US EPA

The purpose of this draft report is to provide a summary of climate change impacts to selected watersheds and recommendations for how to improve the process of conducting watershed assessments in the future.

The effects of global change drivers differ by place and in scale, necessitating place-specific impacts information to enable stakeholders to respond appropriately. Place and scale also determine appropriate adaptation strategies and expected outcomes. Three watershed case studies were conducted by GCRP to advance the capability of managers to consider climate and land use change in watershed management decisions. The case studies were of the San Pedro River Watershed, the Sacramento River Watershed, and several small watersheds in Maryland (see Related Links).

A review of these case studies was conducted by the Global Change Research Program (GCRP) staff to learn effective analytic, project management, and decision support approaches for conducting watershed assessments. This report is a synthesis of what was learned from conducting those three watershed case-study assessments. The report provides a summary of the scientific findings from the three case studies available below and discusses insights gained from a comparison across case studies of the process of conducting watershed assessments and effective ways of improving our capability to support decisions.

Three watershed case studies were conducted by GCRP to advance the capability of managers to consider climate and land use change in watershed management decisions. The review of these case studies was done to learn effective analytic, project management, and decision support approaches. The results of this report are relevant to the Office of Water as they consider how to incorporate climate change impacts into their watershed approach for protecting water quality and aquatic ecosystems.

The results of this external peer review will be assessed by EPA and may be incorporated into the final report. Portions of the report may also be submitted to peer-review literature.

U.S. EPA. Climate and Land Use Change Effects on Ecological Resources in Three Watersheds: A Synthesis Report (External Review Draft). U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, EPA/600/R-07/086, 2007.

Included for public review is the draft document, Climate and Land Use Change Effects on Ecological Resources in Three Watersheds: A Synthesis Report (External Review Draft). Comments on this document may be submitted and reviewed using the e-Government Regulations.gov Web site. From the site, select Environmental Protection Agency and the keyword EPA-HQ-ORD-2007-0667 (for the docket ID) to comment on this report.