scored nearly as well as the
healthy watersheds (see upper left quadrant in Figure 3-4) provide useful information for prioritizing
restoration targets in the future.
MD HUCs RECOVERY POTENTIAL SCREENING, SUMMARY VALUES
v |5 -
o
<~
E
^3
00 10
CO
o
TO
.Si CD _
O
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<=> 0
O
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-------
Lake-watershed systems are affected by agricultural phosphorus flows, draining and development of
wetlands, removal of riparian vegetation, overfishing, and spread of invasive species. From a review of
the literature, Carpenter and Cottingham (2002) found eight factors to be useful as indicators of a lake's
capacity to maintain normal dynamics:
• Livestock density within the watershed as a correlate with phosphorus imports.
• Wetland area per unit lake area as an index of the landscape's capacity to hold water and export
humic substances.
• Proportion of riparian zone occupied by forest and grassland as an indication of the potential
attenuation of nutrient inputs.
• Lake color as an indication of humic content.
• Slow-to-moderate piscivore growth rates as an indication of strong piscivore control of
planktivores.
• Grazer body size as a correlate with the capacity to suppress algal growth.
• Partial pressure of carbon dioxide in surface waters as an indicator of ecosystem metabolism.
• Hypolimnetic oxygen depletion as a symptom of eutrophication and a driver of phosphorus
recycling from sediments.
Comparisons of these indicators with long-term records and regional surveys can provide an
understanding of a lake's resilience and movements away from resilience to inform management
actions.
Some characteristics of coral ecosystems that increase resilience to climate change have been theorized
to be the availability of locations where cooler waters exist due to upwelling/mixing, where rapid
currents exist that flush toxins, or where ultraviolet radiation is reduced or eliminated by cliffs, shelves,
or turbid waters. Resilience also exists where there are coral communities that are adapted to higher
temperatures and ultraviolet radiation or where conditions favor recolonization. These characteristics
were considered in the design of a network of marine protected areas in Kimbe Bay, Papua New Guinea.
The design was composed of four parts, the first of which was to spread the risk by protecting
representative and replicated areas of major habitat types so that local disturbances will not completely
eliminate some species or ecosystem types. The second component was to safeguard special and unique
sites, particularly those that provide key sources of larvae such as fish spawning aggregation sites and
areas that may be naturally more resistant or resilient to coral bleaching. The third was to preserve
ecological connectivity among coral reefs and related ecosystems due to ocean currents, larval dispersal,
and movement of adults to maintain natural patterns of connectivity and facilitate recovery of areas
affected by major disturbances. The final part of the design was to continue to manage other threats,
such as water quality and overfishing, to ensure that reefs are as healthy and naturally resilient as
possible to improve their chances of surviving global change.
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To manage ecosystems for resilience, indicators are needed that can be monitored to give advanced
warning of an approaching regime shift (Contamin & Ellison 2009) and aid in forecasting thresholds
(Luck 2005). How much warning is needed is, in part, driven by how responsive a state or driving
variable is to management actions (Biggs et al. 2009, Contamin & Ellison 2009). Unfortunately, existing
monitoring systems were often established with goals in mind other than resilience or threshold
detection; thus their utility for identifying potential regime shifts is limited. For example, biological
monitoring systems at the state level are designed to detect sources of stream or river impairment. Sites
with suspected sources of impairment are sampled and then compared to sites that are similar, but still
in high ecological condition. The sampling design required to answer these questions cannot inform
other questions that require a different spatial or temporal distribution of monitoring sites. Monitoring
watershed health is likely to require a higher density of sampling sites that may need to be monitored
yearly or seasonally in order to provide adequate information on approaching thresholds or resilience.
Another problem is the length of time and frequency with which existing networks have been set up to
monitor ecosystems to enable careful time-series studies to be conducted (CCSP 2008). If the spatial and
temporal coverage is not sufficient, or existing networks cannot be maintained into the future, it will not
be possible to develop a deeper understanding of ecosystem sensitivities and resilience attributes to
inform management.
Monitoring can provide the necessary empirical data to confirm and resolve the relative importance of
hypothesized characteristics of resilience in order to support improved quantification and prediction of
species and ecosystem resilience within and across watersheds. If done carefully, monitoring can not
only help to identify ecosystem sensitivities and resilience, but can also support adaptive management.
Adaptive management is a process that promotes flexible decision making through adjustments in
policies or operations as outcomes from management actions and other events are better understood
(Gregory et al. 2006; West et al. 2009). It emphasizes management based on observation and
continuous learning, and provides a means for effectively addressing various degrees of uncertainty in
our knowledge of ecosystem processes and sensitivities to environmental stressors and attributes of
resilience. Models can be used to guide decisions and monitoring can improve the models. In order to
employ adaptive management successfully, scientific hypotheses about ecosystem responses need to be
explicitly stated, and monitoring programs must be designed with predefined triggers. Those triggers
should initiate a re-examination of management approaches in order to make appropriate adjustments.
An example of a program employing monitoring for resilience and adaptive management is Minnesota's
Sustaining Lakes In a Changing Environment (SLICE) Program. The Department of Natural Resources
selected a representative sample of lakes to monitor for biological and chemical changes that feed back
to management approaches to prevent or minimize negative impacts from sources such as
development, agriculture, loss of native aquatic plants, invasive species, and climate change. The first
step of this program is to measure a number of watershed, water quality, zooplankton, aquatic plant,
and fish metrics in 24 sentinel lakes. These metrics are evaluated according to their capability of, and
efficiency in, capturing the condition of lake habitats and fish communities. Once a subset of metrics has
been chosen as indicators, monitoring schedules are developed for sentinel lakes and randomly selected
additional lakes to broaden the types of lakes and geographic areas covered in the program. Monitoring
data gathered from the sentinel lakes inform condition assessments, assist in evaluating causal
mechanisms of stressors and responses, and are used in predictive modeling and early detection of
problems. The large number of randomly selected lakes are monitored less frequently, using fewer
indicators for the purpose of identifying geographic scales of trends and comparing results with
observed patterns in the sentinel lakes (see http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/fisheries/slice/index.html).
29
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Ecosystems within watersheds will cross thresholds at different points in time and in different locations,
possibly resulting in substantial alterations. The timing and location of threshold occurrences will
depend in part on the attributes of the ecosystems themselves and on the magnitude of pressure these
systems are exposed to from natural and human sources. Greater understanding of those attributes and
their associated indicators is needed to maintain resilience and manage risks associated with ecological
thresholds within healthy watersheds. The spatial variation in threshold occurrences necessitates
integration of existing monitoring information at all spatial scales to identify ecosystems approaching
and undergoing critical transitions.
With improved understanding of resilience attributes, thresholds, and hypothesis-driven monitoring
data covering multiple spatial and temporal scales, comes an improved capability to forecast and plan
for future threshold events using alternative management scenarios. Even watersheds designated as
healthy today are likely to undergo critical transitions and threshold changes at some point in the future
due to global stressors. This necessitates not only protection now, but also restoration in the future
(CCSP 2008, 2009).
Key to making appropriate changes in monitoring, modeling, forecasting, and management is identifying
the characteristics of systems that make them more or less resilient to individual and multiple stressors
and identifying early warning signals of impending threshold changes. Also important is developing
hypotheses about anticipated changes and employing adaptive management strategies to increase the
resilience of healthy watersheds in the near term and recognize the new successional ecosystem states
or novel combinations of species that may occur in the long-term (see discussion about Figure 3-1 under
the section above entitled "Benefits of Resilience"). The research community is beginning to address this
difficult task of balancing resilience against succession. A few selected publications with helpful guidance
include Galatowitsch, Frelich, and Phillips-Mao (2009), West et al. (2009), and the Climate Change
Science Program (2008). Finally, since some changes in ecosystem states are inevitable over time,
managers may have to adjust some of their goals for healthy watersheds away from historic benchmarks
that may no longer be achievable because of ongoing urbanization, climatic changes, and other global
changes (CCSP 2008, West et al. 2009).
30
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4
The primary goal of the Healthy Watersheds Integrated Assessment Workshop was to support the
identification of healthy watersheds at state and regional scales so that they could be better protected.
Integrated assessments to support identification of healthy watersheds serve a screening role, making
the best use of available data. Ancillary goals of healthy watersheds assessments, discussed in Chapter
3, are to: 1) evaluate the restoration potential of impaired watersheds, and 2) evaluate factors affecting
the resistance and resilience of watersheds in the face of climate change and continued population
growth to ensure that watershed health is sustained in the long run. Discussions during the workshop
highlighted the additional need to assess the effectiveness of watershed management activities in the
context of the conceptual model for healthy watersheds (i.e., to determine what watershed processes
and function need to be considered in protection and restoration efforts in order to protect aquatic
communities and ecosystems). In this context, integrated watershed assessments can be used to help
implement adaptive management.
Some states and NGOs have already implemented screening assessments to identify and prioritize
healthy watersheds for protection. For example, the National Fish Habitat Board (NFHB, 201 0)
developed a Landscape Disturbance Index for the entire United States. Using five natural environmental
variables and 17 human disturbance variables, an index representing the relative quality offish habitat
was developed and a score assigned to every stream reach in the nation. Scores are aggregated at
multiple spatial scales, from the local catchment to the river basin. The scores are calibrated based on
fish community data gathered from a variety of local and regional partners. NFHB is working with these
same partners to communicate the results of the assessment and prioritize protection and restoration
actions. The State of Kansas has developed a Least Disturbed Watersheds Approach that relies on a
similar process for screening watersheds across the state and identifying those that are likely to contain
streams in reference condition. The state plans to monitor physical habitat, water chemistry, and
biological communities at the verified reference streams to develop a database that can be used to
inform regulatory, incentive-based, and interagency efforts to protect reference streams and their
watersheds from degradation.
As presented in Chapter 2, ecosystems within watersheds are influenced by many interacting processes
that operate at multiple spatial and temporal scales. To protect aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems
effectively, watershed managers, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), federal and state agencies,
and local governments will benefit by focusing not only on the condition of aquatic resources, but also
on protecting and restoring key watershed processes that govern the interaction of water, sediment,
plants, and animals at these multiple scales (Beechie et al. 2010; Beechie & Bolton 1999; Dale et al.
2000; Gove et al. 2001; Hidding & Teunissen 2002). This chapter will present a framework for integrating
data and assessments of landscape characteristics, hydrology, geomorphology, water quality, habitat,
and biological communities with the types of management issues and questions that can be addressed
at each of these different scales. This includes identifying the best locations for new development and
protection and restoration actions.
