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Translating historical and ongoing monitoring data into goals and actions in watersheds
Citation:
Smucker, N., C. Nietch, E. Pilgrim, Matthew Heberling, A. Safwat, J. McManus, R. McClatchey, H. Lubbers, AND L. Lenhart. Translating historical and ongoing monitoring data into goals and actions in watersheds. 2019 Society for Freshwater Science Annual Meeting, Salt Lake City, UT, May 19 - 23, 2019.
Impact/Purpose:
Nutrient pollution from human sources is a widespread problem for water quality and aquatic ecosystems throughout the USA and around the world. This presentation highlights the value of historical and ongoing monitoring efforts and how these data can be used in combination with stakeholder engagement to develop conservation and management actions with better ideas of achievable goals. We also present novel findings based on DNA metabarcoding of stream diatoms and how these results can inform nutrient goals.
Description:
Monitoring data accumulated over time provide opportunities to identify ecosystem trends that benefit management and conservation efforts. Here, we show how historical and ongoing monitoring efforts in reservoirs and streams are providing valuable information for nutrient and watershed management, along with a better understanding of how changing climate conditions affect expectations. We further focus on an intensively monitored reservoir in Ohio and its agriculturally dominated watershed as an example of how translational science is turning data and stakeholder engagement into conservation and management actions with better ideas of achievable goals. DNA metabarcoding of stream diatoms is further informing possible nutrient goals. Interdisciplinary collaboration and ongoing engagement among stakeholders, practitioners, ecologists, economists, and modelers are leading to the identification and prioritization of conservation and management practices in the watershed. Actions from 2011 to 2018 include cover crop plantings expanding from 0 to 69 square kilometers, 125 active USDA Environmental Quality Incentives Program contracts being implemented, and 59 nutrient management and conservation practices being funded by the USDA Regional Conservation Partnership Program. Ongoing monitoring and stakeholder engagement will continue being important to realizing the effectiveness of management practices for improving downstream ecosystems.
