The White House Council for Environmental Quality has identified two national watersheds to pilot large-scale drought resiliency implementation. The Missouri Headwaters Basin within the GNLCC region and High Divide landscape is one of these national demonstration areas, and the GNLCC can advance its collective mission with this opportunity. By delivering science to management and building a learning network among watershed groups, this project will align the large-scale watershed management efforts of the GNLCC with the National Drought Resiliency Program (NDRP) and the Montana Department of Natural Resources (DNRC) to build drought resilience into this important northern Rocky Mountain landscape.
FY2015and FY2016The objectives of this project are to support the NDRP demonstration project by:
- providing capacity support to a network of local watershed groups and conservation districts to help them plan for drought and implement drought resiliency tools.
- inventorying and coordinating delivery of federal technical tools to the network of local practitioners (watershed groups and conservation districts)
- developing a basin-wide governance structure and Partnership Agreement among partners and agencies that articulates the delivery of knowledge and drought mitigation 4 tools at a regional scale across the watershed
- evaluating basin-wide social-ecological impacts resulting from a comprehensive drought resilience program by developing metrics of performance that will include social participation, habitat restoration and improvements in water flow and storage from monitoring efforts.
