"[This book] presents the collective views and recommendations of the Instream Flow Council's (IFC) state and provincial fishery and wildlife agency members regarding appropriate instream flow strategies for managing, maintaining, or restoring riverine fishery and aquatic wildlife resources and processes. [It] also identif[ies] eight components that should serve as guidelines in establishing or improving existing agency instream flow programs and in developing prescriptions to be addressed in each instream flow assessment. These components include hydrology, geomorphology, biology, water quality, and connectivity as well as legal, institutional, and public involvement."--Page xxv.
Across the United States, municipalities, counties, and states grapple with issues of ensuring adequate amounts of water in times of high demand and low supply. Instream flow programs aim to balance ecosystem requirements and human uses of water, and try to determine how much water should be in rivers. With its range of river and ecosystem conditions, growing population, and high demands on water, Texas is representative of instream flow challenges across the United States, and its instream flow program may be a model for other jurisdictions. Three state agenciesâ€"the Texas Water Development Board (TWDB), the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD), and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ)â€"asked a committee of the National Research Council (NRC) to review the Programmatic Work Plan (PWP) and Technical Overview Document (TOD) that outline the state's instream flow initiative. The committee suggested several changes to the proposed plan, such as establishing clearer goals, modifying the flow chart that outlines the necessary steps for conducting an instream flow study, and provide better linkages between individual studies of biology, hydrology and hydraulics, physical processes, and water quality.
Since the publication of the first edition (1994) there have been rapid developments in the application of hydrology, geomorphology and ecology to stream management. In particular, growth has occurred in the areas of stream rehabilitation and the evaluation of environmental flow needs. The concept of stream health has been adopted as a way of assessing stream resources and setting management goals. Stream Hydrology: An Introduction for Ecologists Second Edition documents recent research and practice in these areas. Chapters provide information on sampling, field techniques, stream analysis, the hydrodynamics of moving water, channel form, sediment transport and commonly used statistical methods such as flow duration and flood frequency analysis. Methods are presented from engineering hydrology, fluvial geomorphology and hydraulics with examples of their biological implications. This book demonstrates how these fields are linked and utilised in modern, scientific river management. * Emphasis on applications, from collecting and analysing field measurements to using data and tools in stream management. * Updated to include new sections on environmental flows, rehabilitation, measuring stream health and stream classification. * Critical reviews of the successes and failures of implementation. * Revised and updated windows-based AQUAPAK software. This book is essential reading for 2nd/3rd year undergraduates and postgraduates of hydrology, stream ecology and fisheries science in Departments of Physical Geography, Biology, Environmental Science, Landscape Ecology, Environmental Engineering and Limnology. It would be valuable reading for professionals working in stream ecology, fisheries science and habitat management, environmental consultants and engineers.
This open access book surveys the frontier of scientific river research and provides examples to guide management towards a sustainable future of riverine ecosystems. Principal structures and functions of the biogeosphere of rivers are explained; key threats are identified, and effective solutions for restoration and mitigation are provided. Rivers are among the most threatened ecosystems of the world. They increasingly suffer from pollution, water abstraction, river channelisation and damming. Fundamental knowledge of ecosystem structure and function is necessary to understand how human acitivities interfere with natural processes and which interventions are feasible to rectify this. Modern water legislation strives for sustainable water resource management and protection of important habitats and species. However, decision makers would benefit from more profound understanding of ecosystem degradation processes and of innovative methodologies and tools for efficient mitigation and restoration. The book provides best-practice examples of sustainable river management from on-site studies, European-wide analyses and case studies from other parts of the world. This book will be of interest to researchers in the field of aquatic ecology, river system functioning, conservation and restoration, to postgraduate students, to institutions involved in water management, and to water related industries.
