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The Role of Watershed Characteristics in Estuarine Condition: An Empirical Approach
Citation:
Latimer, Jim, M. Hughes, M. Charpentier, AND C. Tilburg. The Role of Watershed Characteristics in Estuarine Condition: An Empirical Approach. Fifth Interagency Conference on Research in the Watersheds, Charleston, SC, March 02 - 05, 2015.
Impact/Purpose:
The presentation associated with this abstract will provide scientists and managers, working in the area of watershed protection, with a method to assess the relationship between watershed character and downstream water and habitat quality.
Description:
Estuarine condition is a function of the nature of the estuary, ocean, and atmospheric systems, and the upstream watershed. To fully understand and predict how an estuary will respond to drivers and pressures, each compartment must be characterized. For example, eutrophication effects on estuarine condition are generally well known; less understood is how the attributes of estuarine watersheds, and their spatial distributions, relate to estuarine condition. The Gulf of Maine Council’s EcoSystem Indicator Partnership (ESIP) and the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Office of Research and Development have joined for a project designed to link watersheds to estuarine conditions. Specifically, the goal of this research is to develop methods and indicators for mapping watershed integrity and aquatic condition in order to predict estuarine condition. The analysis utilizes a common set of watershed spatial indicators and estuarine state/impact indicators. The study builds on past work in southern New England using relationships between land use characteristics and aquatic habitat extent metrics (e.g., eelgrass) and on ESIP’s work in northern New England which has assembled a large database of watershed, contaminants, climate change, aquaculture, and eutrophication variables. The aquatic condition data are comprised of regional data sets including EPA’s National Coastal Assessment. Watersheds are being characterized using multiple indicators such as, for example, land use magnitude and proximity, % impervious cover, landscape development indexes, and measures of terrestrial and hydrological fragmentation and connectivity. Preliminary results are consistent with the hypothesis that land use magnitude and proximity affect downstream estuarine status and impacts. The results of this research will be used to develop methods, models, and data on estuarine condition and watershed characteristics that can ultimately be used to help justify and prioritize watershed protection across the United States and Canada.