Download or read book Evaluating Streamflow to Characterize Ecological Functions of Physical Habitat in Rivers written by Maria Isabel Escobar Arias and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study of the effect of streamflow on Chinook salmon in the Mokelumne River and Yuba River in California.

Download or read book Revised Methods for Characterizing Stream Habitat in the National Water Quality Assessment Program written by and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 82 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stream habitat is characterized in the U.S. Geological Survey's National Water-Quality Assessment (NAWQA) Program as part of an integrated physical, chemical, and biological assessment of the Nation's water quality. The goal of stream habitat characterization is to relate habitat to other physical, chemical, and biological factors that describe water-quality conditions. To accomplish this goal, environmental settings are described at sites selected for water-quality assessment. In addition, spatial and temporal patterns in habitat are examined at local, regional, and national scales. This habitat protocol contains updated methods for evaluating habitat in NAWQA Study Units. Revisions are based on lessons learned after 6 years of applying the original NAWQA habitat protocol to NAWQA Study Unit ecological surveys. Similar to the original protocol, these revised methods for evaluating stream habitat are based on a spatially hierarchical framework that incorporates habitat data at basin, segment, reach, and microhabitat scales. This framework provides a basis for national consistency in collection techniques while allowing flexibility in habitat assessment within individual Study Units. Procedures are described for collecting habitat data at basin and segment scales; these procedures include use of geographic information system data bases, topographic maps, and aerial photographs. Data collected at the reach scale include channel, bank, and riparian characteristics.

Download or read book Land use Changes and the Physical Habitat of Streams written by Robert B. Jacobson and published by Geological Survey (USGS). This book was released on 2001 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Environmental Flow Assessment written by John G. Williams and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2019-04-01 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides critiques of current practices for environmental flow assessment and shows how they can be improved, using case studies. In Environmental Flow Assessment: Methods and Applications, four leading experts critique methods used to manage flows in regulated streams and rivers to balance environmental (instream) and out-of-stream uses of water. Intended for managers as well as practitioners, the book dissects the shortcomings of commonly used approaches, and offers practical advice for selecting and implementing better ones. The authors argue that methods for environmental flow assessment (EFA) can be defensible as well as practicable only if they squarely address uncertainty, and provide guidance for doing so. Introductory chapters describe the scientific and social reasons that EFA is hard, and provide a brief history. Because management of regulated streams starts with understanding freshwater ecosystems, Environmental Flow Assessment: Methods and Applications includes chapters on flow and organisms in streams. The following chapters assess standard and emerging methods, how they should be tested, and how they should (or should not) be applied. The book concludes with practical recommendations for implementing environmental flow assessment. Describes historical and recent trends in environmental flow assessment Directly addresses practical difficulties with applying a scientifically informed approach in contentious circumstances Serves as an effective introduction to the relevant literature, with many references to articles in related scientific fields Pays close attention to statistical issues such as sampling, estimation of statistical uncertainty, and model selection Includes recommendations for methods and approaches Examines how methods have been tested in the past and shows how they should be tested today and in the future Environmental Flow Assessment: Methods and Applications is an excellent book for biologists and specialists in allied fields such as engineering, ecology, fluvial geomorphology, environmental planning, landscape architecture, along with river managers and decision makers.

Download or read book Methods for Evaluating Stream Riparian and Biotic Conditions written by William S. Platts and published by . This book was released on 1982 with total page 78 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Methods for Characterizing Stream Habitat as Part of the National Water Quality Assessment Program written by and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book A Guide to Stream Habitat Analysis Using the Instream Flow Incremental Methodology written by Ken D. Bovee and published by . This book was released on 1982 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Intermittent Rivers and Ephemeral Streams written by Thibault Datry and published by Academic Press. This book was released on 2017-07-11 with total page 624 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Intermittent Rivers and Ephemeral Streams: Ecology and Management takes an internationally broad approach, seeking to compare and contrast findings across multiple continents, climates, flow regimes, and land uses to provide a complete and integrated perspective on the ecology of these ecosystems. Coupled with this, users will find a discussion of management approaches applicable in different regions that are illustrated with relevant case studies. In a readable and technically accurate style, the book utilizes logically framed chapters authored by experts in the field, allowing managers and policymakers to readily grasp ecological concepts and their application to specific situations. Provides up-to-date reviews of research findings and management strategies using international examples Explores themes and parallels across diverse sub-disciplines in ecology and water resource management utilizing a multidisciplinary and integrative approach Reveals the relevance of this scientific understanding to managers and policymakers