From warning the public of impending floods to settling legal arguments over water rights, the measurement of streamflow ("streamgaging") plays a vital role in our society. Having good information about how much water is moving through our streams helps provide citizens with drinking water during droughts, control water pollution, and protect wildlife along our stream corridors. The U.S. Geological Survey's (USGS) streamgaging program provides such information to a wide variety of users interested in human safety, recreation, water quality, habitat, industry, agriculture, and other topics. For regional and national scale streamflow information needs, the USGS has created a National Streamflow Information Program (NSIP). In addition to streamgaging, the USGS envisions intensive data collection during floods and droughts, national assessments of streamflow characteristics, enhanced information delivery, and methods development and research. The overall goals of the program are to: meet legal and treaty obligations on interstate and international waters, support flow forecasting; measure river basin outflows, monitor sentinel watersheds for long-term trends in natural flows, and measure flows for water quality needs. But are these the right topics to collect data on? Or is the USGS on the wrong track? In general, the book is supportive of the design and content of NSIP, including its goals and methodology for choosing stream gages for inclusion in the program. It sees the ultimate goal of NSIP as developing the ability to use existing data-gathering sites to generate streamflow information with quantitative confidence limits at any location in the nation. It is just as important to have good measurements during droughts as during floods, and it therefore recommends supporting Natural Resource Conservation Service forecast sites in addition to those of the National Weather Service.
Provides critiques of current practices for environmental flow assessment and shows how they can be improved, using case studies. In Environmental Flow Assessment: Methods and Applications, four leading experts critique methods used to manage flows in regulated streams and rivers to balance environmental (instream) and out-of-stream uses of water. Intended for managers as well as practitioners, the book dissects the shortcomings of commonly used approaches, and offers practical advice for selecting and implementing better ones. The authors argue that methods for environmental flow assessment (EFA) can be defensible as well as practicable only if they squarely address uncertainty, and provide guidance for doing so. Introductory chapters describe the scientific and social reasons that EFA is hard, and provide a brief history. Because management of regulated streams starts with understanding freshwater ecosystems, Environmental Flow Assessment: Methods and Applications includes chapters on flow and organisms in streams. The following chapters assess standard and emerging methods, how they should be tested, and how they should (or should not) be applied. The book concludes with practical recommendations for implementing environmental flow assessment. Describes historical and recent trends in environmental flow assessment Directly addresses practical difficulties with applying a scientifically informed approach in contentious circumstances Serves as an effective introduction to the relevant literature, with many references to articles in related scientific fields Pays close attention to statistical issues such as sampling, estimation of statistical uncertainty, and model selection Includes recommendations for methods and approaches Examines how methods have been tested in the past and shows how they should be tested today and in the future Environmental Flow Assessment: Methods and Applications is an excellent book for biologists and specialists in allied fields such as engineering, ecology, fluvial geomorphology, environmental planning, landscape architecture, along with river managers and decision makers.
Published by the American Geophysical Union as part of the Geophysical Monograph Series, Volume 194. Stream Restoration in Dynamic Fluvial Systems: Scientific Approaches, Analyses, and Tools brings together leading contributors in stream restoration science to provide comprehensive consideration of process-based approaches, tools, and applications of techniques useful for the implementation of sustainable restoration strategies. Stream restoration is a catchall term for modifications to streams and adjacent riparian zones undertaken to improve geomorphic and/or ecologic function, structure, and integrity of river corridors, and it has become a multibillion dollar industry. A vigorous debate currently exists in research and professional communities regarding the approaches, applications, and tools most effective in designing, implementing, and assessing stream restoration strategies given a multitude of goals, objectives, stakeholders, and boundary conditions. More importantly, stream restoration as a research-oriented academic discipline is, at present, lagging stream restoration as a rapidly evolving, practitioner-centric endeavor. The volume addresses these main areas: concepts in stream restoration, river mechanics and the use of hydraulic structures, modeling in restoration design, ecology, ecologic indices, and habitat, geomorphic approaches to stream and watershed management, and sediment considerations in stream restoration. Stream Restoration in Dynamic Fluvial Systems will appeal to scholars, professionals, and government agency and institute researchers involved in examining river flow processes, river channel changes and improvements, watershed processes, and landscape systematics.
