Citation:

McKane, R., A. Brookes, J. Halama, K. Djang, P. Pettus, AND B. Barnhart. Using the VELMA model to estimate watershed management effects on municipal water supplies and other ecosystem services. Pacific Northwest Watershed Managers Group Annual Meeting, Tacoma, WA, June 20, 2019.

Impact/Purpose:

This invited talk – “Using the VELMA model to estimate watershed management effects on Puget Sound municipal water supplies and other ecosystem services” – will be presented to the Pacific Northwest Watershed Managers Group (PNWMG), held this year in Tacoma, WA. The PNWMG group consists of the major U.S. and Canadian Pacific Northwest municipal drinking water suppliers, serving the cities of Seattle, Tacoma, Portland, San Francisco, and Vancouver and Victoria, BC. Forested watersheds are the primary water supply for these municipalities, which together serve over 5 million people. The group has been meeting annually for more than a decade to share experiences and ideas to better protect and preserve clean drinking water supplies and watershed health. The PNWWMG extended this seminar invitation to learn more about VELMA and its demonstrated usefulness for identifying watershed management strategies for improving water quality and quantity and other ecosystem services vital to human well-being.

Description:

This seminar will explore how the VELMA model can be used to estimate how land use and climate extremes impact the capacity of ecosystems to provide clean drinking water, flood control, habitat for fish and wildlife, food and fiber, carbon sequestration, and other benefits. Ongoing Puget Sound VELMA applications will be used to illustrate management strategies for balancing tradeoffs among these ecosystem services for local and downstream stakeholders, and for increasing watershed resilience to climatic extremes and disturbance events, such as droughts, floods and wild fires

Record Details: