Using Geospatial Indicators of Watershed Condition to Support Freshwater Conservation Actions..

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Impact/Purpose

Scientists at the US EPA’s Pacific Ecological Systems Division have worked to develop data and methods to improve our ability to model, map, and understand the condition of the Nation’s water resources. These data allow scientists to easily obtain watershed information for streams across the continental US and is called the StreamCat Datasets. These datasets include information on the percent of the watershed composed of land uses (e.g., urbanization or agriculture) and natural features (e.g., precipitation and soils). These types of information can be important for understanding human-related effects on the biological, physical, and chemical conditions of water resources. StreamCat data are available for ca. 2.6 million stream segments across the US. These data can be used to produce indicators of integrity for accumulative watersheds and for local catchments. When combined with field measurements of biological condition and plotted, they can begin to parse the scales at which stressors may be acting to affect instream biological condition and provide insight for conservation or restoration planning. This presentation provides an overview of these efforts to Office of Water’s Watershed Academy. It will introduce the algorithms that were critical for developing these datasets. In addition, we will present forthcoming improvements to access StreamCat data and its derivatives, such as the Indices of Watershed and Catchment Integrity.

Citation

Hill, Ryan A, L. Riato, AND M. Weber. Using Geospatial Indicators of Watershed Condition to Support Freshwater Conservation Actions.. National Training Workshop on Water Quality Data, Assessment, and Plans, N/A, OR, June 02, 2022.