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Watershed Framework
In order to undertake and implement a successful process-based approach to protecting aquatic
resources within one or more watershed(s), it is helpful to establish a framework (see Figure 2-2) that
integrates watershed aquatic resource data and information for all watershed aquatic resources and
processes. An example of such a framework was developed by the City of Issaquah and King County in
Washington State (Stanley et al 2009b). A watershed technical team comprised of watershed scientists
(geomorphologist, hydrologist, ecologist, wildlife biologist, fisheries biologist, water quality scientist) is
needed to assist watershed managers in interpreting and applying information from the watershed
framework. The framework should:
• Identify stakeholders and existing data, inventory aquatic resource condition, and
characterize/assess watershed resilience and the condition of watershed processes and
functions over multiple spatial and temporal scales;
• Use a tiered approach that addresses specific questions/issues for the watershed;
• Incorporate process-based models for the system you are assessing (lotic, lentic or tidal) - this
could consist of either conceptual or mechanistic models, depending on the complexity of the
issues and the availability of data;
• Identify problems in the watershed (i.e., where, why, and to what extent have watershed
processes and functions been degraded);
• Identify solutions including regulatory, programmatic, and capital measures needed to protect
and restore processes and functions;
• Take action through implementation (non-regulatory and regulatory approaches); and
• Develop a monitoring program to evaluate and apply results through adaptive management.
Why Are Integrated Assessments Needed?
Along the west side of the glacially sculpted Puget Sound estuary, a small but important coastal watershed
drains to its marine waters. Illahee Creek supports a locally valued salmon run that is declining due to several
interacting factors. In the last ten years, local salmon recovery groups have attempted to enhance the salmon
run by restoring side channel habitat in the lower reaches. The channel enhancements were rapidly "filled in"
by sediment pulses during larger storm events. A subsequent watershed assessment of sediment and water
flow processes demonstrated that high flows and bedload transport were being caused by conditions in the
upper watershed. These included filling of wetlands, high levels of impervious surfaces, and the presence of
unconsolidated outwash deposits. In addition, the recent increase in the intensity of storms appeared to be
accelerating the erosion and movement of sediment. By attempting to design a restoration project at the site
scale without understanding the overall condition of the watershed processes and controls, the probability that
restoration actions will not succeed is greatly increased.
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Using a Tiered Approach
A "tiered approach" (Figure 4-1) is one potential strategy for conducting an integrated watershed
assessment that is designed to address specific issues occurring in a watershed within the limitations of
available time and budget. An integrated assessment includes an assessment at the broad or watershed
scale since it informs analysis at the subsequent finer scales. A watershed scale assessment can provide
information on key processes, stressors, and conditions within the landscape based on broad geographic
information and land use patterns. However, a broad scale analysis is primarily limited to issues
addressing planning level decisions that deal with land use patterns (e.g., zoning, designations, and
policies) and water use as it affects hydroecological requirements (e.g., instream flow, ground water
input, lake levels, hydrologic connectivity). Finer scale assessments (i.e., waterbody and local scale) are
performed within the context of the watershed scale and can address issues regarding reach and site
scale processes, and specific protection and restoration designs.
Watershed Conceptual Model
flurnan Drivers
c\\mate Drivers
Figure 4-1 Conceptual model from Chapter 2 showing the relationship of the "assessment tiers" to the components of the
model. This generally illustrates the type of data that must be used in each assessment and the resolution of the results. Tier
1 analyses require coarse scale data on the controls of processes (geomorphology, soils, and land cover) and can address
questions involving management of land cover. Tier 4 analyses require fine scale data (biological, physical and chemical) at
the waterbody scale and can address management questions of restoration measures and design.
33
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Available data at the local and watershed scales are sometimes inaccurate and often inconsistent in
extent and coverage.3 For example, hydrography data do not always capture the presence of headwater
streams. This complicates efforts to understand fully the relationship between the impacts of land use
activities at the watershed level and the resulting environmental responses at the local scale (e.g.,
ground water withdrawals and low baseflow regimes). Furthermore, watershed assessments require the
integration of knowledge from multiple scientific disciplines (e.g., geomorphology, hydrology, and
ecology). Barriers to successful integration include the lack of common languages and terminology,
mismatches between datasets and methodology, and varying levels of precision and accuracy in
predicting environmental responses (Benda et al. 2002). Therefore, it is important that a watershed
analysis always seeks to explore the links between assessments of physical, chemical, and biological
processes at different spatial and temporal scales in order to improve the accuracy and interpretation of
watershed information. Further, the selected analytical methods must be achievable within the available
budget and expertise while addressing the key issues identified by watershed stakeholders and experts.
The following descriptions of tiered assessments are based on the Chapter 2 overview of how landscape
processes, their controls, and stressors interact to form habitat structure and drive the type and level of
performance of the associated functions (see Figure 2-2).
Tier 1 assessments are desktop exercises using existing GIS data layers to characterize landscape and
watershed conditions using simple categorical ratings without detailed data analysis. Tier 1 analyses
focus on characterizing landscape scale processes at the watershed scale that drive both the structure
and function of aquatic ecosystems at the reach and site scales. Examples of ecological functions that
could be examined in a Tier 1 assessment include surficial and ground water hydrology, potential
nutrient loading, landscape cover type, disturbance regimes, buffer integrity, and connectivity (e.g., the
potential for movement of woody debris). A Tier 1 assessment provides important information on how a
watershed functions at the broad or watershed scale and can serve as an initial filter to determine
where potential problems may exist and where additional finer scale analysis is warranted. Tier 1
assessments involve the use of existing remote sensing data to define watersheds for the assessment of
watershed scale controls, such as topography, hydrologic network, and surficial geology; land use/land
cover; and anthropogenic modifications (see Figure 2-1). A method of grading the ecological health of
watersheds at a Tier 1 level could be developed to provide information to target audiences. There is
generally a much lower capital cost associated with Tier 1 assessments, as there is no field work
required, and they are generally conducted with existing or easily obtainable datasets. There is,
however, a higher level of uncertainty in Tier 1 assessments due to the coarse scale at which they are
conducted.
3 This should not discount the value of local data in identifying problems that exist within a watershed.
34
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Tier 2 assessments are desktop exercises using GIS extensions and other simple spreadsheet and
modeling tools that begin to analyze a combination of watershed and sub-watershed scale
characteristics and conditions. Existing and new remote sensing data are used to hydrogeomorphically
define reference reaches (i.e., functional process zones) using: valley geometry, hydrologic network, and
surficial geology; land use/land cover; and anthropogenic modification to channels, floodplains, and
watersheds (flow and runoff characteristics). Flow characteristics (i.e., magnitude, frequency, duration
and timing) are developed using assessments such as the Ecological Limits of Hydrologic Alteration (Poff
et al.,2010). Tier 2 assessments build upon information derived from Tier 1 analyses and begin to
provide interpretative information over different spatial and temporal scales on how watershed controls
and land cover changes result in different regime conditions (see Figure 2-1) and ecological functions.
Tier 2 assessments are used to suggest probable ecological structure, type and condition of ecosystem
services, and the resiliency or recovery potential of the waterbody as described in Chapter 3.
Tier 3 assessments are conducted at the reach or catchment scale to evaluate general ecological health
using water quality investigations and testing, and relatively simple field measurement of hydrologic,
geomorphic, and habitat indicators. Rapid assessment methods can be developed to analyze factors
such as regime departures, condition of buffers and habitat, water chemistry, connectivity, and
hydrologic modifications. Tier 3 assessments, when combined with Tier 1 and 2 data, can provide
information related to potential stressors to ecologic health.
Tier 4 assessments are intensive site or functional unit level assessments that provide a more thorough
and rigorous measure of ecological condition by gathering direct and detailed measurements. Examples
include measurement of biological taxa, habitat, hydrogeomorphic function, and pollutant loadings. Tier
4 assessments should be integrated with information already derived from Tier 1-3 assessments. Costs
associated with Tier 4 assessments are higher due to intensive field work and potential laboratory costs,
but the information they provide is much more site-specific and accurate. Tier 4 assessments are likely
to be used at targeted locations where restoration or conservation opportunities already exist.
35
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In the past, achieving watershed health has been associated specifically with the management of species
at the site or reach scale without consideration of ecosystem processes (Beechie & Bolton 1999). The
general approach described here uses watershed processes and resulting regime and habitat conditions,
ideally linked with available biotic data, as measures of healthy watersheds. The analysis is based on
climatic drivers (e.g., precipitation) and watershed controls as described in Chapter 2. These drivers and
controls result in various regimes and conditions associated with places on the ground. Processes and
functions are linked among watersheds, waterbodies, reaches, and sub-reaches, and the resulting
conditions and impacts are evaluated at different spatial scales (see Table 4-1).
Without considering these linkages, identification of healthy watersheds will be incorrectly based on the
use of one scale or tier of data. For example, macro/micro habitats that support healthy populations at a
single reach may seem to indicate a healthy watershed. However, by scaling up to the larger
"functional" watershed for this reach, it could be revealed that the driving processes are significantly
altered and will not sustain this finer scale population for the long-term. Therefore, it is wise not to use
single biological samples to characterize watershed health at larger scales without hierarchically linking
habitat features with larger scale formative processes. Conversely, watershed scale information should
not be used to predict site scale biological conditions.
Biological data are also critical for verifying and validating the process-based approach. Depending on
the scale of the analysis and level of detail, data on high priority locations, such as habitat conditions
and status of biological communities, are needed as feedback on the identification of healthy
watersheds using the above approach. Without this validation, important opportunities are missed.
Many states that begin an HWIA may have Tier 1 watershed/landscape data and Tier 4 biological data,
because those are the data that were collected and used to identify impaired waters. The Tier 1 data
may be used to start mapping HWs, using the Tier 4 biological data as initial verification, while some
amount of Tier 2 and 3 data is being collected to define the process linkages between habitat scales.
Ultimately, HW Teams may want to devise a method for ranking the healthiest watersheds, sub-
watersheds, reaches, and waterbodies where protection and restoration activities may be focused. To
assist in selecting an appropriate method, Table 4-2 summarizes for each tier the types of processes and
the resiliency and stressor features used to develop mapping products and actions to protect and
restore healthy watersheds. Ranking healthy watersheds and supporting protective actions are aided by
an understanding of the ecosystem services, sensitivity, and threats that come into sharper focus
through a tiered assessment. Actions may become finer-scaled with each successive tier and may
include the protection of vegetated riparian corridors and shorelines, hydrologic connectivity,
floodplains, and wetlands with assessments at any tier through land acquisition, conservation
easements, land stewardship, permits, education, and outreach.
36
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Table 4-1 Types of data collected in four hierarchical tiers of watershed assessment (see Figure 2-2 for ecological and
assessment framework). Tiers are primarily defined by the spatial scale at which data are collected and secondarily by the
type of effort. Each tier overlaps a pair of the concentric rings depicted in the Watershed Conceptual Model (Figure 2-1).
Scale
Type of Effort
Integration w/
Conceptual Model
(Figure 2-1)
Hydrology
/"""l^N.