Download or read book Water for the Environment written by Avril Horne and published by Academic Press. This book was released on 2017-08-16 with total page 760 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Water for the Environment: From Policy and Science to Implementation and Management provides a holistic view of environmental water management, offering clear links across disciplines that allow water managers to face mounting challenges. The book highlights current challenges and potential solutions, helping define the future direction for environmental water management. In addition, it includes a significant review of current literature and state of knowledge, providing a one-stop resource for environmental water managers. Presents a multidisciplinary approach that allows water managers to make connections across related disciplines, such as hydrology, ecology, law, and economics Links science to practice for environmental flow researchers and those that implement and manage environmental water on a daily basis Includes case studies to demonstrate key points and address implementation issues

Download or read book Integrating Flow Form and Function for Improved Environmental Water Management written by Belize Arela Albin Lane and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rivers are complex, dynamic natural systems. The performance of river ecosystem functions, such as habitat availability and sediment transport, depends on the interplay of hydrologic dynamics (flow) and geomorphic settings (form). However, most river restoration studies evaluate the role of either flow or form without regard for their dynamic interactions. Despite substantial recent interest in quantifying environmental water requirements to support integrated water management efforts, the absence of quantitative, transferable relationships between river flow, form, and ecosystem functions remains a major limitation. This research proposes a novel, process-driven methodology for evaluating river flow-form-function linkages in support of basin-scale environmental water management. This methodology utilizes publically available geospatial and time-series data and targeted field data collection to improve basic understanding of river systems with limited data and resource requirements. First, a hydrologic classification system is developed to characterize natural hydrologic variability across a highly altered, physio-climatically diverse landscape. Next, a statistical analysis is used to characterize reach-scale geomorphic variability and to investigate the utility of topographic variability attributes (TVAs, subreach-scale undulations in channel width and depth), alongside traditional reach-averaged attributes, for distinguishing dominant geomorphic forms and processes across a hydroscape. Finally, the interacting roles of flow (hydrologic regime, water year type, and hydrologic impairment) and form (channel morphology) are quantitatively evaluated with respect to ecosystem functions related to hydrogeomorphic processes, aquatic habitat, and riparian habitat. Synthetic river corridor generation is used to evaluate and isolate the role of distinct geomorphic attributes without the need for intensive topographic surveying. This three-part methodology was successfully applied in the Sacramento Basin of California, USA, a large, heavily altered Mediterranean-montane basin. A spatially-explicit hydrologic classification of California distinguished eight natural hydrologic regimes representing distinct flow sources, hydrologic characteristics, and rainfall-runoff controls. A hydro-geomorphic sub-classification of the Sacramento Basin based on stratified random field surveys of 161 stream reaches distinguished nine channel types consisting of both previously identified and new channel types. Results indicate that TVAs provide a quantitative basis for interpreting non-uniform as well as uniform geomorphic processes to better distinguish linked channel forms and functions of ecological significance. Finally, evaluation of six ecosystem functions across alternative flow-form scenarios in the Yuba River watershed highlights critical tradeoffs in ecosystem performance and emphasizes the significance of spatiotemporal diversity of flow and form for maintaining ecosystem integrity. The methodology developed in this dissertation is broadly applicable and extensible to other river systems and ecosystem functions, where findings can be used to characterize complex controls on river ecosystems, assess impacts of proposed flow and form alterations, and inform river restoration strategies. Overall, this research improves scientific understanding of the linkages between hydrology, geomorphology, and river ecosystems to more efficiently allocate scare water resources for human and environmental objectives across natural and built landscapes.

Download or read book Environmental Flow Assessment written by John G. Williams and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2019-03-26 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides critiques of current practices for environmental flow assessment and shows how they can be improved, using case studies. In Environmental Flow Assessment: Methods and Applications, four leading experts critique methods used to manage flows in regulated streams and rivers to balance environmental (instream) and out-of-stream uses of water. Intended for managers as well as practitioners, the book dissects the shortcomings of commonly used approaches, and offers practical advice for selecting and implementing better ones. The authors argue that methods for environmental flow assessment (EFA) can be defensible as well as practicable only if they squarely address uncertainty, and provide guidance for doing so. Introductory chapters describe the scientific and social reasons that EFA is hard, and provide a brief history. Because management of regulated streams starts with understanding freshwater ecosystems, Environmental Flow Assessment: Methods and Applications includes chapters on flow and organisms in streams. The following chapters assess standard and emerging methods, how they should be tested, and how they should (or should not) be applied. The book concludes with practical recommendations for implementing environmental flow assessment. Describes historical and recent trends in environmental flow assessment Directly addresses practical difficulties with applying a scientifically informed approach in contentious circumstances Serves as an effective introduction to the relevant literature, with many references to articles in related scientific fields Pays close attention to statistical issues such as sampling, estimation of statistical uncertainty, and model selection Includes recommendations for methods and approaches Examines how methods have been tested in the past and shows how they should be tested today and in the future Environmental Flow Assessment: Methods and Applications is an excellent book for biologists and specialists in allied fields such as engineering, ecology, fluvial geomorphology, environmental planning, landscape architecture, along with river managers and decision makers.

