Developing a watershed planning tool to prioritize riparian restoration activities

David D. Hart, Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Environmental and Watershed Research, University of Maine, Orono, ME, 207/581-3257, david.hart@umit.maine.edu

Thomas E. Johnson, Patrick Center for Environmental Research, Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA

James N. McNair, Patrick Center for Environmental Research, Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA, 215/299-1109, mcnair@acnatsci.org

Puneet Srivastava, Biosystems Engineering Department, Auburn University, Auburn, AL, 334/844-7426, srivapu@auburn.edu

We are developing scientifically-based tools to help guide watershed restoration and protection planning. Our initial efforts have focused on creating a prototype tool to evaluate the potential benefits of alternative riparian restoration and protection efforts. Although the benefits of riparian buffers are widely recognized, we currently lack a tool to identify which riparian restoration activities will have the greatest benefits. For example, we need a tool that will predict how the outcomes of riparian restoration depend on the type, amount (e.g., width and length) and location of buffers within a stream network. We gathered data on physical, chemical, and biological aspects of stream health at 40 sites in the mid-Atlantic piedmont, focusing particularly on small streams in the Schuylkill River watershed. We then used statistical models to examine how stream health was related to spatial variations in land cover, including the type, amount, and location of riparian buffers. Our results demonstrate how stream health is affected by both local riparian conditions and upslope landcover. We show how these relationships can be incorporated in a simple tool that predicts the outcomes of different riparian restoration projects, thereby enabling users to select those projects that will yield the greatest watershed benefits. We conclude by proposing how this type of tool can be calibrated and applied in Maine.