(4)
\^__^
Geomorphology
-j-_^
/((\
f \\ \
//
V \\ /
\AV^
Water Quality
(POT)
Habitat
/v£f\
L^ vW/A_ 1
x^^^x
^" ^
Biological
(Q)
V — /
Tierl
Watershed / Subwatershed
Existing GIS data layers
Climate drivers
(precipitation), watershed
controls, broad ecosystem
and hydrological conditions
Digital hydrography data,
Land use / cover, wetlands,
Precipitation mapping,
Hydrologic connectivity,
Roads, ditches, dams,
% impervious cover
Geology: bedrock and
surficial,
Soil resistance properties,
Geography- continental,
mountain, valley, and
coastal land forms
Surficial geology and soil
chemistry,
Temperature zones,
Permitted wastewater and
stormwater discharges
Climatic and physiographic
regions,
Spatial extent / connectivity
of native vegetative cover,
Natural disturbance regimes
(wind, flood)
Tier 2
Subwatershed/
Valley Segments (FPZ)
New GIS data /modeling
Watershed controls,
regimes, conditions, &
resiliency/recovery
potential
Flow characteristics:
magnitude, frequency,
duration, and timing
of flows;
Historical land use/cover
Delineation of:
geomorphic reaches,
functional process
zones, active river
areas, ground water-
dependent
ecosystems: springs,
seeps, wetlands, lakes;
Historical planform and
floodplain
modification
Mapping of human
disturbance gradients
and critical source
areas using land use
nutrient loading
Ecological Drainage Unit
(EDU) mapping (soils,
slope, and
vegetation);,
Riparian mapping,
Habitat Suitability Index
mapping,
Green infrastructure
assessment
Biotic history
Zoographic distribution of species from natural heritage
data: rare, threatened, and endangered species and
regional species pools
Tier3
Reaches / Waterbodies
Field data collection
Regimes, conditions,
habitat, ecosystems, and
connectivity
LiDAR/bathymetry data,
Flow modifiers,
Bedrock and surficial
geologic mapping to
support ground water
recharge and discharge
delineation
Channel, floodplain, and
valley geomorphology;
Hydrologic, sediment,
and woody regimes;
Geomorphic stability and
stage of channel
evolution
D.O., sediment, nutrients,
conductivity
Temperature conditions,
NPDES monitoring data,
Illicit discharge detection,
Agricultural soil nutrient
management data
Tier 4
Segments /Sites
Field data collection/
empirical modeling
Regimes, conditions,
habitat, ecosystems,
& biological integrity
Channel geometry
and hydraulics,
Distribution and
sorting of sediment
& wood,
Boundary conditions
and vegetation (soil
erodibility testing,
roughness elements
and coefficients)
Chemical pollutant
loading data:
nutrients, toxins,
contaminants of
emerging concern
Pathogen data
Habitat conditions and dynamics evaluated from:
wetland soils, vegetation, and hydrology;
littoral zones/shorelands;
instream cover types, depth/velocity combinations,
riparian banks, buffers, and corridors;
habitat connectivity: lateral and longitudinal
Biological integrity and community health of the
resident biota (fish, invertebrates, riparian
organisms, wetland and upland plant
communities, periphyton, plankton,
macrophytes, amphibians, and other wildlife);
Invasive species surveys
37
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Table 4-2 Features and process-based components used in developing mapping products to protect healthy watersheds (see
Figure 2-2 for ecosystem and assessment framework).
Tierl
Tier 2
TierS
Tier 4
Mapping Scale
Watershed, subwatershed
landscape
Subwatersheds, valley
segments, ecosystems
Reaches, waterbodies,
natural communities
Segments, sites, and
functional habitat units
Functional
Process Features
Watershed hydrologic
features identified at broad
scales driven by climate as
controlled by geologic and
biological landscape
elements and explaining
overland & subsurface
water delivery to aquatic
ecosystems. Other regimes
characterized broadly at
the watershed scale.
Spatial and temporal
refinement of hydrologic
regime and valley-scale
zonation of disturbance;
sed./organic/nutrient; and
heat/light regimes based on
existing gage data and finer
scale measurement of
watershed controls. Upstream
connectivity and zoo-
distribution.
Spatial refinement of
regimes at the reach scale;
mapping of ecosystem
structures &
presence/extent of
functional habitat units
(e.g., depth, velocity, and
substrate patches);
upstream, riparian, and
upland connectivity.
Spatial refinement and
regime dynamics at the
micro/macro habitat scales
(i.e., mapping of habitat
patches). Measurement of
"habitat integrity" and
"biological integrity" in
response to regime and
connectivity conditions and
invasive species.
Resiliency
Features
Elevation,
Watershed size/shape,
Soil resistance and
chemical properties,
Forests and wetlands,
Connectivity of native
vegetative cover,
Rare taxa/species
occurrence
Contribution and storage
areas for water, sediment,
organics and nutrients
Natural channel forms,
Hydrologic connectivity,
Forests and wetland areas in
corridor/buffer,
Corridor slope,
Contiguous green
infrastructure
Equilibrium channels,
Upstream and upland
connectivity,;
Bank stability, soils, woody
vegetation,
Diversity of habitat cover
types,
Ground water seeps,
Buffered chemistry
Habitat integrity,
Aquatic community
integrity,
Lack of invasive species
Rare taxa present
Human Stressor
Features
Hydrologic alterations,
Impervious cover,
Road/ditch density,
Dams & road crossings,
Agricultural land use,
Wastewater discharges,
Connectivity breaks in
native vegetative cover
Alterations in magnitude,
frequency, duration and
timing of flows;
Channelization,
Structural encroachments in
corridor/flood plain,
Crop tillage and tile drains in
corridor or buffer,
Removal of buffer vegetation
Dredging, snagging,
berming, ditching, and
bank-armoring
Undersized crossings &
other aquatic barriers,
Channel incision,
Vegetative response to
nutrient enrichment,
Unstable or embedded
beds/banks/shores,
Loss of habitat cover types
Low index of aquatic
community integrity,
Poor habitat integrity,
Invasive species,
Disequilibrium (sediment
transport imbalance)
verified in hydraulic
modeling
Healthy
Watershed
Identification
Map landscapes and
watershed areas using
simple categorical ratings
of condition without
detailed data analysis.
Intact resiliency features
with the fewest human
stressors would be rated
highest (see Chapter 3:
recovery potential rating).
Condition ratings from Tier 1
are refined and assigned to
smaller scale,
hydrogeomorphically defined
reaches, corridors, or valley
areas. Important process-
related areas are rated higher.
Stressors within corridors and
buffers used in HW/Recovery
are identified.
Map areas of ecological
(habitat) health at the reach
or waterbody scale,
including physical/chemical
conditions. Tier 3 reach data
used to refine Tier 1/2 scale
HW maps. Separate stressor
maps assist with restoration
work.
Map sites or locations with
high habitat and biological
integrity nested within Tier
3 healthy reach condition
maps. Tier 1/2 HW maps
depicting larger scales are
refined.
Healthy
Watershed
Protective
Actions
Land use planning and
zoning, i.e., location, type,
and intensity of new
development to avoid and
buffer existing, mapped
watershed features.
Refinements of Tier 1 land use
planning and zoning to
protect existing, mapped
watershed features and green
infrastructure serving
important watershed process
and function.
Reach and watershed-scale
strategies for land and
water protections, e.g.,
water use permits
protective of instream flow.
Reach specific BMPs to
protect and restore
conditions associated with
healthy watersheds.
Protection of biodiversity
and other critical areas.
Adaptive management (bio)
feedback and site and reach
scale project designs for the
specific BMPs to remediate
stressors to restore and
protect healthy watersheds.
38
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Example of Tier I Assessment
One example of a Tier 1 assessment is an assessment of water flow processes in Puget Sound,
developed by the state of Washington. Watershed and subwatershed scales were used for mapping and
assessment. The assessment methods identified the types of "controls" or important areas on the
landscape that govern the movement of water and associated processes, and how land use activities
impair each process. This included identifying precipitation types and patterns, and areas of storage
(wetlands/floodplains), recharge, and discharge. Impairments assessed included loss of forest, extent of
impervious surfaces and change in recharge, and ground water withdrawals. The goal of watershed
assessment is to inform decisions on where protection and restoration of watershed processes will be
most effective, and which areas on the landscape are most appropriate for development. A watershed
management matrix (Figure 4-2), summarizes the information from the assessment. The matrix is a
graphical representation used to identify analysis units most suited for protection, restoration, and
other land use activities for a watershed process. The matrix results from two factors: 1) the importance
of the analysis unit in maintaining watershed processes, and 2) the degree to which the processes in the
analysis unit have been impaired by human activities.
Kitsap County - Overall Results for Water
Flow Assessment
Figure 4-2 Results of Tier 1 assessment of water flow processes in Kitsap County, Puget Sound, Washington. For planners, this
type of information can be used to identify the most appropriate development patterns and land use designations that will
maintain watershed processes. Areas of green suggest land use activities and policies that protect processes; yellow suggests
potential restoration areas and grey areas have higher development intensity. Tier 2 through 4 assessments can address
specific issues such as the appropriate restoration design for a creek in a yellow "restoration" watershed.
39
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Example of Tier 3 Assessment
The state of Vermont has developed a fluvial geomorphic-based assessment methodology to support its
river corridor protection program. Floodplains, which promote sediment and nutrient storage processes,
have been identified as key functional units for protecting and restoring healthy watersheds. The
method involves using Tier 1 and Tier 2 data to define meander belt-based river corridors using regime
equations and GIS modeling. River corridors encompass the amplitude of meanders that exist or would
exist in a given set of watershed controls that define sediment regime. Tier 3 field data are then
collected to assess sediment regime departures. In this example, a river corridor plan prepared by South
Mountain Research and
Consulting for the Lewis Creek
Association has assessed Reach
M22 as a gravel-based
meandering channel that has
been straightened into an incised,
sediment transport dominated
reach. Due to limited human
encroachment, the M22 corridor
is identified as an intact HW
component and an exceptional
opportunity to increase sediment
storage and restore ecological
processes. A corridor easement is
proposed to restrict land uses and
channel management, allow the
Creek to re-meander and, in the
process, restore floodplain
connectivity and function.
Tier 3: historic
channelization
floodplain
processes
disconnected a
type supports
gravel-based
meandering
channel at M.
River
Reach
M23
M22
M21-B
M21-A
M20
M19
M18
Corridor
Protection
Priority
Very high
Exceptional
Very high
Moderate
High
Very High
Low
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Figure 4-3 Lewis Creek in Vermont is a watershed with very high recovery potential. Tier 1, 2, and 3 data are used to
identify the reach M22 corridor as a priority for a conservation easement to protect sediment/nutrient storage processes.
40
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In applying assessment results the following three principles, as put forth by Beechie et al (2011), should
be observed:
1. Target the root causes of habitat and ecosystem change. Restoration and planning actions
should always identify why a particular environmental problem is occurring and not resort to
simply treating the symptom(s). This should always include consideration of the interaction
between multiple processes and stressors. For example, if wood is not present in a stream
reach, then the response should not be to anchor more wood without first considering the
upstream processes delivering wood. Investigation of these watershed processes may reveal
that a combination of high flows due to deforestation and channelization is both reducing the
supply of wood and destabilizing channels so that any remaining wood is transported out of the
system.
