The Water Initiative research agenda of the Pacific Northwest Research Station (PNW) targets four research themes of critical importance to management of resources that are the responsibility of the Forest Service. The general nature of the problem analysis is intentional, to create a broad umbrella under which a variety of research projects can be accomplished. In each of these themes the PNW Station brings distinctive capabilities to contribute to solutions that serve management and policy needs. These themes concern geographic and temporal aspects of hydrologic systems that affect larger ecological and social systems. A research theme in the human dimension addresses emerging challenges posed by competing uses and changing values, demographics, and technologies. Finally, new approaches to sustainable management of water resources are considered.

Theme 1. The spatial arrangement of water affects our ability to understand and manage aquatic resources (Geography of water). A more comprehensive display of the geography of water - quantity, quality, timing, location, ownership/management, and jurisdiction - is needed as a basis for sound, contemporary water resource policy. Research on the geography of water will aim to provide the public, policy makers, water resource managers, and others with geographically based depictions of water issues over large scales. Understanding the spatial distribution of water production in relation to storage; geologic controls; climatic drivers; population and demographic trends; and the water allocation infrastructure is critical to making future choices.

Theme 2. Articulate the causes and consequences of altered flow regimes. A comprehensive illustration of the connections between social and ecological systems with the regimes of streamflow, sediment load, and water quality is needed as a basis for sound, contemporary water resource policy. The research to be conducted includes initial efforts to characterize flow regimes (annual and seasonal discharge, floods, low flows) and flow routing in forest landscapes under recent, unaltered conditions and as modified by changes in upland and riparian vegetation, road networks, reservoir management, and water extraction. Approaches to this characterization include analysis of historical streamflow records and modeling of historic, existing, and potential future flow regimes.

Theme 3: Recognize the competing demands, uses, and management opportunities to resolve conflict over water. A more regional expression of the demands and uses for water, including attitudes and values of the users, is needed for developing a water resource management strategy. Developing the information needed for water resource management strategies will be dependent, in large part, on changes unfolding in the socio-economic and technological sectors.

Theme 4. Develop tools and solutions for water sustainability. Innovative and creative tools and techniques are needed to reconcile competing demands and pressures on the water resource and to provide technical information for fully informed natural resource decisions. We will employ conceptual and analytical management tools to evaluate and help resolve competing demands for water. These tools can be as simple as synthesis of existing information on effects, critical analysis of existing allocation structures, or lessons learned in watershed councils. The tools can also be complex modeling efforts that integrate information on the location of water supplies, whose water it is, how much there might be under a variety of existing and potential water management strategies in selected basins, and what the nature of the bottlenecks might be (for example, physical, ecological, social, or institutional).

INTRODUCTION

Throughout time, water has shaped both the biophysical and human environments of earth. It sculpted the biophysical landscape through the processes of erosion and disturbance. The ground, surface, and atmospheric patterns of water are reflected by the type, distribution, and variability of the vegetative mosaic across the landscape. Similarly, the abundance, type, and character of human occupancy and use of the land—routes of travel and transportation, patterns of settlement, nature of land use and economic activity—are often closely tied to the characteristics of the region’s water regime.

Water drives both biophysical and cultural systems; in many ways, it is the life’s blood of the pattern, composition, and distribution of these systems. A systems approach to water resource management is essential; including not only the constituent parts, but also the links, relations, consequences, and implications among these parts. The role of science can be framed as bringing the complete consequences, including the relative benefits and costs of alternative management options to the table, along with an assessment of the degree of scientific uncertainty (Lackey 1997).

The importance of a research initiative on water is highlighted in the growing scientific, management, and political partnerships for effective stewardship of the Nation's water resource. Pressures to reallocate water resources, for changing management strategies, and to develop new policies heighten the need for improved understanding and insight. The scientific community will play a major role in this debate, providing managers, policymakers, and citizens with an improved ability to specify options, define consequences and implications, and to fashion responsive, informed programs and practices (NRC 1999).

Today in the Pacific Northwest, as well as throughout much of the nation, water’s contribution to environmental quality as well as to economic and social well-being is even more critical. However, at the very time when we are beginning to acknowledge this contribution, a host of factors confront us with unprecedented challenges in the management of this valuable resource. Consider the following factors driving the water issues:

· In the past 20 years, the human population of the Western states (many of them arid) has increased 40%; over the next 40 years, it is projected to grow 70%;

· Water in western streams is already overappropriated (Moody 1990; NRC 1992);

· In the past 20 years, participation rates in various water-based recreation activities have increased between 20 and 40% (Brown et al. 1991);

· More than 20 non-federal hydropower dams on Region 6 national forests are due for relicensing; 24 projects are due for licensing actions in Region 10.

· Over 200 stocks of Pacific Northwest anadromous salmonids are considered at risk (Nehlsen et al. 1991). The listing of various salmon under the Endangered Species Act has profound socioeconomic implications for the entire region.

These driving factors have resulted in several critical issues confronting the region:

ü Shifting demographics - Population growth, shifting demographic characteristics, land use conversion, and changing economic and value structures will place new demands on allocating water and the water resource itself;

ü Need for new information - Lack of basic information on the interactions among streamflow regimes, forest conditions, aquatic and riparian ecological conditions, and flow modifications for human uses constrain our ability to develop effective, efficient water management systems;

ü Competing water uses - Competing values, uses, and management generate conflicts; the decision space and tradeoffs among biologic, geomorphic, economic, and social uses and demands for water are neither known nor understood; and

ü Decision support - New analytical processes, institutions, and tools are needed to develop viable, innovative alternatives, to evaluate tradeoffs, and to arrive at water resource management strategies that are biophysically possible, economically efficient, and socially acceptable.

The challenges and opportunities associated with undertaking a focused program of research on water rest primarily on providing the tools and an adequate knowledge base upon which to base management and policy decisions regarding water. Yet, all too often, such knowledge is lacking, either because the research has not been done or the results have not been communicated to those in a position to use it. The result is that decisions are undertaken for which we have only a limited understanding of the associated implications and consequences. There is an urgent need to define the benefits, costs, tradeoffs and risks associated with alternative management of the water resource and watersheds (Figure 1). Having credible knowledge on how systems work, available to all interested persons, is critical at arriving at solutions that are durable enough to withstand the challenges of a rapidly changing technological, economic, and social environment while retaining the essential integrity of the biophysical system. This challenges the scientific community in general, and the Pacific Northwest Research Station (PNW) in particular, to undertake a more proactive role, focused on providing managers, policymakers, and citizens with an improved ability to identify options, define consequences and implications, and to fashion responsive, informed programs and practices (NRC 1999).

Why a PNW Research Water Initiative?

What should be the specific role undertaken by the PNW Station with regard to water? As we consider this question, we need to reflect on the context within which it exists. For example, the Station (and the Forest Service) is only one player in an arena in which there are a larger number of others, both in the public as well as private sectors. This challenges the Station in terms of defining its specific role and highlights the importance of avoiding unnecessary and inefficient overlaps with other information providers. The historical pattern of involvement in water research, coupled with the comparative advantages offered by being a research organization located within the Forest Service, suggests that we have a particular niche in water supply-related issues. Finally, given the limited understanding of the links between the effects of various land management actions and the production of clean, cool water, PNW is uniquely positioned to address these important science questions.

The basic rationale for involvement of the PNW Station in the water research arena has its historical roots in the very creation of what is now the National Forest System. Public domain forests and rangelands originally were reserved by the General Land Office as a means of protecting and maintaining supplies of clean, cool water for the nation. In effect, the headwaters of streams throughout the West became the core of our national forests. Years later, passage of environmental laws, such as the Clean Water Act, National Forest Management Act, and the Endangered Species Act, further confirmed the necessity of maintaining water quality for both federal and state agencies. However, despite improvements in water quality, many streams in the Pacific Northwest remain highly altered and/or polluted (NRC 1992); a predominant focus on satisfying an array of human demands on water systems, rather than maintaining and sustaining essential processes and functions still remains the dominant criterion affecting stream management. All too often, the management strategies in place accommodate neither the range of natural conditions nor the full expression of ecological interactions between aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems (Gregory et al. 1989, FEMAT 1993, Naiman et al. 1995, NRC 1996, Bisson et al. 1997). The need for increased knowledge that is required to make informed decisions provides a clear rationale for both an agency-wide focus on water and forest management, and a research initiative for the PNW Station.

Building upon its existing strengths and capabilities, PNW Research offers substantial conceptual and substantive capacity to address the challenging research questions that derive from water-related issues. The Station has long been the source of information regarding watershed issues in the region, through its long history of forest watershed research in experimental watersheds and various research properties. In recent years, growing concerns about the importance of an integrative perspective has helped foster increased attention to the links between, and among, the physical, biological, and social sciences. The Station also provides a legacy of close interaction with a variety of partners, including universities, National Science Foundation, management colleagues in the federal, state, and private sectors, and with various research partners and colleagues around the world. The Station has played a leadership role in watershed research, represented by seminal work on such diverse topical areas as cumulative watershed effects, disturbance ecology, and landscape analysis and modeling.

Figure 1 – Depiction of the interrelated processes (physical, ecological, and socioeconomic) occurring within watersheds of the Pacific Northwest.

Beyond these capacities, it seems important to recognize that the kinds of crosscutting questions that emerge from a critical analysis of the issues will require not only the disciplinary- and interdisciplinary-grounded efforts that have characterized traditional research efforts, but also innovative integration models that are only now beginning to take form.

The specific content, direction, and scope of such an Initiative has the potential to go many directions. Given the diversity of interests and the wide variety of individuals and organizations involved in the water research arena, this Initiative attempts to frame a program that builds upon the Stations particular capabilities, contributes to issues and questions that other information providers have not undertaken, and complements the work that they have performed. Because of this nature of the problem analysis has been kept relatively general, to create a broad umbrella under which a variety of research projects can be accomplished. The framework for the Water Initiative arose from:

ü A critical assessment of the changing landscape of issues, players, and agency needs for water resource information, tools, and protocols, including information based on on-the-ground management and science experience in watershed assessments;

ü A workshop in the fall of 1999, involving a wide variety of scientific disciplines, organizational perspectives, government levels, and partnerships; and

ü A focus on building upon, and extending, the program of existing research involvement by Station scientists;

ü To develop high-quality, science-based information and technologies at multiple scales to assist a wide range of managers (land and water resource) and policy makers in improving or restoring water-derived benefits while maintaining ecosystem integrity.

ü To improve communication regarding water resources research and development.

ü To make more efficient use of scarce science talent and resources.

The Water Initiative research agenda of the PNW Station targets four research themes of critical importance to management of resources that are the responsibility of the Forest Service. In each of these themes the PNW Station brings distinctive capabilities to contribute to solutions that serve management and policy needs. These themes concern geographic and temporal aspects of hydrologic systems that affect larger ecological and social systems. A research theme in the human dimension addresses emerging challenges posed by competing uses and changing values, demographics, and technologies. Finally, transfer of new approaches to sustainable management of water resources are considered.

But as we describe the individual themes please bear in mind that linear framing inadequately recognizes the reciprocity between the water resource and its different users. Use is affected by quality and quantity, and quality and quantity affects use. The resource is as much defined by historical economic and social factors as by geography. Just as, "A more comprehensive understanding of simple geography of water . . ." is needed as a basis for sound policy, a more comprehensive understanding of the influence of different water users and the social and economic factors that motivate them also is needed. Before policies are proposed, an understanding of the reciprocity between the water resource conditions and water use (and the social and economic factors that drive it) is needed to frame good research.

Theme 1. The spatial arrangement of water affects our ability to understand and manage aquatic resources (Geography of water). A more comprehensive display of the geography of water - quantity, quality, timing, location, ownership/management, and jurisdiction - is needed as a basis for sound, contemporary water resource policy. Where is it produced? In what quantities and quality? Where is it used? What are the effects of land ownership and land use patterns? What are the risks to water resources?

Significance: Research on the geography of water aims to provide the public, policy makers, water resource managers, and others with geographically based depictions of water issues over large watersheds. Not all landscapes and watersheds have the same potential to produce water or other watershed products. Understanding the spatial distribution of water production in relation to storage; geologic controls; climatic drivers; population and demographic trends; and the water allocation infrastructure is critical to making future choices.

Approach: The scope of issues ranges from effects of climate variability to inter-basin transfers of water or influences on water use (e.g., for power generation and distribution) to intra-watershed patterns of water fluxes and storages. In many parts of the nation, Forest Service lands have critical roles as the headwaters, forming the initial source of water supplies, serving as refuges for native species, and being the first sites of direct manipulation of surface waters as they begin to flow downstream through a large watershed. But for any water strategy to be effective urban and agricultural users need to be sufficiently integrated into the conceptualization of water sustainability to recognize the role of these users in potential programs and policies to address water quality and quantity problems. Urban and agriculture users potentially have the greatest negative impacts on water resources, but also can have potentially the most positive impacts with improved education and/or policies. This fact has significant implications for water resource research and policy regarding forested and grassland landscapes and is the reason behind taking a broad approach to displaying the sources and uses of water across basins.

Theme 2. Articulate the causes and consequences of altered flow regimes. A comprehensive illustration of the connections between social and ecological systems with the regimes of streamflow, sediment load, and water quality is needed as a basis for sound, contemporary water resource policy.

Significance: The current geography of water consists of basins varying widely in their degree of alteration of flow regimes, from pristine through profoundly altered. Virtually all human intervention in watersheds results in changes to the flow regime and associated transport of watershed products to some degree. We don’t fully understand the effect of our actions on flow and we have even less understanding of the consequences of changing flows on ecosystems or social/human values associated with stream systems. Our capacity to respond to the growing demands for clean, cool water depends upon improved understanding of how changes in land management, including changes in forest structure and composition, both in upland reaches as well as within riparian zones, affect the quality and quantity of water produced.

Approach: To understand the biodiversity, productivity, and sustainability of river ecosystems, the central organizing role played by a dynamically varying physical environment and hydrologic cycle must be appreciated. Maintaining the ecological integrity of river ecosystems and their forested headwaters rests, in turn, on maintaining a semblance of their natural hydrologic regime (Poff et al. 1997, Richter et al. 1997). Although natural flow regimes are dynamic, they are key to organizing and defining river ecosystems. The five components of the flow regime (magnitude, frequency, duration, timing, and rate of change) influence ecologic integrity both directly and indirectly, -- through their effects on other primary regulators of integrity: water quality, energy, habitat, biotic interactions, and material transport (Poff et al. 1997). In rivers, aquatic habitat is defined largely by the movement of water, sediment, and debris in the channel and between the channel and floodplain.

The research to be conducted includes initial efforts to characterize flow regimes (annual and seasonal discharge, floods, low flows) and flow routing in forest landscapes under recent, unaltered conditions and as modified by changes in upland and riparian vegetation, road networks, reservoir management, and water extraction. Approaches to this characterization include analysis of historical streamflow records and modeling of historic, existing, and potential future flow regimes.

Theme 3: Recognize the competing demands, uses, and management opportunities to resolve conflict over water. A more regional demonstration of the demands and uses for water, including attitudes and values of the users, is needed for developing a water resource management strategy. Who uses it? How is it used? What happens when there isn’t enough to meet demands? How is it valued? Whose values are represented in current water allocation structures? Whose will be represented in future structures?

Specifically, social systems can be characterized by their demographic characteristics, including such things as past, current, and projected population size, spatial distribution, age, and ethnic composition. Within the population there are a collective set of values, beliefs, uses, and knowledge it possesses about water. The stochastic nature of the water regime (for example, the frequency of flooding) can lead to events that affect human uses and values. These events, in turn, whether caused by natural or human actions and whether purposeful or inadvertent, combine to create the concept of risk. A key element of our framework is a critical and systematic appraisal of the array of institutional structures and processes that link people and water. The principle of prior appropriation, watershed councils, and benefit-cost analyses to estimate the monetary value of different water-related uses, such as agriculture or recreation, are examples. This appraisal includes the role and influence of these structures and processes on the people-water interface, and the extent to which they facilitate or thwart efforts to manage the water regime.

Significance: A key emerging issue across the Pacific Northwest centers on the rapid growth in demands for cool, clean water. These demands derive from a variety of sources and sectors such as agriculture, industrial development, urbanization, power, recreation and amenities, and fisheries. A host of forces operate in conjunction to drive these demands including continuing economic expansion, population growth and movement, concern with salmon and other fisheries, and the importance of water to a host of recreational and amenity uses and values. Improved understanding and insight as to both the dynamics of the water regime and its interaction with human settings will be critical to avoid severe, perhaps even irreparable harm, to this life-sustaining resource.

There are important information needs resulting from changes in the regional socio-economic and institutional fabric and their consequent effects on the water regime. The impact of continued population growth upon the water regime is problematic and will depend upon how population growth is distributed across the region and public response to the issue.

Approach: Developing an improved understanding of how future demands and uses will affect the quantity and quality of water available must take into account changes in the complex biophysical, social, economic, institutional and technological fabric within which the water regime is located. Moreover, none of these components operate in isolation from one another; e.g., the impacts of regional population growth on water consumption could either be aggravated beyond the effects associated with more people by virtue of pricing policies that promoted consumption and/or discouraged conservation or significantly reduced by public policies that encouraged adoption of state-of-the-art technology. These effects, in turn, have implications for the other themes; e.g., changes in population and economic development could lead to changes in land use, vegetation management, and temperature regimes in streams that alter the basic ecological processes and functions. Developing the information needed for water resource management strategies will be dependent, in large part, on articulating the changes unfolding in the socio-economic and technological sectors.

Theme 4. Develop tools and solutions for water sustainability. Innovative and creative tools and techniques are needed to reconcile competing demands and pressures on the water resource and to provide technical information for fully informed natural resource decisions. A more comprehensive understanding of tools includes alternatives, costs, tradeoffs, and consequences.

Significance: The search for solutions is the logical next step once information from the preceding three themes on physical, biological and social systems surrounding water issues is brought to bear. As we begin to frame the key scientific and policy questions that the Water Initiative seeks to inform, it is essential that we not lose sight of the integrative and inter-dependent nature of these issues. The inherent integrative nature of these challenges holds important implications for how we structure our research strategy within the Water Initiative.

Approach: We will employ conceptual and analytical management tools to evaluate and help resolve competing demands for water. These tools can be as simple as synthesis of existing information on effects, critical analysis of existing allocation structures, or lessons learned in watershed councils. The tools can also be complex modeling efforts that integrate information on the location of water supplies, whose water it is, how much there might be under a variety of existing and potential water management strategies in selected basins and what the nature of the bottlenecks might be (for example, physical, ecological, social, or institutional).

A critical part of the research agenda is communication, both from researchers to users and from feedback from users on the form and substance of the information needed. This communication can take various forms: workshops to help stakeholders identify assessment and analysis strategies; targeted workshops to compare and contrast alternative methods and tools for specific issues and needs; and direct participation in the process itself, either as conductor of specific studies, reviewer of study plans and results, or consultant to others who are doing so. The Water Initiative will guide and support integrated research and applications at the direction of a Strategic Oversight Group composed of scientists and managers. In addition, we have built into the initiative an intentional, long-term effort to listen to and absorb public input.

The following are examples of specific research projects that contribute to some or all of the above themes. They are a mix of existing efforts, proposed studies, or things we would like to do if we had additional funding. For instance the first example is located in the Willamette basin because it capitalizes on an existing consortium that is developing strategies for that basin. There are many basins in Alaska, Washington, and Oregon that would benefit from this same type of effort.

Issue And Background: The distribution of natural and altered streamflows is emerging as a major issue in evaluating the condition of river systems, allocating water to meet various objectives, and planning for future development. Yet at the scale of large river basins, such as the Willamette, we have a very imperfect picture of how much water and of what quality is available where and when. Having accurate information on how runoff is distributed in time and space, under both natural and altered conditions, is fundamental to evaluating effects of land use, dams, diversions, agricultural and municipal uses, and restoring instream flows.

Objectives And Opportunities: The project seeks to better quantify natural, altered, and alternative streamflow regimes and water temperature regimes for the Willamette River system. Because many of the processes controlling runoff at both small and large scales are linked to the underlying geomorphology of a region we are using a geomorphic framework. We believe the interaction of geologic substrate, topography and climate determines the overall surface water discharge regime, including the shape and timing of the annual hydrograph. For example, the westward-flowing tributaries of the Willamette River flow perpendicular to regional geologic trends, affording the opportunity to examine effects of geomorphology on streamflow. Streams draining the older, more deeply dissected western Cascades typically have higher peak flows and lower low flows per unit area than streams draining the younger High Cascades. Understanding physical and biological responses of watersheds to human modifications, including reservoir and forest management, requires appreciation of this broader geomorphic framework in which such changes occur.

Products: This project would develop geo-hydrologic maps and related formats that can be used to evaluate ecological and management implications of different land and water uses for the year 2050. We will also use this information to better quantify the roles of Federal and non-Federal lands in meeting future water supply needs and to distinguish watersheds that provide municipal water supplies.

Context: This project proposes to capitalize on work of the Pacific Northwest Ecosystem Research Consortium (funded by EPA) working on the Willamette River basin. The existing Consortium project on the Willamette River basin led by David Hulse (University of Oregon), Stan Gregory (Oregon State University), and others working with EPA funding is preparing a great wealth of Initiative-relevant information--spatial and non-spatial data bases and analyses of riverine, upland, demographic, and economic factors. The purpose of the proposal is to capitalize on this valuable information resource, to link it more tightly with objectives of the Initiative, to add an important component to the work of the Consortium project, and to present a streamlined representation of findings from the larger Consortium project that can serve as a prototype for work in other basins where less information is available. Various parts of the Consortium and allied projects (e.g., Willamette Livability Forum and Willamette River Restoration Initiative) are themselves tools for addressing sustainability issues, such as formulation of future scenarios of development under different policies. The resulting information will be presented to key decision-makers.

Relation To Initiative Components: This project will endeavor to provide a model of work spanning all four components, but emphasizing the themes of displaying The spatial arrangement of water (Geography of water) and Articulating the causes and consequences of altered flow regimes.

Issue And Background: The recent floods in the Pacific Northwest have reignited old debates about the relative importance of natural phenomena versus human modification to streams and watersheds in contributing to flood effects. A wide range of human activities, including forest management, roads, reservoir and dam operation, loss of wetlands, development and urbanization of floodplains and other flood-prone areas, and stream channelization have been variously and sometimes exclusively implicated as factors increasing the destructive potential of floods. Crafting effective public policy to reduce flood impacts requires technically sound information on the absolute or relative influence of human impacts on flood processes at different locations within watersheds. Conceptual and institutional boundaries currently preclude addressing flood behavior with this holistic view, and there is no scientific or public forum where the relative importance of human impacts can be evaluated and policy direction set.

Objectives And Opportunities: We need to understand how human interventions in streams and watersheds act in concert to influence the behavior of floods. To accomplish this, we propose to develop a coordinated inter-agency research program to comprehensively evaluate the relative importance of factors contributing to recent floods through an integrated analysis of the following: 1) precipitation, snowmelt, and streamflow records in both upland and lowland watersheds, 2) regional patterns of flood disturbance, including zones of inundation, landslides, channel changes, and riparian disturbance, 3) history of river basin development, including reservoir operation schedules, floodplain development, road networks, agricultural lands, and wetland loss, and 4) patterns of population and economic growth and development and social trends contributing to river basin development.

Products: Results from this effort will take several forms, including the following: 1) a technical interagency forum, attended by both scientists and policy makers where results from this integrated analysis can be discussed, and 2) an inter-agency technical report presenting results of the analysis and implications for watershed management, which may include protocols for monitoring/assessments, validation experiment proposals, technology testing opportunities, synthesis and reformulation of existing technologies for forest management applications, and decision support models based on the analysis.

Context: Little research has been done to place flood effects in a broad geographical or temporal context. While a wide range of agencies have responsibility for various aspects of flood prediction and control (i.e., the National Weather Service (NWS) predicts precipitation and river flows, National Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) measures snowpacks, the US Geological Survey (USGS) gauges streamflows, the Forest Service monitors forested watersheds, the Army Corps of Engineers (ACOE) operates the reservoir system), no one agency or group of agencies is charged with evaluating the consequences of their actions in relation to other parties. So, for example, while forest practices may increase peak flows and sediment transport from upland streams, downstream effects may be minimized where reservoir operation reduces flood peaks and sediment accumulates in reservoirs. On the other hand, sustained high flow releases from dams may contribute to higher sediment and turbidity problems downstream than shorter but higher natural peak flows. Participation will be sought from all relevant federal agencies, including: USGS, USFS (Regions 6 and 10, National Forest System and PNW Research), Bureau of Land management (BLM), NRCS, ACOE, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), NWS, and other agencies; other participants will include key researchers from academic (Oregon State University, University of Oregon, University of Washington) and State agencies from Alaska, Washington, and Oregon (the recently convened consortium of state agencies charged by Governor Kitzhaber to develop comprehensive plans for coordinating flood response will be a key contact).

Relation To Initiative Components: This project will endeavor to provide a model of work spanning all four components, but emphasizing the themes of Articulating the causes and consequences of altered flow regimes and Developing tools and solutions for water sustainability.

Issue And Background: Recreation on and/or adjacent to water remains a predominant part of American leisure time. Whether recreating directly on the water (e.g., boating), fishing along a riparian zone, camping on a lakeshore, or simply enjoying the esthetic backdrop that a river or lake provides, water is an essential element in the recreational experience of most people. Projections of future recreation use consistently estimate that this appeal will continue and that many Americans will continue to engage in their favorite recreational activities in association with water.

However, the seemingly simple interface between recreation and water is, in fact, a highly complex setting, where changes in one, either purposeful or inadvertent, could change the other, in either positive or negative ways. For example, we have long understood that recreational boating produces significant impacts on water quality and associated aquatic life, due to emissions from motors. If the popularity of this activity increases at rates consistent with those observed over the past few years (e.g., between 1982-83 and 1994-95, motor boating grew 40%, while total population increased by only 13%), we can anticipate increased adverse impacts on many water resources. Moreover, if boat motor use or motorized vehicles are restricted on some areas, either to protect riparian conditions or to feature other non-motorized activities, we can anticipate even greater relative increases elsewhere, with an attendant increase in pollution effects.

Conversely, changes in the management of the water resource can dramatically affect its use for recreation. In the central Cascades of Washington State, for example, the closure of riparian zones to camping and other developments along some streams apparently has resulted in substantial restoration of shoreline vegetation and in stream water quality, but it has also eliminated important recreational opportunities. With the closures for recreational use, questions surface as to where this "displaced" use has relocated; has it shifted to upland areas in the same area, to riparian zones in other drainages still open to recreation use, or elsewhere? And to the extent that recreation use has been displaced by policy decisions favoring stream and riparian zone restoration, what are the effects on the areas where that use is now located? Have our policy decisions simply relocated the specific location of adverse terrestrial and aquatic impacts, perhaps to areas even less well adapted to accommodating them than the locations they once occupied? Has the displacement lead to significant improvement in stream condition and health, or are the changes merely esthetic or cosmetic?

Objectives And Opportunities: Decisions that lead to changes in elements of the water regime (e.g., quantity, quality) for any given purpose (e.g., stream restoration) will produce consequences and implications for other uses and values. An excellent example of this is reflected in decisions to restore riparian habitats and the impacts of these decisions on recreation use and opportunities. To provide expanded insight on this complex interaction, the project proposes to undertake an in-depth study of one or more river drainages, providing a range of spatial scales, to evaluate the processes through which such restoration-based decisions are undertaken, document the nature and extent of the decisions on both the primary objective (e.g., stream restoration, habitat improvement) and on recreation use and opportunities, and describe the management and policy implications of the resulting effects.

Products: Results from this effort will take several forms, including the following: 1) a peer-reviewed synthesis of existing water-based recreation research, from which state-of art management guidelines and key research questions are identified, 2) development of a protocol to facilitate comprehensive and integrated analyses of recreation and water resource management policies and programs in other watersheds, and 3) an on-site, field-based workshop to present study results and discuss implications for management and research, involving citizens, managers and scientists.

A process for improving integrated research and for the utilization of research information in decision-making processes could evolve from this project. This would include 1) facilitating an integrative approach to planning and management in watersheds and river basins, 2) identification of consequences, implications, and the benefits and costs of functionally-based management programs, 3) clarification of the contributions and limits of existing institutional structures, and 4) processes for integrating water resource management with other uses and values.

Context: This issue provides a good example of the integrative nature of the questions confronting the Water Initiative because it will need to examine the interaction among policy changes, bio-physical responses, and social change. Moreover, some of the social changes (e.g., displacement of use to new areas) will, in turn, produce new biophysical consequences, which might necessitate new management and policy actions.

Relation To Initiative Components: This project will endeavor to provide a model of work spanning all four components, but emphasizing the themes of Recognizing the competing demands, uses, and management to resolve conflict and Developing tools and solutions for water sustainability.

Issue And Background: The Environmental Protection Agency is requiring each state to do Source Water Assessments (SWA's) of all public water supply systems by 2003. The National Forest (NF) System manages more than 900 municipal watersheds and 3000+ water supply systems serving Forest Service facilities (e.g., campgrounds, offices, etc.). Managers of National Forest and other lands will perform SWA's by incorporating public comment on them, and/or by making decisions regarding appropriate management of public water supply source areas. In Region 6 (R6) over 400 municipal watersheds and public water supply systems exist. For example, municipal watersheds occupy 36% of the Siuslaw NF and 94% of the Umpqua and Willamette NF in Oregon. The Willamette River Basin has over 620 municipal watersheds with about 1/3 using surface water and 2/3 using wells. In addition there are over 17,200 irrigation withdrawals, extracting 40% of the low flow surface water, and 90% from wells. The Willamette River is over-appropriated even though agriculture still has claimed only 5% of their entitled water from the flood control reservoirs on National Forests, which have high visitor days in the adjacent campgrounds. Municipal watersheds on the Siuslaw NF are more numerous; 136 of them exist on the Cascade National Forests. There is no water storage infrastructure on the Oregon coast although the area experiences ten-fold population increases in the summer. Nearly all of the rivers and streams in Oregon and Washington also have large private inholdings along their floodplains.

Water management issues are pervasive throughout Oregon, Washington, and Alaska. On the Tongass NF in Alaska, key water uses include domestic water supply, recreation, growth and propagation of fish, and hydroelectric power generation for mining, sawmills, communities, and other uses. There are six major power installations on the forest. Additional installations and interties are proposed. The forest supplies domestic water for 18 permanent communities, nine fish hatcheries, three industrial sites, nine logging camps, and three resorts. Three cities have congressionally-designated municipal watersheds.

Objectives And Opportunities: A variety of water-management questions would be better served by basin-scale, ground-water/surface-water analytical tools and data sets. Basin-level uses for watershed management include: processing water-right applications for new appropriations, changes, and transfers to determine whether the additional use or changes in use impair senior rights, and regulating permitted uses when senior surface-water rights (diversions or established minimum instream flow) are not satisfied. The causes may include drought, increased water use with unanticipated results, or climate change.

Products: Working with interdisciplinary teams, the following products could result. First, an assessment of cumulative effects of water withdrawals, such as estimating surface-water capture by all permitted, exempt, and claimed ground-water uses. Several important analyses would include ground-water/surface-water interaction estimates as an important input including determining minimum instream flows for fish and wildlife habitats, determining the effect of capture by wells on the contaminant-dilution capacity of a stream, such as during the review of National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permits which is based, in part, on a Total Daily Maximum Load analysis, and identifying and interpreting the causes of water-quality problems. Second, an evaluation and development of alternative mitigation designs for water withdrawal projects, which could include the following components: a) the purchase and movement of a senior surface-water or a ground-water right to avoid face affects farther upstream, b) changing withdrawal timing to avoid impairments during seasonal low flow periods or closures, c) off-stream storage and later releases, d) aquifer storage and recovery, also known as artificial recharge, e) pumping of ground water directly into a stream, and f) habitat restoration requiring the weighing of environmental tradeoffs.

Context: This project is one of the few attempts at incorporating both ground and surface water resource management. While some research has provided linkages between the sources of water there has been little practical effort to integrate them at the basin scale. The states are currently preparing SWA’s by drainage but this effort does not include ground water resources. The project would attempt to expand the capability to link surface and ground water system management including assessment, evaluation, and mitigation techniques.

Relation To Initiative Components: This project will endeavor to provide a model of work spanning all four components, but emphasizing the themes of Recognizing the competing demands, uses and management to resolve conflict and Developing tools and solutions for water sustainability.

Research carried out under the Water Initiative can be organized as a portfolio of studies that address different aspects of the issues discussed above, and which are complimentary to each other in space and time. The goal is to support studies that satisfy short- mid- and long-term information needs at scales ranging from local to regional. The following matrix illustrates how the four examples provided above are linked to the core issues and themes related to water in the Pacific Northwest.

Watersheds, and the complex of human and biophysical resources within them, have become central organizing themes for Forest Service land management. Crafting solutions to the water conflicts of the Pacific Northwest has been difficult because of the complexity of laws, myriad water uses, and the inadequate information about water despite its essential nature. The Water Initiative provides an opportunity for examining these areas and their various uses and values, in an integrative, long-term fashion. As we begin to focus increased research attention on water, new questions and challenges will almost certainly confront us. But as always, getting the question right is the most critical part of the research process; by working with our management colleagues and interested citizens, our capacity to do so is substantially enhanced.

Bisson, P.A., G.H. Reeves, R.E. Bilby, and R.J. Naiman. 1997. Watershed management and Pacific Salmon: desired future conditions. Pages 447-474 in D. J. Stouder, P. A. Bisson, and R. J. Naiman (editors). Pacific salmon and their ecosystems: status and future options. Chapman and Hall, New York.

Brown, T.C., J.G. Taylor, and B. Shelby. 1991. Assessing the direct effects of streamflow on recreation: A literature review. Water Resources Bulletin 27.

[FEMAT] Forest Ecosystem Management Assessment Team. 1993. Forest ecosystem management: An ecological, economic, and social assessment. U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Department of the Interior (and others). Portland, OR.

Gregory, S.V., G.A. Lamberti, and K.M.S. Moore. 1989. Influence of valley floor landforms on stream ecosystems. Pages 3-8 in D.L. Abell, ed. Proceedings of the California Riparian systems conference: Protection, management, and restoration for the 1990’s. Proceedings on 22-24 September 1988. Davis, California. General Technical Report PSW –110, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Forest and Range Experiment Station, Berkeley, California.

Lackey, R.T. 1997. Restoration of Pacific salmon: the role of science and scientists. Proceedings of the Sixth Biennial Watershed Management Conference. S. Sommarstrom, editor. Water Resources Center Report No. 92. University of California, Davis, CA.

Moody, D.W. 1990. Groundwater contamination in the United States. Journal of Soil and Water Conservation 45: 170-179.

Naiman, R.J., J.J. Magnuson, D.M. McKnight, and J.A. Stanford. 1995. The freshwater imperative: a research agenda. Island Press, Washington, D.C.

National Research Council (NRC). 1992. Restoration of aquatic ecosystems. National Academy Press, Washington, D.C. 552 pages.

National Research Council (NRC). 1996. Upstream: salmon and society in the Pacific Northwest. National Academy Press, Washington, D.C. 452 pages.

National Research Council (NRC). 1999. New strategies for America’s watersheds. National Academy Press, Washington, D.C. 311 pages.

Nehlsen, W., J.E. Williams, and J.A. Lichatowich 1991. Pacific salmon at the crossroads: Stocks at risk from California, Oregon, Idaho, and Washington. Fisheries 16 (2): 4-21.

Poff, N.L., J.D. Allan, M.B. Bain, J.R. Karr, K.L. Prestegaard, B.D. Richter, R.E. Sparks, and J.C. Stromberg. 1997. The natural flow regime. Bioscience 47: 769-784.

Richter, B.D., J.V. Baumgartner, R. Wigington, and D.P. Braun. 1997. How much water does a river need? Nature Conservancy.

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