Nationwide Assessment of Nonpoint Source Threats to Water Quality

Brown, Thomas C.; Froemke, Pamela

doi:10.1525/bio.2012.62.2.7

Cited by 91 publications

(51 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…The Forests to Faucets project of the US Forest Service [87] explicitly considers threats of fire in US catchments critical to drinking water supply. An assessment of non-point source threats covering the entire USA included post-fire sediment as a water stressor [88]. The World Resources Institute [17] recognized fire risk management as a cost-avoidance measure in a 'natural infrastructure' (i.e.…”

Section: Concluding Thoughtsmentioning

confidence: 99%

At the nexus of fire, water and society

Martin¹

2016

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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The societal risks of water scarcity and water-quality impairment have received considerable attention, evidenced by recent analyses of these topics by the 2030 Water Resources Group, the United Nations and the World Economic Forum. What are the effects of fire on the predicted water scarcity and declines in water quality? Drinking water supplies for humans, the emphasis of this exploration, are derived from several land cover types, including forests, grasslands and peatlands, which are vulnerable to fire. In the last two decades, fires have affected the water supply catchments of Denver (CO) and other southwestern US cities, and four major Australian cities including Sydney, Canberra, Adelaide and Melbourne. In the same time period, several, though not all, national, regional and global water assessments have included fire in evaluations of the risks that affect water supplies. The objective of this discussion is to explore the nexus of fire, water and society with the hope that a more explicit understanding of fire effects on water supplies will encourage the incorporation of fire into future assessments of water supplies, into the pyrogeography conceptual framework and into planning efforts directed at water resiliency. This article is part of the themed issue ‘The interaction of fire and mankind’.

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Section: Concluding Thoughtsmentioning

confidence: 99%

At the nexus of fire, water and society

Martin¹

2016

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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“…For example, U.S. forests and grasslands provide over half of U.S. fresh water supply (Brown et al, 2008;Sun et al, 2015a). Water draining from forests, natural or managed, has the best quality among all land uses (Binkley and Brown, 1993;Brown and Froemke, 2012). Forests and grasslands can offset 10-40% of annual carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels each year (Ryan et al, 2010;McKinley et al, 2011;Xiao et al, 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Drought impacts on ecosystem functions of the U.S. National Forests and Grasslands: Part II assessment results and management implications

Sun

Caldwell

et al. 2015

Forest Ecology and Management

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a b s t r a c tThe 781,000 km 2 (193 million acre) United States National Forests and Grasslands system (NF) provides important ecosystem services such as clean water supply, timber production, wildlife habitat, and recreation opportunities to the American public. Quantifying the historical impacts of climate change and drought on ecosystem functions at the national scale is essential to develop sound forest management and watershed restoration plans under a changing climate. This study applied the previously validated Water Supply and Stress Index model (WaSSI) to 170 NFs in the conterminous U.S. (CONUS) to examine how historical extreme droughts have affected forest water yield (Q) and gross primary productivity (GPP). For each NF, we focused on the five years with the lowest annual SPI3 (Standardized Precipitation Index on a 3-month time scale) during 1962-2012. The extent of extreme droughts as measured by the number of NFs and total area affected by droughts has increased during the last decade. Across all lands in CONUS, the most extreme drought during the past decade occurred in 2002, resulting in a mean reduction of Q by 32% and GPP by 20%. For the 170 individual NFs, on average, the top-five droughts represented a reduction in precipitation by 145 mm yr À1 (or 22%), causing reductions in evapotranspiration by 29 mm yr À1 (or 8%), Q by 110 mm yr À1 (or 37%) and GPP by 65 gC m À2 yr À1 (or 9%). The responses of the forest hydrology and productivity to the top-five droughts varied spatially due to different land-surface characteristics (e.g., climatology and vegetation) and drought severity at each NF. This study provides a comprehensive benchmark assessment of likely drought impacts on the hydrology and productivity in NFs using consistent methods and datasets across the conterminous U.S. The study results are useful to the forestry decision makers for developing appropriate strategies to restore and protect ecosystem services in anticipating potential future droughts and climate change.Published by Elsevier B.V.

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“…In addition, artificial facility construction has impacted the river regime, directly acting on the security of river ecosystems [30]. Considering the availability of data, and based on the eco-environment status of the SRB, we chose ten human threat factors that were determined to be related to river ecosystems in previous studies [31,32]. These factors specifically included population (total number of inhabitants), secondary industrial output (annual revenue in CNY, Chinese Yuan Renminbi), urbanized and industrialized areas (residential areas and industrial estates), large animals (sum number of cattle, horses, donkeys, mules, and camels), fertilizer (consumption of nitrogen, phosphate, potash, and compound), pesticides (consumption of chemical pesticides), agricultural area (tillage of agriculture land), reservoir storage (storage capacity of large and medium reservoirs), traffic land (roads > 30 m in width), and mining and manufacturing sites (sum number of pollution points).…”

Section: Human Threat Factorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Human Threat to River Ecosystems at the Watershed Scale: An Ecological Security Assessment of the Songhua River Basin, Northeast China

Shen

Cao

Tang

et al. 2017

Water

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Abstract:Human disturbances impact river basins by reducing the quality of, and services provided by, aquatic ecosystems. Conducting quantitative assessments of ecological security at the watershed scale is important for enhancing the water quality of river basins and promoting environmental management. In this study, China's Songhua River Basin was divided into 204 assessment units by combining watershed and administrative boundaries. Ten human threat factors were identified based on their significant influence on the river ecosystem. A modified ecological threat index was used to synthetically evaluate the ecological security, where frequency was weighted by flow length from the grids to the main rivers, while severity was weighted by the potential hazard of the factors on variables of river ecosystem integrity. The results showed that individual factors related to urbanization, agricultural development and facility construction presented different spatial distribution characteristics. At the center of the plain area, the provincial capital cities posed the highest level of threat, as did the municipal districts of prefecture-level cities. The spatial relationships between hot spot locations of the ecological threat index and water quality, as well as the distribution areas of critically endangered species, were analyzed. The sensitivity analysis illustrated that alteration of agricultural development largely changed the ecological security level of the basin. By offering a reference for assessing ecological security, this study can enhance water environmental planning and management.

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Nationwide Assessment of Nonpoint Source Threats to Water Quality

Cited by 91 publications

References 40 publications

At the nexus of fire, water and society

At the nexus of fire, water and society

Drought impacts on ecosystem functions of the U.S. National Forests and Grasslands: Part II assessment results and management implications

The Human Threat to River Ecosystems at the Watershed Scale: An Ecological Security Assessment of the Songhua River Basin, Northeast China

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