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EPA'S WATERSHED MANAGEMENT AND MODELING RESEARCH PROGRAM
Citation:
Borst*, M AND M L. O'Shea*. EPA'S WATERSHED MANAGEMENT AND MODELING RESEARCH PROGRAM. Preparing for the 21st Century; Proceedings of the 26th Annual Water Resources Planning and Management Conference; June 6-9, 1999, Tempe, Arizona. Wilson, E.M. (Ed.). Reston, VA: American Society of Civil Engineers, 1999, 11p, Tempe, AZ, 6/6-9/1999.
Description:
Watershed management presumes that community groups can best solve many water quality and ecosystem problems at the watershed level rather than at the individual site, receiving waterbody, or discharger level. After assessing and ranking watershed problems, and setting environmental goals, watershed management options can be analyzed. This analysis typically considers system constraints, cost-effectiveness, the probability of meeting the watershed goal, the time required to achieve the goal, and the likelihood of a sustained change. Watershed management research at ORD,s National Risk Management Research Laboratory (NRMRL) addresses the following questions: what effective watershed management strategies are available and how do communities select the most appropriate subset from these to match specific watershed needs?
Watershed managers rely on various tools to enumerate, evaluate, and select management options. An important tool available to evaluate the array of management alternatives available is a decision support system, i.e., a collection of approaches enabling water resource planners to select consistent, appropriate interventions with reasonable a priori estimates of their effectiveness. NRMRL watershed management research is creating a set of holistic, adaptive tools that enable local communities to select cost-effective approaches to protect or restore the water resources within their watershed. NRMRL,s research concentrates on identifying, collating, and developing techniques with associated data on cost, efficiency, execution, performance, and longevity emphasizing approaches likely to be within the pooled resources of watershed managers coupling flexibility with incremental quality improvements that allow adaptive management.
Mathematical models that simulate facets of the watershed are among the most powerful tools employed in the watershed management decision-making process. Consequently, a significant part of NRMRL,s watershed research emphasizes modeling and assessment tools to promote the planning of better control strategies, understanding the limitations and uncertainties of individual and connected models, and interaction among models.
Other research includes identifying and organizing information from research projects and demonstrations including stormwater reuse and BMPs for urban, urban fringe, agricultural, and riparian areas; evaluating methods to predict ecologic indices and compare them with remote sensing and direct observation and land-uses; defining standard measurements, measurement procedures, data quality objectives, and GIS data storage format allowing data sharing across municipalities; evaluating methods to predict quantity and routes of sediment migration including channelization, stream bank and land surface erosion, and bottom scouring; demonstrate methods to predict the effects of stormwater runoff on surface and subsurface source water; and, investigating the interaction between stormwater runoff and groundwater.