Download or read book Riverine Ecosystem Management written by Stefan Schmutz and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-05-08 with total page 562 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access book surveys the frontier of scientific river research and provides examples to guide management towards a sustainable future of riverine ecosystems. Principal structures and functions of the biogeosphere of rivers are explained; key threats are identified, and effective solutions for restoration and mitigation are provided. Rivers are among the most threatened ecosystems of the world. They increasingly suffer from pollution, water abstraction, river channelisation and damming. Fundamental knowledge of ecosystem structure and function is necessary to understand how human acitivities interfere with natural processes and which interventions are feasible to rectify this. Modern water legislation strives for sustainable water resource management and protection of important habitats and species. However, decision makers would benefit from more profound understanding of ecosystem degradation processes and of innovative methodologies and tools for efficient mitigation and restoration. The book provides best-practice examples of sustainable river management from on-site studies, European-wide analyses and case studies from other parts of the world. This book will be of interest to researchers in the field of aquatic ecology, river system functioning, conservation and restoration, to postgraduate students, to institutions involved in water management, and to water related industries.

Download or read book R1 R4 Northern Intermountain Regions Fish and Fish Habitat Standard Inventory Procedures Handbook written by and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Managing Flow Regimes and Landscapes Together written by Alison Agnew Whipple and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Riverine landscapes are shaped by dynamic and complex interactions between streamflow and floodplain landforms, and these physical processes drive productive and diverse freshwater ecosystems. However, human activities have fundamentally altered river-floodplain processes and degraded ecosystems. Flow regime variability has been homogenized and floodplains disconnected from rivers due to dams, diversions, levee building, and land use change. Reconciling competing demands to support ecosystems and resilience to future change is a core scientific and management challenge. This dissertation describes spatiotemporal dynamics of floodplain environments, introducing a method for flood regime classification and establishing a methodological approach for hydrospatial analysis to quantify and evaluate the response of floodplain inundation patterns and related physical habitat to restoration and flow regime change under climate change. It is motivated by the need to develop process-based and landscape-scale strategies to better manage flow regimes and landscapes together, such as coordinated levee-removal floodplain restoration and environmental flow allocations. River restoration literature is synthesized herein to examine trajectories from form-based to process-based approaches, recognize that highly modified large rivers may require coordinated physical habitat restoration and environmental flows implementation, and suggest opportunities for improved integration of restoration strategies. A river’s flood regime drives a variety of different physical and ecological functions. Characterizing different floods of a flood regime informs understanding of climate and watershed processes and the management of natural floodplain dynamics. Following cluster analysis approaches used in flow regime classification, a flood regime typology was developed for the Cosumnes River, the only major unregulated river of the west slope Sierra Nevada, California, USA. A primary contribution of this study is the establishment of flood regime classification that moves beyond typical flood frequency analysis to address a range of ecologically-relevant flood characteristics, including duration and timing. Rehabilitating freshwater ecosystems of highly modified rivers under a changing future requires improved understanding and quantification of land-water interactions. Despite ecological implications, quantification of spatiotemporal variability is rare, particularly for management applications. An approach for evaluating spatiotemporal floodplain inundation patterns, or the hydrospatial regime, is presented in several studies. Physical inundation characteristics and associated habitat were quantified in space and time, and responses to restoration and climate change induced flow scenarios were evaluated and compared. The multi-metric approach is demonstrated for a recent levee-removal restoration site along the lower Cosumnes River. The novel hydrospatial analytical approach developed and presented herein applies two-dimensional hydrodynamic modeling and spatial analysis to quantitatively summarize, in space and time, a range of ecologically-relevant physical metrics relating to inundation extent, depth, velocity, frequency, duration, timing, rate of change, connectivity, and heterogeneity. Comparison of metrics before and after levee-removal restoration on the Cosumnes River floodplain showed that while inundation extent greatly increased with restoration, responses varied in space and time and were different for different metrics. Changes in metrics were most substantial at intermediate flood flows. Subsequently, habitat criteria for a native floodplain fish species, Sacramento splittail (Pogonichthys macrolepidotus), were applied to the physical metrics. Findings suggest that restoration nearly doubled overall habitat availability, though benefits varied considerably in space and time. Flow-habitat relationships were nonlinear and not one-to-one, indicating habitat availability mediated by the physical complexity of the floodplain. Finally, floodplain responses to climate change induced streamflow scenarios were compared and the relative impacts of levee-removal restoration across the scenarios were evaluated. Results reflected the balance of increasing extreme winter flooding and declining spring flooding under future climate change scenarios. Magnitude and direction of change depended on the climate change scenario and metric. Levee removal had the general effect of dampening climate change impacts, though the relative impacts of climate change scenarios were greater than that of restoration in some cases. This body of work presents a new methodology to analyze flow-landscape interactions, and in turn contributes to understanding of flow-ecology relationships, susceptibility to anthropogenic change, and improvements to water and land management. Several broad implications emerge from this research. It demonstrates the capacity of a riverine landscape to serve different functions at different times and supports improved management toward variable conditions. Another contribution is advancing the use of hydraulic metrics over hydrologic metrics for better connections between physical processes and ecological functions. Further, the approach allows for ecologically-relevant criteria that are spatially and temporally dependent to be evaluated explicitly (e.g., duration, connectivity, temporal sequence of flood events). Findings show that, for habitat evaluation within complex floodplain environments, habitat availability is not likely to be a simple function of flow. Floodplain hydrospatial regime responses to climate change will be mediated by flow-landscape interactions, with the potential for physical restoration activities to mitigate impacts of climate change. Despite highly modified physical processes, climate change, and freshwater diversity and productivity declines globally, there is great capacity to better balance human and ecosystem requirements. This dissertation expands scientific understanding of and informs management toward dynamic and heterogeneous riverine landscapes that support functional and resilient ecosystems.