2. Restoration and protection actions may need to consider human constraints in the watershed
that otherwise limit the full potential of those restoration and protection actions. These types of
constraints would typically involve permanent impacts to processes such as those associated
with urban development. This would not be considered the case with working and rural lands
(agriculture, forestry), since the impacts to processes there do not involve converting land cover
to impervious surfaces.
3. Match the scale of the restoration actions to the temporal and spatial scale of physical and
biological processes (Figure 4-4). In the llahee Creek example provided at the beginning of this
chapter, restoration of side channel habitat in the lower watershed requires restoring natural
rates of erosion and runoff processes at a larger spatial scale (upper watershed). These upper
watershed runoff processes occur on a temporal scale of 10"1 to 102. Therefore, restoration of
lower reaches should be delayed until overland flow and erosion have been reduced and
downstream sediment fluxes have returned to normative levels. This delay could range from 1
year to more than a decade after upper watershed restoration actions are completed.
41
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Define & Address
Environmental
Problem
Develop Local
and Regional
Plans
What is the root cause of
the reach or site scale
problem?
What is the best location
for new development &
protection, restoration
actions?
e
S
c
a
1
e
Apply local & state data on site
and reach conditions
* *
Develop solutions, if
root cause identified &
consistent with broad
scale assessments
/
Root cause not
identified proceed
to next tier up &
repeat
Apply Assessment Results
Broad scale information
can inform site scale
plans
Develop Watershed Based
Management Plan
Site data can inform
broad scale plans
Apply to restoration
design or planning
L
a
n
d
s
c
a
P
e
S
c
a
Figure 4-4 The primary use of Tier 1 and 2 information from these assessments is to address planning issues. Level 3 and 4
data are typically used to address reach and site scale issues, but such analyses should be done within the context of Tier 1
and 2 information and plans. Broad-scale plans can also be refined with data and analysis from Tiers 3 and 4 that identify
causes of specific environmental problems.
42
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The tiered approach described above provides a stepwise method to examine watershed processes and
functions at multiple scales, and includes multiple endpoints: biology, water quality, habitat, landscape
connectivity, hydrology, geomorphology, and watershed disturbance regimes. There is not yet a single
assessment approach that successfully incorporates all of these elements and the interrelationships
among them. The November 2010 EPA workshop evaluated existing approaches to integrated
assessments that take into account the linkages among two or more of these elements.
At the coarsest scale, the Active River Area concept (Smith et al. 2008) identifies important elements of
the landscape within the watershed based on their lateral and upstream-downstream connections with
the river and role in key watershed processes and habitat complexes. The framework identifies five key
components of the active river area: 1) material contribution zones, 2) meander belts, 3) riparian
wetlands, 4) floodplains and 5) terraces. These areas are defined by the major physical and ecological
processes associated and explained in the context of the continuum from the upper, mid, and lower
watershed. The framework provides a spatially explicit manner for accommodating the natural ranges of
variability to system hydrology, sediment transport, processing and transport of organic materials, and
key biotic interactions.
The Active River Area framework provides analysis tools for defining the active river area components
over a range of spatial scales within a watershed. The framework itself does not provide an integrated
assessment approach, but does provide an overview of existing methods to assess biology, habitat, and
geomorphology. The Active River Area concept has been applied by Vermont in an assessment program
that links geomorphology with local habitat features (VTANR, 2007). EPA's Environmental Monitoring
and Assessment Program (EMAP) protocols for physical habitat assessments provide an approach to link
riparian zone and channel characteristics with habitat features (Kaufmann and Robison, 1998), which in
turn are linked with results of biological assessments (e.g., Maul et al. 2004).
Approaches to link aquatic network connectivity with habitat quality and population persistence of
aquatic species are under development. Galatowitsch et al. (2009) applied climate projections from an
ensemble of climate change models to assess the midcontinent region of North America to evaluate
potential habitat shifts in communities, and proposed management approaches to maintain terrestrial
and aquatic reserve connectivity. Landscape Conservation Cooperatives (LCCs;
http://www.fws.gov/science/shc/lcc.html) represent public-private partnerships organized at the
regional scale to implement strategic terrestrial and aquatic habitat conservation practices. The LCCs are
developing methods to link both current and projected future habitat quality and connectivity with
population persistence of key species.
The Ecological Limits of Hydrologic Alteration (ELOHA) approach has been successfully applied to assess
the natural range of variability in hydrologic regimes for lotic systems and to determine the associated
ecological flow requirements (Poff et al. 2010). Attributes of natural flow regimes have in turn been
linked with habitat connectivity and channel-forming processes (Bunn and Arthington 2002).
Methods have been developed to map ground water-dependent ecosystems (GDE) and communities,
and identify potential threats to these systems (Brown et al., 2010 and Brown et al., 2009). Thus far,
these methods have only been tested in Oregon (Brown et al. 2010). The Nature Conservancy and the
U.S. Forest Service are collaborating to develop methods and protocols for determining the ground
water requirements for GDEs (i.e., the amount and quality of ground water needed to sustain healthy,
viable ecosystems).
43
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To ensure the successful application of assessment results, data must be accessible in a manner that is
appropriate to the user's goals, objectives, and decision process. It is also very important that results are
displayed in a manner that can be readily understood by decision makers and the public. Without clear
written and visual explanation of the basis and need for strategic and prioritized watershed actions,
needed public support cannot be achieved. Examples of effective communications include:
• New Hampshire communicates 305(b)/303(d) assessments to the public using new HUC12 level
report cards, see:
http://des.nh.gov/organization/divisions/water/wmb/swqa/report cards.htm.
• National Fish Habitat Action Plan provides examples of how to display and interpret watershed
data: http://fishhabitat.org/images/documents/fishhabitatreport 012611.pdf.
• Whatcom County Planning Department, in conjunction with Washington Department of Ecology
(WA DE) and local citizen input, developed a watershed-based plan using displays of GIS-based
assessment methods:
http://www.whatcomcountv.us/pds/naturalresources/specialproiects/birchbaywatershed-
actionplan.jsp
• Mapping examples from the states of Washington and Vermont (shown in Figure 4-2 and Figure
4-3, respectively) integrate data endpoints, display a range of conditions, and communicate
resiliency and recovery potential of assessed waterbodies.
Developing assessments to integrate watershed structure and function provides an opportunity to
communicate aquatic ecological integrity within the context of supporting watershed processes and
influence broad-scale land and water use planning. Watershed technical teams also have an opportunity
to tailor assessment outputs in a manner which speaks directly to the implementation of protection
programs at the federal, state, or local level. For instance, a state HW team might provide the municipal
governing bodies with maps based on a Tier 1/2 assessment that include recommendations to: 1)
protect active river areas shown as having intact floodplains and riparian wetlands; and 2) upgrade or
replace undersized culverts that are causing sediment discontinuity and aquatic organism passage
issues. Involvement of stakeholders is necessary at all steps of the process to define decision context,
goals, scale, tolerance for uncertainty, trust, etc. (Cash et al. 2003).
44
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5
Participants at the Healthy Watersheds Integrated Assessments Workshop identified many ideas for
effective implementation of HW programs, starting with recognizing that the establishment of a
governance framework to nurture and support program development by states and localities would be
beneficial. This chapter addresses all stages of HW program implementation, from integrated
assessments, to strategic action planning, to program launch and management. The chapter provides an
overview of some of the most significant recommendations made by workshop participants. A more
complete list of ideas is provided in the workshop proceedings. Subsequent to the workshop and
development of this synthesis report, US EPA Office of Water has published a Healthy Watersheds
Initiative National Framework and Action Plan 2011 (US EPA 2011g), which addresses many of the issues
discussed here.
There was a general sense among workshop participants that Healthy Watersheds assessments and
programs should have a whole-system scope and strive to define and create sustainable watershed
systems - ecologically, economically, and socially. Healthy watersheds programs should therefore
address all characteristics of a watershed, including ecological and physical processes, but also other
factors that directly and indirectly affect the ability of resource managers to protect and restore
watersheds over the long-term. This can include factors such as usage trends, economic needs,
stakeholder perspectives, and development patterns.
With such a broad vision and objectives, it is essential to establish national, regional, and state-level
operational structures to support and facilitate the development of Healthy Watersheds programs. Such
an operational framework should include strategies to leverage existing programs and funds to enable
government entities to jump-start HW initiatives on a broad scale. There was strong workshop support
for a "national franchise" approach to HW programs, whereby EPA, through its regional offices, sets
certain guidelines and incentives for the HW approach, but remains flexible by encouraging states and
localities to define the specific elements of their own programs, based on their unique issues,
opportunities, and capabilities.
Stakeholder dialogue is needed to define and establish a national HW program management and
accountability structure that will reflect unique regional and state opportunities. The HWIA workshop
played a role in fostering this dialogue. EPA brought together NGOs with many state and federal
agencies that have had experience in developing important components of a Healthy Watersheds
program. States that have mature HW protection programs were invited to bring their experience to the
table and contribute to a national framework.
As with any government initiative, it is considered essential to identify HW program "champions" at all
levels of government. Empowering individuals should not be difficult. Water resource managers, who
have long experienced "one step forward—two steps backward" working on pollution abatement and
restoration programs may be eager to establish proactive avoidance-based programs. They know that
today's threatened waters will become tomorrow's impaired waters, unless we put the same emphasis
on protecting these waters as we do for impaired waters. Workshop participants emphasized the need
for strong support from senior political appointees at federal, state, and regional agencies.
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State and local agencies (and NGOs) represent the primary delivery mechanisms for an HWI, as they
implement the full suite of assessment, planning, funding, and regulatory programs that are necessary
to do the job. Federal agencies also have a role in these functions and need to develop and deliver HWI
programs as well. Regional, state, and local efforts will be far more successful where they have
opportunities to work through joint programs with the EPA, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S.
Geological Survey, Army Corps of Engineers, Bureau of Reclamation, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and
Department of Energy. These federal agencies have programs that affect watershed health, and the HWI
can be a means of getting their respective programs to operate in more collaborative ways. Government
created HWI task groups responsible for inter- and intra-agency coordination (including NGOs) would be
a valuable asset. Healthy watershed initiatives at larger scales may require the utilization of multi-
agency groups within and among states to break state silos and encourage collaboration. Examples of
such organizations include the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (AFWA), Association of State
Wetland Managers (ASWM), Western States Water Council (WSWC), Environmental Council of States
(ECOS), and Association of State and Interstate Water Pollution Control Administrators (ASIWPCA).
Workshop participants felt it would be beneficial if EPA and other national organizations convene
regional meetings with federal agencies, states, and regional governmental and non-governmental
organizations to evaluate the supporting infrastructure and help states create plans for program roll-
out. Such facilitated dialogue sessions could address opportunities to integrate HW initiatives into
existing assessment, planning, funding, and regulatory programs (i.e., create strategic planning maps
tied to larger program objectives and prompt commitments for follow-up action).
Workshop participants suggested that the national HWI program should conduct an assessment of
regional and state water programs and identify their current healthy watershed-oriented activities,
commonalities, differences, program needs, etc. Opportunities exist to apply the HW approach to
traditional water resource management programs (e.g., the Clean Water Act Section 404's
compensatory mitigation watershed-based approach).
Regional teams that consist of experts from both state and federal agencies should engage the research
and technical community to identify and address gaps in watershed science, explore methods for
assessment integration, and develop comprehensive and strategic healthy watershed planning
processes. In this way, resource management agencies can align their policies and standards to
effectively deliver clear and consistent programs to local governments, landowners, and developers that
succeed in protecting the whole aquatic resource.
Given the need to adapt approaches to meet the unique conditions and circumstances of different
aquatic ecosystems, it is important to maintain some measure of flexibility in the application of HW
protection approaches. Workshop participants also thought that it would be beneficial if EPA
encouraged an adaptive management approach by regional and state authorities (i.e., identify desired
program outcomes, create conservation strategies, and begin tracking indicators of near and long-term
success).
Workshop participants felt sufficient funding sources for regional, state, and local HW programs is
critical for any successful watershed program (e.g., that the states, EPA, and other federal agencies may
need to consider redirecting funds from restoration and remediation toward avoidance and protection).
Clean Water Act (CWA) funding was mentioned as a source that could support HW assessment and
planning. For example, workshop participants suggested that it be beneficial if EPA provided national
program guidance that identifies the HW approach as a priority for project funding under established
CWA programs such as the State Revolving Fund and geographically-based programs (e.g., the
Chesapeake Bay program).
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Workshop participants agreed that where Large Aquatic Ecosystem programs exist (e.g., Great Lakes,
Chesapeake Bay, the Mississippi River basin, and Puget Sound), they represent excellent opportunities
to support a faster, more effective scale-up of state and regional HWI programs. However, an inventory
of available funding sources and areas where program leverage already exists would be useful, since
HWI programs may be most needed in areas outside the geographic scope of large restoration
programs.
Some workshop participants expressed concern about the ability of federal, state, and local
governments to implement a nationwide HW framework in the current economic climate, where
budgets at all levels of government are being cut. While there was apparent agreement that agencies
need to leverage existing ecosystem programs in order to implement the HWI at a sufficiently broad
scope, many also felt that the value of the HWI whole-system approach is actually greater when
government funds are limited.
The HW approach is designed to consider all available data; all trends affecting watershed health, all
relevant programs and resources; and all regulatory and non-regulatory options. The approach is
specifically aimed at evaluating and prioritizing prospective actions in ways that can maximize return on
investment. Aquatic ecosystems provide socioeconomic benefits, and while economic analysis is not
part of the HW assessment, local and regional government entities may include economic analysis as
part of their planning and sustainability assessments. The HWI can identify overlapping or
complementary government programs and prompt collaborative planning to find "bang for the buck"
synergies among them. Workshop participants agreed that the HWI has the potential to be much more
than simply a mechanism to protect healthy waters. It has the potential to create a governance
framework for a much more effective system of water resource management in the United States.
Some states have already started watershed protection programs within their environmental or natural
resource agencies. Other states may find useful coordination and leadership within their basin planning
programs. Workshop participants suggested that states would gain significant value from forming HWI
Task Groups with essential "working" members being managers within state programs that play primary
roles in the assessment, planning, funding, and regulatory work to protect, manage, and restore rivers,
lakes, wetlands, floodplains, estuaries, and ground water. Task group "advisory" members may
represent federal, regional, state, and local agencies; universities; conservation organizations; and
NGOs.
State HWI Task Groups could collectively define a consolidated and holistic planning process that builds
on the synergy of existing program resources by linking their assessment and planning efforts. Well-
defined HWI goals and objectives enable the adoption of an HW classification system which is based on
a condition and stressor analysis. The resource managers and scientists on the Task Group should
challenge themselves to develop a HW condition assessment process such that outcomes represent
strategic actions and priorities within their existing aquatic resource protection, management, and
restoration programs. Evaluating HW threats, or the lack of threats, based on assessment of different
watershed stressors (e.g., encroachment, hydrologic modification, sediment and nutrient loading), will
create opportunities to identify high priority, waterbody-specific actions to remediate certain stressors
or protect key areas where intact physical and ecological processes occur.
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Chapter 4 of this Synthesis Paper describes a tiered HWIA approach that allows specificity to build over
time. Tiered assessments create efficiency by using selected data for an initial screening. An HW
classification system based on large-scale, remote sensing data (Tier 1 or 2) may identify where the Task
Group would work with local groups to prioritize finer-scale, more intensive assessments. It may also
reveal what development patterns are most protective of watershed processes and functions and avoid
costly environmental issues such as flooding, ground water contamination, and low flow concerns that
cannot be readily resolved with site level permits and conditions. Smaller-scale assessments (Tiers 3 and
4) may be used to classify and map specific areas important to protecting watershed processes and
resiliency (e.g., key sediment attenuation areas as in Figure 4-2), and at the same time identify specific
stressors which may threaten or impede the recovery of healthy watershed functions (e.g., undersized
culverts or dams that could be removed to restore connectivity and aquatic organism passage).
State HWI Task Groups should not find it difficult to get started. Tier 1 landscape level data are readily
available, including those from the recently completed National Fish Habitat Assessment
(http://fishhabitat.org/images/documents/fishhabitatreport 012611.pdf). Many states have Tiers 3-4
type data on water quality, aquatic biology, habitat, natural heritage, etc. Fewer states have completed
green infrastructure, geomorphic, hydrologic, and other watershed process assessments. However,
making the argument for the role and value of ecological and physical processes from society-valued
perspectives (i.e., recreational use, water quality, fish and wildlife, property values, flood hazards, soil
development and conservation, and climate change adaptation) will help with securing funds for
conducting those assessments and implementing programs to protect those watershed characteristics
and functions.
The HWI brings water resource agencies out of the water and onto the land. We cannot truly restore
and protect aquatic ecosystems without restoring and protecting the processes that link land and water.
Workshop participants felt that EPA leadership would be valuable for empowering and providing
incentives for river and lake managers to work with the ground water, stormwater, wetland, and
floodplain managers and then seek out land use planners, land-based businesses, natural heritage
groups, and local land trusts. Knowledge and appreciation for watershed processes will drive the
integration of assessment data and strategic plans from each respective entity. Interpreting the links
between landscapes, hydrogeomorphic conditions, habitat, and biota will provide for a much broader
evaluation of ecosystem stressors and consensus for applying best management practices (BMPs) to
address them.
Technical challenges exist which, for a time, will impede the meaningful integration of assessment data.
Many of these were discussed at the workshop in terms of research needs. Existing datasets, created for
different purposes, may be useful indicators of ecosystem condition, but at very different spatial and
temporal scales. For instance, landscape data gathered for a screening assessment (Tier 1) may indicate
healthy forested conditions at a broad scale; but below the canopy, hydrogeomorphic data (Tier 3)
indicates fair or less healthy conditions for specific tributaries and reaches (i.e., due to sediment regime
departures related to historic deforestation, old mill dams, and undersized culverts); and at even finer
scales, biological communities (Tier 4) indicate very good conditions due to the patches of excellent
physical habitat that may exist even in systems where there are significant departures in natural physical
process.
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As tiers of assessment are completed, and results are shared with the public, care must be taken to
explain what the maps and supporting data may or may not be telling us. Discrepancies may foretell the
need to revisit how data are collected at different tiers and scales to provide for better data integration
and ecological assessments; or, they may be very useful in explaining the importance of a process-based
approach to managing sustainable healthy watersheds. In the example cited above, large- and site-scale
data (landscape and biological communities) indicate a potentially healthy watershed. Long-term
sustainability may depend, however, on a public recognition, based on reach-scale condition analyses
(geomorphic instability due to legacy effects and easily remediated encroachments), that important
physical processes may easily recover where local communities work together to protect the watershed
from further encroachments.
Once assessments and strategic planning are underway, State HWI Task Groups may discover that to
implement HW plans, the existing suite of land and water protection and restoration programs must be
strengthened. State, regional, and federal agencies may need to pursue or create new HW protection
mechanisms (i.e., statutory, regulatory, procedural, and funding). For instance, many local land trusts
have traditionally focused on protecting viable farmland. If state and federal resources agencies
supporting land trusts work to show the connection between sustainable farming and healthy
watershed processes, then this effort may elicit the support of agricultural leaders in directing scarce
conservation dollars toward HW protection. State HWI Task Groups will also need to explore whether or
not any regulations represent barriers to HW protection. For instance, the minimum Federal Emergency
Management Agency (FEMA) floodplain development standards, which communities are required to
adopt to stay enrolled in the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), may be a serious barrier, as they
allow for and essentially facilitate development on floodplains.
Finally, workshop participants discussed the importance of communicating the results of integrated
assessments and involving public and local communities with the implementation of strategic plans.
Many ideas were put on the table (see Workshop Proceedings). Major needs include:
• Visual maps that municipalities, the general public, and other agencies can easily interpret;
• A technical watershed team that can assist the above entities in properly interpreting watershed
data and information (i.e., watershed framework);
• Published popular articles, interactive websites, and other media events to show off results and
explain the consolidated HW assessment and planning process;
• Institutional mission statements acknowledging that larger scale processes and issues are linked
(i.e., HW processes increase resiliency to climate change and result in the soil regeneration
critical for sustainable agriculture); and
• Public outreach on the economic and societal benefits of protecting healthy watersheds.
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Throughout the HWIA Workshop, participants discussed the importance of not only protecting aquatic
and riparian habitat, but also protecting areas in watersheds involved in the ecological processes that
naturally create and maintain these habitats. The Nature Conservancy presented the Active River Area
methodology it is initiating with its partners that identifies watershed areas important to ecological
process (Table 5-1). Water resource managers working in wetlands, and more recently floodplains, have
used a management paradigm based on the protection of natural water-related functions that link land
areas with surface waters. A process-based approach will enhance the traditional site-specific and
stream reach surface water quality approach. Further, protecting ecological processes will benefit from
a broader landscape approach of not only protecting stream buffers, but integrating watershed
components such as meander belts, lake shores, riparian wetlands, and floodplains into protection
programs. All of this will require aquatic resource managers to work at larger scales with a whole new
set of partners concerned with land use planning and management.
Land and water protection through non-regulatory and regulatory programs, conducted at all levels of
government in partnership with nongovernmental organizations and landowners, is central to
implementing the HWI. However, protection and restoration are often part of an integral approach, as
many states consider opportunities to protect healthy watersheds and restore impaired watersheds
with a high recovery potential. A process-based approach that considers watershed resiliency and
sustainability is important for restoration success. In addition to restoring natural flows, this could mean
adding green infrastructure, removing constraints (e.g., dams), or working to ensure that land-water
ecosystems remain dynamically connected.
To restore and protect dynamic processes, HW champions must often promote a package deal in which
integrated planning brings together different interest groups and provides opportunities and incentives
to bundle "project" components and achieve a net ecological benefit. This may occur where, at every
turn, the regulatory, technical assistance, and funding program managers are connecting the dots
between land conservation; wetland, riparian, and floodplain protection and restoration; urban
stormwater and agricultural best management practices; channel and shoreline management; and
instream ecological flow protection and restoration.
Terrestrial ecosystem protection proponents have been working with land use planners and
conservation organizations for decades. Aquatic ecosystem protection proponents are just beginning to
develop these relationships. As with any meeting of cultures, each discipline must patiently learn the
language and practices of the other. For instance, the Vermont Rivers Program, a group represented at
the workshop, reported being in its seventh year of developing a river corridor and floodplain protection
program. Much of this time was spent cross-training with municipal planners and conservation
organizations. River managers are learning about zoning bylaws, easements, and land appraisals. Their
land use and conservation counterparts have been learning about meander belts, floodplain restoration,
and dynamic equilibrium and most importantly, why these concepts are important to their traditional
clients. Flood and erosion hazard avoidance and mitigation have become the common ground and
incentive for land and water managers in Vermont. These mutual interests and cross-training are
starting to pay off, with more than a dozen towns adopting zoning bylaws that keep structures out of
meander beltways and floodplains, and agricultural land trusts adding river corridor development and
channel management restrictions to their easements.
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Table 5-1 The Active River Area framework (Smith et al. 2008) provides a systematic approach to identifying those areas,
based on valley setting, watershed position, and geomorphic stream type that can be used to identify conservation targets
and guide the protection and restoration of freshwater resources (Adapted from Schiff et al. 2008).
Natural Process
Key Attributes
Hydro logic f I
regime
Sediment
transport
Processing and
transport of
organic materials
Establishment of
connectivity
tater quality
aintenance
Regulation of the
thermal regime
Energy transport
The timing, volume, duration, and distribution of flow events
over the hydrologic year that are influenced by climate,
geology, watershed land cover, connectivity, and valley/stream
morphology.
The size, quantity, sorting, and distribution of sediments that
are a function of geology, hydrology, connectivity and
valley/stream morphology.
The abundance, diversity, and physical retention of organic
material available for biological uptake and physical refuge that
are a function of bank and riparian vegetation, climate,
hydrology, connectivity, and valley/stream morphology.
The maintenance of connectivity in and between the channel
and riparian zone to support the unimpeded movement of
water, sediment, organic material, and organisms longitudinally
up and down the watershed and laterally/vertically between
the stream channel and its floodplain.
Transformation and transport of suspended sediments, ions,
and nutrients that are a function of geology, climate, hydrology,
and watershed land cover.
The maintenance of daily and seasonal instream water
temperatures influenced by climate, hydrology, riparian canopy,
and valley/stream morphology.
Sources of nutrient and energy inputs, primarily in the form of
sun and changes to organic compounds via bond breaking
(respiration) and bond assembly (production or photosynthesis)
and the associated ecosystem responses such as changes to
dissolved oxygen and pH.
ctive River Area
mponents
Meander belts, riparian
wetlands, floodplains,
terraces, material
contribution areas.
Meander belts, riparian
wetlands, floodplains,
terraces, material
contribution zones.
Material contribution
areas, meander belts,
floodplains.
Meander belts, riparian
wetlands, floodplains.
Material contribution
areas, meander belt,
riparian wetlands,
floodplains, terraces.
Material contribution
areas, meander belts,
riparian wetlands,
floodplains, terraces.
Meander belts, riparian
wetlands, floodplains,
material contribution
areas.
Technical teams comprised of watershed scientists (e.g., geomorphologist, hydrologist, ecologist, fish
and wildlife biologist, and planner) are needed to help peer review the data and research contributing to
regional or statewide HW frameworks. Technical teams need to provide NGOs and local governments
with assistance in interpreting data and maps correctly and applying the information in a scientifically
acceptable manner to local land use plans. This technical support will contribute to more defensible and
credible local watershed protection plans.
Over the last several decades, a variety of state and federal regulatory protections have been developed
to protect and restore healthy watersheds. In very general terms there are water, including wetland-
and floodplain-based protections, and land-based protections. Many of the protections for healthy
waters are based on elements of the state and federal implementation of the CWA, Wild and Scenic
Rivers Act, and Farm Bill Programs (e.g., Wetlands Reserve Program). Others are based more directly on
fish and wildlife, streamflow, and channel or floodplain management regulations.
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State water quality standards, implemented pursuant to CWA regulations and procedures, identify tiers
of protection in several broad areas; designated uses, criteria to protect uses, and antidegradation
policies. All states must have antidegradation policies that protect existing instream uses, high quality
waters, and outstanding natural resource waters. Some states have also chosen to designate or classify
certain waters as exceptional ecological waters (e.g., Vermont Class A (1), Maine AA waters, and
Pennsylvania's Exceptional Value waters). EPA and the states would benefit from research evaluating
the use of antidegradation rules in protecting healthy watersheds.
Some states have developed statewide streamflow protection rules or regulations. Many of these
include provisions for providing higher levels of protection to higher quality waters. The Maine DEP
Chapter 587, In-stream Flows and Lake and Pond Water Levels Rule, for example, provides highest
protection to Class AA waters.
States also have programs that are specifically designed for river protection and in some cases are state
parallels to the Federal Wild and Scenic Rivers Program. For example, the New Hampshire River
Management and Protection Program, established in 1988 with the passage of RSA 483, protects certain
rivers, called designated rivers, for their outstanding natural and cultural resources. The program is
administered by the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services.
Land use and wetland regulations and public lands management programs exist in various forms across
the country. Some specifically integrate land and water planning and protection in the same program.
Excellent examples are the Vermont River Corridor Protection Program and the Washington Critical
Areas Growth Management Act.
New state and federal regulatory protections will enjoy very little broad-based support during difficult
economic times, and new funding programs will be even scarcer. Protecting HWs is cost-effective in the
long-run. Workshop participants offered that this alone could justify state and federal funding and
technical assistance programs realigning to enable support for the HWI. The goal of the CWA is to
restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the Nation's waters. Historically,
greater emphasis has been placed on the restoration element of the CWA goal. A shift in emphasis from
restoration or "fixing things" to more of a balance between "avoidance" or maintenance of the integrity
of the Nation's waters and restoration, at all levels of government, would be a first step in redirecting
some resources toward protecting HWs.
In lieu of state land use regulations, local action would be required. States should pilot projects and
create funding incentives for landowners, towns, and local organizations to adopt river corridor,
wetland, floodplain, shoreline, and ground water source protection bylaws. Consideration could be
given to those communities which take action to protect HW areas relative to priority for emergency
management, transportation, community development, and environmental infrastructure grants. As
one community takes action without mandates, others will follow. States can also provide towns with
administrative and technical assistance (e.g., developing a model ordinance that protects watershed
processes and HW attributes, or assisting with a package of federal grant applications to address a
number of local water-related issues and opportunities as an incentive for, and in tandem with, HW
protections).
Much can be done at very little cost, especially with support and coordination from regional entities and
federal agencies. Many great HWI examples were presented at the HWIA workshop. Local and state HW
initiatives can get off to a fast and efficient start learning from the successes and failures of one another.
EPA and other federal agencies should work together to emphasize integrated assessments and HW
protection in their research and grant programs, and support a web-based clearinghouse where states
are encouraged to post their accomplishments and success stories.
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6
A logic model was created to reflect the steps necessary to support development of HWIAs, and is
applied here to highlight important gaps in the science related to watershed assessment. A logic model
is a systematic and graphical approach to identifying the resources, participants, activities, and outputs
needed to achieve program short, medium, and long term goals. Typically, logic models are constructed
by defining long term goals, then working backwards to determine intermediate objectives that support
long term goals, then short term conditions needed to support intermediate objectives, and so forth
(W.K. Kellogg Foundation, 2004). A logic model is used to represent the interrelationships among
program inputs, products, and desired outcomes; to prioritize activities; and to identify gaps in existing
programs.
A logic model framework for the support of HWIAs was set up based on three of the strategic long term
goals (SGs) outlined in EPA's Strategy to Protect America's Waters (U.S. EPA 2011c). The three strategic
goals chosen for focus are:
1) Increase Protection of Healthy Waters—Increase focus on the protection of source waters and
healthy watersheds to ensure that they remain protected from degradation and depletion;
2) Enhance Watershed Resiliency and Revitalize Communities—Implement sustainable approaches
and technologies that will reduce the impacts and risks associated with climate change,
population growth, increased urbanization, infrastructure gaps, and other factors; and
3) Restore Degraded Waters—Enhance the ability of EPA, states, and tribes to restore degraded
waters, restore ecosystems, and take action to increase the number of restored water bodies,
including nutrient-impaired waters.
EPA's Healthy Watersheds Initiative National Framework and Action Plan 2011 (US EPA 2011g) was not
yet available at the time of the workshop and subsequent preparation of this synthesis document.
However, the goals and underlying objectives outlined in that document are generally consistent with
the EPA Strategic Goals above:
1) Identify, protect and maintain a network of healthy watersheds and supportive green
infrastructure habitat networks across the United States;
2) Integrate protection of healthy watersheds into EPA programs (including watershed
restoration); and
3) Increase awareness and understanding of the importance of protecting our remaining healthy
watersheds and the range of management actions needed to protect and avoid adverse impacts
to those healthy watersheds.
The science gaps and data needs identified by the attendees of the HWIA workshop have been
formulated and ranked based on the three SGs of the logic model (Appendix A). The HWIA logic model is
consistent with the Sustainability Realization Process outlined by Fiksel (2010) as a parallel for EPA's
traditional risk assessment framework (Figure 6-1). Through the HWIA stakeholder workshop, several
existing conceptual models for healthy and resilient watersheds were reviewed (System
Characterization), and the state of indicator development for HWIA examined (System Assessment). The
original watershed assessment framework presented by the U.S. EPA Scientific Advisory Board (U.S. EPA
2002) was extended to encompass multiple system types and to include the concept of watershed
resilience in the face of climate change and continued human development pressures.
