Watershed modeling for stream ecosystem management
Dates
Project Start Date
2010
Project End Date
2014
Summary
Description of Work U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) will develop and provide forecasting tools for managers to determine how water withdrawals or other hydrologic or land use changes in watersheds may affect Great Lakes ecosystems. This information will help guide restoration efforts to achieve maximum effectiveness and success. Project provides unified information across the Great Lakes Basin for ecosystem restoration, assessment, and management by incorporating models that relate changes in landscape and hydrologic variables and stresses to changes in ecosystem function. The project relies upon regionally consistent hydrologic, biologic, and geospatial data to generate regionally consistent estimates, models, and analysis. USGS is [...]
Summary
Description of Work
U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) will develop and provide forecasting tools for managers to determine how water withdrawals or other hydrologic or land use changes in watersheds may affect Great Lakes ecosystems. This information will help guide restoration efforts to achieve maximum effectiveness and success. Project provides unified information across the Great Lakes Basin for ecosystem restoration, assessment, and management by incorporating models that relate changes in landscape and hydrologic variables and stresses to changes in ecosystem function. The project relies upon regionally consistent hydrologic, biologic, and geospatial data to generate regionally consistent estimates, models, and analysis. USGS is the Circular A-16 theme lead for hydrographic spatial data. As such USGS has responsibility to coordinate with other federal agencies, states, and other entities the development and stewardship of the National Hydrography Dataset (NHD). USGS also has developed in partnership with EPA the NHDPlus, it has a memorandum of understanding with The Nature Conservancy to study environmental flows and impacts of hydrologic alterations on ecology. USGS has been a lead agency in the development of techniques and methods to estimate streamflow characteristics in gaged and ungaged watersheds and in developing, applying, and coordinating research in ecology and hydroecology. Products from this research will include a consistent hydrologic dataset of the US Great Lakes Basin built on the 1:100,000 NHDplus and attributed with landscape and aquatic ecologic variables. Empirical models developed for fish distribution, temperature, and streamflow will be developed. A hierarchical lotic habitat classification framework and fish-based lotic habitat classification will be built on the hydrologic dataset.
Relevance & Impact
Project provides unified information across the Great Lakes Basin for ecosystem restoration, assessment, and management by incorporating models that relate changes in landscape and hydrologic variables and stresses to changes in ecosystem function.
Key Findings
Scientists updated the AFINCH analysis program to improve the ability of the analyst to archive and reproduce simulation results. The AFINCH analysis program is menu-driven, and, prior to this update, reproducing simulations would require the analyst to read through a log file written by the program and manually inputting the required information into the AFINCH program again. The program was updated to write and read an XML file that archives both the user input values and the AFINCH program regression results. Reproducing a simulation is streamlined as an analyst can now provide the XML file to the program to quickly set up the simulation and read the required information. The analyst can also verify that the reproduced simulation results match the original simulation. Project researchers worked with the USGS Center for Integrated Data Analytics (CIDA) to develop an on-line mapper that will deliver the time series of ungaged flow estimates produced by AFINCH to the public. Initial versions of the software have been developed and these will be refined during the remainder of FY13. Preliminary relations describing fish species response to altered streamflow also were developed. These relations will be refined as AFINCH flow estimates are finalized.
Products
A mapping tool was developed, which allows users to explore and download gaged stream flow as well as modeled stream flow and catchment yield from AFINCH. The GLRI AFINCH Mapper Tool is available at http://cida.usgs.gov/glri/afinch/
Direct questions and requests to the Principle Investigator.
Purpose
Two objectives from this focus area benefit from this research. The ungaged flow estimates provide key information for assessing tributary streamflow within the Basin. The major purpose of this work is to provide a common, consistent, framework for stream ecosystem restoration and management. This framework can be used to assess the health of aquatic ecosystems, provide tools for use in stream ecosystem and watershed restoration, planning, and management; help identify areas in need of protection, conservation, enhancement, and restoration; and provide information for policy makers to make informed decisions on topics that relate to stream ecosystem health.
