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SCIENCE FOR INTEGRATED WATERSHED MANAGEMENT: A MULTI-SCALE EXPERIMENTAL CASE STUDY LINKING LAND USE MANAGEMENT PRACTICES AND WATER QUALITY IN SOUTHERN OHIO
Citation:
Nietch*, C AND H. J. Allen*. SCIENCE FOR INTEGRATED WATERSHED MANAGEMENT: A MULTI-SCALE EXPERIMENTAL CASE STUDY LINKING LAND USE MANAGEMENT PRACTICES AND WATER QUALITY IN SOUTHERN OHIO.
Impact/Purpose:
To inform the public.
Description:
Although it is routine for watershed management programs to coincide the monitoring of land use impacts and water quality at different spatial scales, rarely are the data collected in a manner to elucidate the linkages among ecological systems across a drainage network. There remains no clear-cut experimental framework for determining the effectiveness of small-scale management actions at larger watershed scales. This is a primary theme of the research developed, in which linkages between small- and large-scale ecological systems will be studied experimentally and in the context of watershed risk management.
The research goal is to derive relationships between stressor loading and stream ecology at the subwatershed scale. At the larger scale, it endeavors to monitor the cumulative effects of these load-to-ecology linkages across a watershed where they manifest as water quality in multi-use aquatic ecosystems. Thus, two primary approaches evolve: 1) the development of multiple-scale water quality monitoring tools, and 2) experimental studies that address biogeochemical control over ecological structure-function interactions in low order streams.