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Sustainability Realization Process
,
System
Characterization
FIRST
framework
Conceptual scope,
context, structure,
stakeholders, goals,
problem formulation,
stressors, barriers,
solution options
Sustainability
Assessment
Sustainability
Enhancement
System
Adaptation
Analytics and
modeling tools
Execution
Indicators, baseline
assessment, option
evaluation, risks &
benefits, trade-offs,
knowledge gaps
Monitoring,
response to
problems
Decision making,
system resilience,
intervention
Figure 6-1 Sustainability Realization Process, from Fiksel, "Resilience and Sustainabilitv in Industrial. Social, and Ecological
Systems." presented June 8, 2010 (https://intrablog.epa.gov/pathforward/?page id=802)
The research needs and data gaps associated with the HWIA logic model have been considered in the
context of priorities set out by EPA (U.S. EPA 2010b, U.S. EPA 2011c). The HWIA is consistent with
themes outlined under EPA's emerging research programs in: Safe and Sustainable Waters (U.S. EPA
2009b, 2011d), Sustainable Communities (U.S. EPA 2011e), and Air, Climate, and Energy (ACE; U.S. EPA
2011f). In addition, HWIA research is consistent with EPA's Green Infrastructure Initiative (U.S. EPA
2009c, 2010c), which considers the role of green infrastructure at both local scales (e.g., rain gardens,
green roofs) and landscape scales (connectivity of natural land cover) in sustaining HWs. Priority areas
for research under these SGs are based on the following criteria: 1) results support multiple Office of
Water (OW) programs or offices, and their anticipated future scientific information needs (e.g.,
managing multiple stressors, addressing future climate and land use change impacts, integrated
monitoring); 2) Sustainability is explored through a systems approach, taking climate change effects into
consideration; 3) the impact of the research products is important for sustainable environmental
management decisions, including those related to climate adaptation; 4) transdisciplinary integrated
research is promoted where appropriate; and 5) the intramural and extramural capability and capacity
exists to successfully conduct the research.
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SGI: Increase Protection of Healthy Waters
Near-term outcomes (FY11-14) required to achieve strategic goal 1 (SGI) of the HWIA logic model
include: 1) integration of the HW approach into multiple CWA programs, 2) creation of preliminary HW
lists by states based on the best available information and methods, 3) identification of core metrics and
measures for HWIA through evaluation of those in current use by multiple entities, and 4) pilot
demonstrations of HWIA at the state scale (Appendix A). Analyses to elucidate the long-term net
benefit of preservation policies and protection of green infrastructure and processes sustaining HWs will
provide critical support for promoting an integrated systems
approach to watershed management. The efficient
development of preliminary HW lists by all of the states, and
subsequent refinement of those lists, will require a
comprehensive information infrastructure to deliver data
supporting conservation decisions (see Chapter 5). Achieving
consensus on a core set of metrics and methods will require a
coordinated test of approaches through pilot HWIA programs
and fostering of communication across states, other
agencies, and NGOs to share and discuss results.
Demonstration and refinement of approaches for HWIA
requires a conceptual model, a consistent nationwide nested
framework for stratifying assessments, cost-effective
methods for assessing individual elements of HWs,
particularly those not traditionally included in assessments,
knowledge of the interrelationships among HW elements,
and, finally, methods to evaluate multiple assessment
endpoints simultaneously to prioritize conservation options.
Workshop participants identified some of the biggest near-
term gaps in data and knowledge needed to support these
steps, which include: 1) the interdependence of existing and
proposed stratification frameworks (e.g., ecoregions, FPZs,
and flow regime classes); 2) regional models to predict
natural and altered flow, ground water, and thermal regimes
based on limited existing field data, available watershed
characteristics, and human water use statistics; 3) efficient
and cost-effective methods for assessing status and trends in
geomorphology and material transport; and 4) exploration of
consistency of assessment results across endpoints and
spatial or temporal scales.
SGI Research Needs
Evaluate core metrics and methods
for measurements of HWs.
Conduct analyses to elucidate the
long-term net benefit of preservation
policies and protection of green
infrastructure and processes
sustaining healthy watersheds.
Identify characteristics of aquatic
ecosystems and their surrounding
watersheds that make them resilient
to changing land use and climate for
use in predictive models.
Understand interdependence of
existing and proposed stratification
frameworks.
Develop regional models to predict
natural and altered flow, ground
water, and thermal regimes.
Develop efficient and cost-effective
methods for assessing status and
trends in geomorphology and
material transport.
Explore consistency of assessment
results across endpoints and spatial or
temporal scales.
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SG2: Enhance Watershed Resiliency
Climate changes will affect all types of watersheds - healthy and impaired - many years into the future.
Therefore, it is necessary to understand the extent and magnitude of those effects in order to provide
the information necessary to maintain resilient, sustainable, and healthy watersheds over the long-term.
The second SG articulated by the HWIA is enhancing the resilience of watersheds to ongoing climatic
changes. The research needs to support this goal are summarized below and detailed in the logic model
(Appendix A).
Some CWA programs are built on definitions of "natural condition" or on "reference sites." These
definitions allow identification of the condition of all other sites through comparisons with natural or
minimally-impacted sites. However, climatic changes will affect the physical and biological environments
of both reference and non-reference sites and their "natural" and "impaired" conditions. It is probable
that watersheds designated as "healthy" today will be affected to a greater degree than impaired
watersheds in highly modified landscapes. Therefore, a significant gap in our scientific knowledge
identified in the workshop is an incomplete understanding of the physical and biological responses of
aquatic systems and their surrounding landscapes within their watersheds to the effects of climate
change. In addition research is needed to identify the most appropriate indicators and sampling
schemes needed to monitor and detect changes in condition or drift in reference condition due to
climate change. Results of this research will support the definition, designation, and maintenance of
HWs, taking into account ongoing changes in climate, and provide the basis for understanding how to
adjust other OW programs to accommodate climate change effects.
A second significant data gap identified in the workshop is a
lack of understanding of key characteristics of aquatic
ecosystems and their surrounding watersheds that make
them resilient to changing land use and climate for use in the
design of predictive models. These models can then provide
information on future potential changes in condition due to
climate and land use change to aid in evaluating watershed
resilience, prioritizing protection and restoration of the most
resilient systems, and identifying those management actions
that maintain or increase their resilience over the long-term.
Successfully producing the outputs for this SG requires a
highly coordinated effort from across EPA ORD National
Research Programs and a number of disciplines (e.g.,
climatology, hydrology, ecology, and socioeconomics), to
address processes that occur at a variety of spatial and
temporal scales. Integration is necessary to incorporate
linkages between the physical and social sciences, as well as
feedbacks among physical, chemical, and biological systems. Multiple interacting stressors need to be
considered along with human interactions and responses. EPA ORD has significant expertise in the
required areas of hydrology, ecology, model development, monitoring design, and climate vulnerability
and adaptation assessment relating to both humans and ecological systems. Achieving success in the
research outputs articulated for this SG will support OW and its stakeholders in adapting to the impacts
of climate change by managing to not only sustain healthy watersheds into the future, but also to
improve the condition of those watersheds that are currently impaired.
SG2 Research Needs
Understand responses of aquatic
systems to the effects of climate
change.
Research and develop the indicators
and sampling schemes needed to
monitor and detect changes in
condition or drift in reference sites
due to climate change.
Identify characteristics of aquatic
ecosystems and their surrounding
watersheds that make them resilient
to changing land use and climate to
use in the design of predictive models.
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SG3: Restore Degraded Waters
Increasing the number of HWs, the third SG of the HWI, depends greatly on our understanding of the
characteristics of a watershed functioning as a whole system (whether healthy or impaired),
management to sustain these systems, coordination of conservation and restoration with HW principles
across multiple scales, and establishment of partnerships to
protect HWs and their socioeconomic conditions. The
research needs supporting this goal are presented in the
logic model (Appendix A).
SG3 Research Needs
Enhance existing monitoring
approaches to include representative
HW systems, for HW evaluation and
adaptive management.
Coordinate both conservation and
restoration with HW principles across
multiple scales.
Promote the establishment of
partnerships to explore the
socioeconomic conditions that favor
HW protection.
The greatest gap in our scientific knowledge relative to SG3
identified by workshop participants was specific information
on characteristics of existing healthy watersheds. Enhancing
existing monitoring networks to include regular monitoring
of representative HW systems for evaluation and adaptive
management, with discrete and continuous real-time
reporting and facilitated accessibility would be a significant
benefit. This long-term monitoring activity will require
collaborative efforts of multiple federal agencies. However,
the data collected in this network would support and greatly
facilitate many studies on watershed functioning and
management, and could easily contribute to an 'early product' in the form of a place-based and/or
regional management planning demonstration (FY14).
The second research need for SG3 identified in the workshop was to support coordinated conservation
and restoration consistent with HW principles across multiple scales. This can be pursued by: 1) scale
convergence, in which optimizing ecosystem-scale conservation and restoration at the local township
scale is linked with optimizing preservation and restoration at the watershed scale; and also by 2)
endpoint convergence, in which there is joint optimization of conservation and restoration planning
(e.g., gap analysis, and green infrastructure network analysis) as well as with protection and restoration
of watershed-scale functions (e.g., flow, sediment, thermal and woody debris regimes). Restoration and
conservation planning would greatly benefit from cost-benefit analyses of applications of HW
assessments in different CWA programs, including relationships between HWs and healthy
communities, source water protection, flood damage protection, property values, and reductions in
pollutant loads (minimizing needs for total maximum daily loads). Although these varied activities will
require several years, some products in the planning arena of green infrastructure may become
available at an early stage (FY13-14).
The third and final significant research need for SG3 identified by the workshop participants was to
provide information that promotes the establishment of partnerships to protect HWs and to explore the
socioeconomic conditions that favor this protection. An analysis of agency roles and responsibilities,
potential stakeholders, and user needs will be required to identify vital partners at the local, regional,
and national levels. Such analyses can be undertaken, and the results reported as 'early products'
(FY13). The relationships between the ecological health of HWs and socioeconomic factors, quality of
human life, and economic sustainability should also be studied, and the results reported. In combination
with results from research priority 2, these findings will be important drivers for decisions regarding the
protection of HWs. It is expected that partners and stakeholders will be involved in most, if not all,
decisions on HW protection.
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PROGRAM TITLE: Healthy Watershed Integrated Assessments
SITUATION STATEMENT:
INPUTS
Short Term (FY11-14)
Medium Term (FY14-17) Long Term (FY17-20)|I
OUTCOMES - IMPACT
Short Term (FY11-14) Medium Term (FY14-17) Long Term (FY17-20)
Agency network analysis, including user needs assessment (social
network analysis of institutional structures and responsibilities that
are needed to be involved)
Quantified human and natural water use/needs
Costs of protecting watersheds compared to drinking water
treatment of degraded waters
Cost effectiveness of protecting active river area (e.g., floodplains)
from development as compared to payments for storm damages
Relationship between maintaining pre-development hydrology and
load reduction (minimizing needs for TMDLs)
Link between landscape-scale green infrastructure and aquatic
related terrestrial health/WQ
Cost-effectiveness of protection as compared to restoration (319
program)
Inventory of existing state and Federal data sources for HWIA
Demonstrated utility of probabilistic monitoring data for
identification of all healthy watersheds
Evaluation of human disturbance indicators at watershed scale using
available data and identification of thresholds of impairment
Agency network analysis, including user needs assessment (social
network analysis of institutional structures and responsibilities that
are needed to be involved)
Addition of multiple ecosystem types to conceptual model for
integrated watershed assessments, including coastal systems
Poff /Thorp spatial framework
Proposed classification frameworks
Examination of existing expertise and data
Screening level landscape disturbance indicators
Existing stressor-response relationships and thresholds
Regional models for unaltered (and altered) flow regime prediction
based on landscape, demographic, and climate attributes
Available data on human and natural water use/needs
Regional models for unaltered (and altered) thermal regime
prediction based on landscape, demographic, and climate attributes
Regional models for unaltered (and altered) sediment regime
prediction based on landscape, demographic, and climate attributes
Available information on movement of aquatic-dependent
organisms through watershed
Existing optimization methods
Existing optimization methods
Development and evaluation of cost-effective
metrics for Healthy Watershed Assessment
elements, esp. functional measures: surface
and subsurface water regime, geomorphology,
thermal regime, sediment regime, woody
debris regime, connectivity at state-wide scale
Cost/benefit analysis of applications of Healthy Watershed Assessments in different
Clean Water Act programs, including relationship between healthy watersheds and
healthy communities
Flexible assessment framework to identify healthy watersheds using diverse,
available state-level data
Evaluation of approaches at state scale for HW protection
Proposed definition of HW (condition, including resilience)
Proposed set of elements and metrics for evaluation
User needs/program assessment
Conceptual model
A consistent, nested framework
Evaluation of existing and proposed methods for stratifying HWIA, including use of
nested scales
Evaluate relationship between FPZs and ecoregions
Evaluation of differences in biological response to altered flow regime and altered
thermal regime across geomorphic unit types (e.g., Functional Process Zones)
Test of screening level landscape disturbance indicators
Analyze gaps in stressor-response relationships and thresholds
Fill in gaps in regional models for unaltered flow regime prediction
Fill in gaps w respect to human and natural water use needs
Assessment methods for woody debris regime, sediment regime, connectivity,
temperature, invasive species, flow regime, thermal regime
Evaluation of healthy groundwater regimes (and associated metrics), groundwater-
dependent community composition, functioning and water requirements;
connectivity of critical ground-surfacewater interaction zones for recolonization
Fill in gaps in regional models for unaltered (and altered) thermal regime prediction
based on landscape, demographic, and climate attributes
Fill in gaps in regional models for unaltered (and altered) sediment regime prediction
based on landscape, demographic, and climate attributes
Demonstrate cost-effective geomorphology survey methods, using best combination
of field and remote-sensing data
Modification of biological and habitat monitoring designs and strategies to emphasize
longitudinal, lateral, and vertical connections
Evaluate movement of organisms and barrier effects (e.g., culverts)
Joint optimization of conservation planning (e.g., gap analysis, green infrastructure
network analysis) and protection of watershed -scale functions (flow regime,
sediment regime, thermal regime, woody-debris regime)
A consistent, nested framework
Classification framework
Develop missing stressor-response relationships and
thresholds
Assessment methods for woody debris regime, sediment
regime, connectivity, temperature, invasive species, flow
regime, thermal regime
Coordinated assessments of different system types
Approaches for linking optimization of ecosystem-scale
conservation at local township scale with optimizing
preservation of watershed -scale function
Optimization of
multiple end points
Demonstrate benefit
of HWA for other
CWA programs
Preliminary Healthy
Watershed List
Achieve consensus
on core set of
elements and
Pilot demonstration
of approaches at
state scale for HW
identification
Promote the use of
available resources (e.g.,
604(b), 319) to develop
HW lists and protect HW
Refinement of methods
for HW assessment
Increase Protection
of Healthy
Waters— Increase
focus on the
protection of source
waters and healthy
watersheds to
ensure they remain
protected from
degradation and
depletion
-------
PROGRAM TITLE: Healthy Watershed Integrated Assessments
SITUATION STATEMENT:
Short Term (FY11-14)
INPUTS
Medium Term (FY14-17)
Long Term (FY17-20)
Differences in biological response to altered flow,
sediment, and thermal regime across geomorphic
unit types (e.g., Functional Process Zones)
Tools for forecasting projections for population
growth, increase in impervious cover, and
fragmentation
Differences in biological response to altered flow,
sediment, and thermal regime across geomorphic
unit types (e.g., Functional Process Zones)
Tools for forecasting projections for population
growth, increase in impervious cover, and
fragmentation
Database of available sustainability indicators,
resilient indicators, recovery indicators, etc. for
watersheds or components of watesheds
Tools for forecasting projections for population
growth, increase in impervious cover, and
fragmentation
Regional models for unaltered
(and altered) flow and
sediment regime prediction
based on landscape,
demographic,land use, and
climate attributes
Regional models for unaltered
(and altered) thermal regime
prediction based on landscape,
demographic, land use, and
climate attributes
Regional models for unaltered
(and altered) flow and
sediment regime prediction
based on landscape,
demographic, land use, and
climate attributes
Regional models for unaltered
(and altered) thermal regime
prediction based on landscape,
demographic, land use, and
climate attributes
Inventory of watershed
monitoring plans
Thresholds of
impairment
Thresholds of
impairment
Thresholds of
impairment
States' Rivers and Streams Biocriteria Programs, analyze
potential climate sensitivity of reference sites and need for
methods to attribute effects to climate-related sources of
impairment
For CWA programs built on definitions of "natural condition"
(303(d) listing, Total Maximum Daily Loads, NPDES permits),
analyze sensitivity of "natural condition" determination to
climatic changes and assess need for methods to attribute
changes in condition to climate-related sources
Define watershed resilience and evaluate available
metrics/indices (e.g., recovery indices) for capability to
capture resilience in response to changes in climate and land
use; identify /develop new metrics of resilience where gaps
exist
Develop new indicators for resilience where necessary
For rivers and streams, develop or revise methods,
indices, and models to monitor, detect, and
attribute long term climate-change-related sources
of impairment versus natural climate variability and
other sources of impairment
For rivers and streams, develop or revise predictive
models to project into the future potential drifts in
reference condition due to climate change
Develop or revise approaches, models, indices to
detect and attribute long term climate-change-
related shifts in natural condition versus other
causes of impairment
Modify biological and habitat monitoring: (1) to
detect long term climate-change-related changes
(such as movement/loss of organisms, changes in
water quality and habitat condition, etc.); and (2) to
collect data following climate-related disturbances
to evaluate effects and recovery
For watersheds (including wetlands and lakes),
develop methods to monitor and detect
impairment due to climate change versus natural
variability, and as separate from other sources of
impairment
For watersheds (including lakes and wetlands),
develop methods to project into the future
potential drift in reference condition due to
climate change
Develop or revise predictive models to project
into the future potential changes in natural
condition due to climate change
Work with stakeholders to develop methods to:
evaluate current watershed resilience, project
future watershed resilience under conditions of
changing land use and climate, and prioritize
restoration and protection of the most resilient
watersheds
Work with stakeholders to develop methods to
evaluate arrays of
conservation/preservation/restoration options
under uncertainty associated with climate
change/land-use change projections, including
critical placement of healthy subwatersheds to
optimize future recovery/ resilience of currently
unimpaired ecosystems following catastrophe or
climate change and of impaired systems
following restoration1
OUTCOMES - IMPACT
Short Term (FY11-14) Medium Term (FY14-17) Long Term (FY17-20)
Compatibility of other
CWA programs with
protection goals
CWA programs aligned to
support protection,
maintenance, and
enhancements of healthy
watersheds
Enhance Watershed
Resiliency and
Revitalize
Communities-
Implement
sustainable
approaches and
technologies that will
reduce the impacts
and risks associated
with climate change,
population growth,
increased
urbanization,
infrastructure gaps,
and other factors.
1 Also builds on research under LTG1 (related to scale convergence and Endpoint convergence)
-------
PROGRAM TITLE: Healthy Watershed Integrated Assessments
SITUATION STATEMENT:
INPUTS
Short Term (FY11-14)
Medium Term (FY14-17) Long Term (FY17-20)|
Short Term (FYll-14)
OUTPUTS -ACTIVITIES/PRODUCTS
Medium Term (FY14-17)
Long Term (FY17-20)
PARTICIPATION
OUTCOMES - IMPACT
Short Term (FY11-14) Medium Term (FY14-17) Long Term (FY17-20)
Comprehensive monitoring network for healthy watershed
evaluation and adaptive management
Social network analysis of institutional structures and responsibilities
that are needed to be involved
Continuous real-time monitoring network of representative HW
systems
Existing thresholds and stress-response relationships
Tools for forecasting projections for population growth, increase in
impervious cover, and fragmentation
Database of available information on ecosystem service values
related to HW
Cost/ benefit analysis of
applications of HW
assessments in different
CWA programs,
including 1. Relationship
HW and healthy
communities; 2.
Relationship HWand
source water protection;
3. Relationship HWand
flood damage
prevention; 4.
Relationship HWand
property values; 5.
Relationship protecting
HW components and
reducing loads
(minimizing needs for
TMDLs)
Cost/ benefit analysis of
applications of HW
assessments in different
CWA programs,
including 1. Relationship
HWand healthy
communities; 2.
Relationship HWand
source water protection;
3. Relationship HWand
flood damage
prevention; 4.
Relationship HWand
property values; 5.
Relationship protecting
HW components and
reducing loads
(minimizing needs for
TMDLs)
Alternatives
analysis, including
implications of no
action
Understanding of adaptive management requirements for
healthy watersheds
Agency network analysis, including user needs assessment
Understanding and quantification of natural and human
water use
Scale convergence: approaches for linking optimization of
ecosystem-scale conservation and restoration at local
township scale with optimizing preservation and restoration
of watershed -scale function
Evaluation of ecosystem services related to HW
Endpoint convergence: joint optimization of
conservation and restoration planning (e.g. gap
analysis, green infrastructure network analysis) and
protection and restoration of watershed-scale
functions (flow regime, sediment regime, thermal
regime, woody debris regime)
Evaluation of critical placement of healthy
subwatersheds to optimize future
recovery/resilience of currently unimpaired
ecosystems following catastrophe or climate
change, and of impaired systems following
restoration
Linkages between ecological health and
socioeconomic factorsl
Methods to identify arrays of options under
uncertainty associated with climate change/land-
use change projections
Show people what will happen if resources are
not protected
Climate change adaptation approaches to
conservation/ preservation planning
Are HWs related to quality of life and economic
sustainability; understand behavioral
responses/incentives/disincentives created by a
HWIist
USGS
Stakeholders,
including TNC
Identify what a
partnership to
protect HW would
look like, and
establish the
partnership
Coordinate both
conservation and
restoration programs
with HW principles
across multiple scales
Restore Degraded
Waters—Enhance
the ability of EPA,
states and tribes to
restore degraded
waters, restore
ecosystems, and
take action to
increase the number
of restored water
bodies, including
nutrient impaired
waters
Also builds on LTG1 short-term outcome 'Achive consensus on core set of elements and metrics for HW
------- |