BUILDING A SPATIAL STATISTICAL NETWORK MODEL OF STREAM TEMPERATURE TO GUIDE RESTORATION DECISIONS IN AN INTERNATIONAL WATERSHED
Citation:
Figary, S., N. Detenbeck, AND C. O'Donnell. BUILDING A SPATIAL STATISTICAL NETWORK MODEL OF STREAM TEMPERATURE TO GUIDE RESTORATION DECISIONS IN AN INTERNATIONAL WATERSHED. Society for Freshwater Science, Salt Lake City, UT, May 19 - 23, 2019.
Impact/Purpose:
The Atlantic salmon population has been nearly decimated in the Saint John River, a larger international watershed straddling the border of Maine and New Brunswick, Canada. In May 2017, Federal agencies including US EPA and Canadian Federal departments signed a statement of cooperation with the Maliseet Tribal/First Nation leaders to affirm their mutual objective to cooperate in the restoration of the portion of the Walastook/Saint John River that lies in the state of Maine and in the province of New Brunswick. It is important to maintain and restore coldwater habitats in streams to support coldwater fish such as the Atlantic salmon. In 2017 EPA published a statistical model to describe the factors affecting the temperature regime of streams and rivers in New England. Due to data constraints, that model did not include portions of northern Maine watersheds that crossed the border with Canada. More recently, data have become available allowing the extension of the New England Stream Temperature model to international watersheds such as the Meduxnekeag tributary to the Saint John River. This effort will also include refinement of the model to a finer spatial scale to inform the potential effects of reforestation of riparian zones along the river.
Description:
The Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians (HBMI) are working with the United States Environmental Protection Agency to build a stream temperature spatial statistical network (SSN) model of the Meduxnekeag Watershed. The Meduxnekeag Watershed is a 1336 km2 watershed that flows through Maliseet tribal lands and is split by international boundaries with headwaters in Maine, United States and the confluence with the St. John River in New Brunswick, Canada. Modelling across international boundaries creates challenges because datasets are usually constrained to political boundaries, and data resolution and collection methods can differ between countries. The 2017 release of the High Resolution National Hydrology Dataset Plus includes watersheds that cross international boundaries, which enables creating SSN temperature models at riparian buffer management scales in the Meduxnekeag Watershed. The model was developed using 53 stream temperature monitoring stations throughout the watershed and watershed attribute data from both the United States and Canada. HBMI will use the model to determine the location of cold water refuges and to select areas for riparian restoration to expand habitat for Brook Trout and restoring Atlantic Salmon populations.