Download or read book Riparian Areas written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2002-10-10 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Clean Water Act (CWA) requires that wetlands be protected from degradation because of their important ecological functions including maintenance of high water quality and provision of fish and wildlife habitat. However, this protection generally does not encompass riparian areasâ€"the lands bordering rivers and lakesâ€"even though they often provide the same functions as wetlands. Growing recognition of the similarities in wetland and riparian area functioning and the differences in their legal protection led the NRC in 1999 to undertake a study of riparian areas, which has culminated in Riparian Areas: Functioning and Strategies for Management. The report is intended to heighten awareness of riparian areas commensurate with their ecological and societal values. The primary conclusion is that, because riparian areas perform a disproportionate number of biological and physical functions on a unit area basis, restoration of riparian functions along America's waterbodies should be a national goal.

Download or read book Influence of Streamflow Regime and Biotic Interactions on Fish Assemblage Structure in Rivers of the Northern Great Plains written by Valerie Kelly and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study evaluates the functional organization of stream fish assemblages in response to streamflow factors and biotic interactions across a range of spatial scale. The study area for this project includes 109 stream reaches located on tributaries to the upper Missouri River in the northern Great Plains. Fish distribution data was provided by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program. The analysis examined assemblage structure in terms of the distribution of ecological traits along gradients of streamflow regime, and proceeded in several phases. First, a methodology was assembled for estimating ecologically relevant metrics to describe streamflow regime where streamflow data were not available. Second, co-occurrence patterns for species and their traits were examined at two levels of spatial scale in order to evaluate the relative role of environmental filtering and competitive exclusion. Third, a structural equation analysis was conducted to examine the role of specific components of streamflow regime as constraints on the expression of fish life-history strategies within local assemblages, including an evaluation of factors across a range of scale that were associated with flow patterns. This analysis also incorporated an aggregate measure of the potential for biotic interactions at the assemblage scale. Results for the streamflow analysis describe distinctive regional patterns of flow regime across the study area. A clear snowmelt signature was observed for streams in the western mountains, with little variability in peak-flow magnitude or timing. These streams contrast with those in the lowlands further east, which were consistently characterized by greater variability in peak-flow timing and magnitude as well as higher probability of intermittent flow. Species co-occurrence patterns were consistent with a strong tendency for local coexistence to be mediated primarily by present or past competition, resulting in spatial segregation of species when they share similar feeding strategies. At the regional scale, a contrasting pattern was observed where species with similar life-history traits tended to cluster together. These results indicate that critical niche dimensions may be defined at several levels of scale. Furthermore, these dimensions apparently are associated with ecological processes that can oppose one another across scale. Finally, SEM results indicate that small, short-lived opportunistic species were significantly influenced by regional patterns of streamflow variability while large, long-lived periodic species responded more strongly to variability at the smaller scale of the stream network. On the other hand, species with strategies to maximize juvenile survival (i.e. equilibrium strategists) showed negligible response to flow variability at any scale. These results presumably reflect the versatility of this strategy regarding physical habitat conditions. This research demonstrates that stream fish assemblages are structured at multiple levels of spatial scale by biotic interactions as well as characteristic responses of life-history strategies to streamflow variability.

Download or read book An Assessment of Stream Habitat and Nutrients in the Elwha River Basin written by and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: