Citation:

Hoque, Y. M., M. M. Hantush, AND R. S. Govindaraju. On the Scaling Behavior of Reliability-Resilience-Vulnerability Indices in Agricultural Watersheds. F. Müller (ed.), ECOLOGICAL INDICATORS. Elsevier Science Ltd, New York, NY, 40:136-146, (2014).

Impact/Purpose:

The primary objective of this study is to investigate the effect of spatial scale on risk-based watershed health assessment. A related objective is to examine whether the placement of BMPs within a watershed affects R-R-V values and their scale dependency.

Description:

Risk indices such as reliability-resilience-vulnerability (R-R-V) have been proposed to assess watershed health. In this study, the spatial scaling behavior of R-R-V indices has been explored for five agricultural watersheds in the midwestern United States. The study was conducted using two different measures of spatial scale: (i) the ratio of contributing upland area to area required for channel initiation (FA), and (ii) Strahler stream order. It was found that R-R-V indices do change with spatial scale, but a representative watershed-specific threshold FA value exists for these indices to achieve stable values. Scaling with Strahler stream order is feasible if the watershed possesses a tree-like stream network. As an example of anthropogenic influences, this study also examined the role of BMPs placed within an agricultural watershed via a cost-effective optimization scheme on the evolution of R-R-V values with scale. While the placement of BMPs acheived reductions in concentrations and/or loads of constituents, they may not significantly change watershed risk measures, but are likely to cause significant reduction in vulnerability. If primarily upland BMPs are placed in a diffuse manner throughout the watershed, there might not be a significant change in the scaling behavior of R-R-V values.

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