Hydrologic Information System: Needs for Aquatic Ecology

1. Hydrologic Information System: Needs for Aquatic Ecology N. LeRoy Poff Colorado State University Fort Collins, CO 80523 CUAHSI Hydrologic Information System Symposium March 7-9, 2005

2. Climatic and Watershed Setting - Precipitation - Geology - Temperature - Land Cover/Use Biogeography Flow Regime Sediment Regime Thermal Regime Chemical Regime Biota RIVER-SPECIFIC ENVIRONMENTAL TEMPLATE Ecological Processes and Patterns - biotic life cycles - population growth and production - species interactions & diversity - nutrient cycling and retention A simple conceptual model of aquatic ecosystems

3. Basic Needs for advancing predictive Aquatic Ecology • Betterresolution of physical data of water, sediment, and nutrient flux at scales of ecological sampling • Better landscape characterizations that can drive spatially-explicit fluxes • New, readily accessible information to support aquatic ecology model development

4. Aquatic Ecology data structures (which help guide our needs) • Intensive, at-a-site, process-based studies create detailed data • Interface with NEON? • Extensive, synoptic, monitoring designs that create ‘snapshots’ • Agency programs (e.g., EMAP, NAWQA)

5. ORD’s Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program

6. EMAP Design - Western Pilot • Sites selected for Western Pilot Mid-Atlantic Highland Assessment

7. Western Pilot Landscape Indicators • Watershed scale indicators • Human use index (U) • Agriculture on steep slopes • Natural cover type index • Population density • Roads crossing streams • Riparian indicators • % of stream miles w/ different types of land cover • Biophysical indicators • Average slope of watershed • Palmer Drought Severity Index

8. Surface Water Indicators • Fish assemblage • Fish tissue contamination • Periphyton • Macroinvertebrate assemblage • Physical habitat (e.g. riparian characteristics, woody debris, canopy cover, gradient) • Water physio-chemical (e.g. nutrients, temperature, alkalinity dissolved oxygen, heavy metals)

9. NAWQA

10. STORET - Raw biological, chemical, and physical data on surface and groundwater collected by federal, state and local agencies, Indian Tribes, volunteer groups, academics, and others. *** Newer (and more reliable) biological data not very “harvestable” because it is still being processed and entered.

11. Core Areas: • Invasive species • Ecological aspects of biogeochemical cycles • Biodiversity and ecosystem functioning • Ecological implications of climate change • Land use and habitat alteration • Ecology and evolution of infectious disease • Hydroecology

12. Final version Hydroecology Workshop Report, Los Angeles meeting (Jan 12, 2004) • We propose measurements be made at the scale of entire watersheds. They should reflect ecological processes integrated across all three dimensions: • aboveground (including water- and soil-atmospheric processes); • belowground (including soil, groundwater, and hyporheic processes); • and surface water (lakes, wetlands, running-waters, and coastal ocean ecosystems). • 2 proposed integrative measures of the influence of water on ecosystems: • (1) whole-system rates of metabolism (whole-system functioning) • (2) rates of nutrient cycling, specifically C, N, and P (critical to biota, influenced by biota, and determine water quality – all of which are critical to the provision of ecosystem services)

13. What should HIS do? • Everything! • Create data structures to “ingest” existing ecological databases • Both intensive (EMAP, NAWQA, STORET) and extensive (NEON, etc.) • Create tools/models/interfaces to make synoptic data more amenable to meaningful analysis from ecological perspective • Especially for agency data! • National scale effort (will stimulate further research and feed-backs to CUAHSI) What “information” is needed?

14. How riverine ecologists view systems Hierarchical watershed Connectivity(through time) Disturbance-driven Vertical (hyporheic) Disturbance a function of: - hydrologic regime - channel / valley morphology - bed stability Lateral (floodplain) (Frissell et al. 1986) Longitudinal (channel) 2) Habitat Hierarchy (top-down constraints)

15. “Types” of data needed 2) Habitat Hierarchy (top-down constraints) Site & Watershed Site

16. Site and Watershed The “data cube” is a good model for data acquisition and management

17. What we would really like … But “harvested” data alone is not enough

18. Ecological data REACH … the digital REACH (within a Watershed) REACH

19. Interpretation tools we really need: • GIS support: • Reach-scale features (e.g., riparian cover, channel slope, etc.) • Watershed-scale features (e.g., flow regime, geology, land use, etc.) • Model support for hydrograph generation at ungauged sites • links to ‘standard’ tools (e.g., Streamstats, Map-to-map) • data structures that will support off-the-shelf models • Needs to be “straight-forward"

20. StreamStats is a cooperative effort of the USGS and ESRI, Inc.1 It is an integrated GIS application that uses ArcIMS, ArcSDE, ArcGIS, and the ArcHydro Tools. It incorporates a map-based user interface for site selection; a Microsoft Access database that contains information for data-collection stations; a GIS program that delineates drainage-basin boundaries and measures physical and climatic characteristics of the drainage basins; and a GIS database that contains land elevation models, historic weather data, and other data needed for measuring drainage-basin characteristics and for locating sites of interest in the user interface.

21. Initial list of data needs for HIS: REACH • Size (channel width, stream order) • Length (distance between bounding tributaries) • Channel geometry (width, slope) • Valley width and topography (including flood plain to allow for hydraulic routing models) • riparian extent (width), type • measure of retentiveness (power/channel roughness) • index of permeability/exchange with groundwater • Relative size of upstream boundary tributary • Flow regime (magnitude, frequency, duration, timing of extremes) • Local stream power • Thermal regime (winter/summer extremes) • Sub-reach fields, such as • D50 or sediment size distribution • Local channel morphology (riffle/pool ratio, etc.) • Riparian patchiness • Others available through LIDAR, etc.

22. Initial list of data needs for HIS: WATERSHED (delineated by area upstream of sampling point) • basin area • Flow regime (magnitude, frequency, duration, timing of extremes) • typical GIS stuff that can be either averaged or spatially-weighted (e.g., % forest, geology, riparian buffer) • Number of tributaries in network (network topology) • Watershed slope • Watershed scale stream power (concentration of streamflow in trib network x WS slope?) • Geology (spatially-distributed?)