The Diamond Fork River, and it’s tributary Sixth Water Creek, has been highly altered in terms of shape, function, and ecologicaly due to large, trans-basin flows additions to the system for irrigation starting in the early 1900s. Flows were exceptionally large for 80 years, after which they were reduced in 2004. Larger than natural flows during the low flow season were then added to the river in an effort to improve ecosystem health and recreational fishing opportunities. Since the prescription additional flow during low flow seasons, the river channel has undergone further change, most noticeably in the form of narrowing. With the channel change that has occurred over the past decade, it has been suggested that the additional flows, which augment baseflows, are too large and that key habitat elements, particularly pools, are lacking throughout the river. We evaluated trout habitat throughout the altered reaches of the Diamond Fork River and Sixth Water Creek which are still subject to flow additions. We used a model to estimate the number of fish a reach can support at a given flow in order to evaluate which flow produces the highest quality trout habitat. We found that the current summer baseflows of 80 cfs for the lower Diamond Fork and 32 cfs for Sixth Water Creek are less than desirable and that flows less than 40 cfs for the lower Diamond Fork and flows between 20 cfs and 30 cfs for Sixth Water Creek would increase the quality of trout habitat. We also evaluated the size and number of pools throughout the system and identified that pools are generally lacking both in size and number relative to standard requirements for trout success. We documented that as the channel narrowed, the number of pools/deep water disappeared. The lack of sediment and the limited number of flows capable of moving sediment were identified as key causes of the channel simplification and loss of pool habitat. Crucial components of future pool formation and maintenance are i) active sediment availability and ii) frequent sediment mobilizing flows. If the baseflow regime were to be lowered, we predict that the channel would narrow, which would increase the effectiveness of floods, increase mobility of sediment, and overall increase pool habitat. This research, as part of a larger, interdisciplinary project, lays the foundation for proposing new flows for the Diamond Fork River that targets ecological goals identified by stakeholders as well as providing information for future habitat restoration projects.

I evaluated the spatial and temporal patterns of the avian communities in the Colorado River delta, Mexico, and their relationship with vegetation type and surface water. I also developed plausible conservation and restoration guidelines for riparian areas and native birds in the region. The study included monthly point counts at 30 transects (240 points) from May 2002 to July 2003, breeding counts at 175 sites (3 times per year) during 2002 and 2003, and habitat measurements at the survey points.The most common species were Mourning Doves, Red-winged Blackbirds, and Brown-headed Cowbirds, but another 64 species were commonly found, including Verdins, Song Sparrows, Yellow-breasted Chats and Abert's Towhees. Surface water was the most important habitat feature related to avian richness and density regardless of vegetation type or land cover (P < 0.005). During summer, species richness was explained by variations in water and the cover of cottonwoods (r2 = 0.56, P < 0.001), and the variation in bird densities was explained by variations in water and the cover of willows (r2 = 0.35, P = 0.003).When comparing native versus saltcedar dominated sites, both with the presence (wet) or absence (dry) of surface water, the diversity of birds was more influenced by the presence of water than by vegetation type. Bird abundance was more influenced by vegetation type, but water also had an important effect, as wet sites had higher bird abundance than dry sites with the same vegetation type, and saltcedar wet areas had similar avian abundance to native dry sites. On all cases, the presence of water was an important factor determining the ecological value, in terms of avian richness, abundance, and diversity, of both native riparian and saltcedar areas. Saltcedar areas with surface water had avian characteristics similar to native riparian sites.The dedication of instream flows and pulse floods, the maintenance of vegetation cover and structural diversity, and an increase of older riparian stands will secure the viability of existing bird populations and will increase the probability of recovery of the species that are still extirpated from the floodplain of the Colorado River in Mexico.

An awareness of the effect of agricultural production on the environment has led to the development of policies to mitigate its adverse effects. This dissertation provides analyses of agri-environmental policies designed to protect environmental assets, as well as analytical decision-making tools useful for conducting policy evaluations. The first essay employs propensity score matching techniques to estimate the additionality of federal agricultural conservation programs for six conservation practices for farmers in Ohio. Additionality is an important measure of the effectiveness of conservation programs in inducing an increase in the conservation effort of farmers. Results suggest that additionality is positive and statistically significant for all six conservation practices. However, while programs achieve positive additionality for all practice types, a comparison between conservation practices reveals that certain practice types achieve higher percent additionality than others. Such results, coupled with information on the environmental benefits obtained per practice, could prove useful to program managers for improving the effectiveness of conservation programs. The second essay develops a new methodology to decompose the additionality measure into the two effects induced by conservation programs: expansion versus the new adoption of conservation practices. To do so, the relative contributions of two types of farmers, prior-adopters and new-adopters, are estimated. Results of the decomposition reveal that the additionality for prior-adopters is not significant for all practice types. Instead, additional conservation effort comes from new-adopters adopting new practices. Second, decomposition estimates suggest that practice types with a greater fraction of enrolled farmers that are new-adopters achieve greater percent additionality than those with greater proportions of prior-adopters. This suggests that a farmers? history in conservation adoption has a significant influence on additionality levels. The final essay analyzes the effect of recent instream flow diversion-guidelines on agricultural water security and streamflows within a decentralized water management regime. Spatially-explicit economic and hydrologic models are integrated to evaluate the tradeoffs between salmon bypass-flows and agricultural water security for three different diversion-guidelines within a northern-California watershed. Results indicate that the most restrictive diversion-guideline provides the greatest protection of bypass-flow days within smaller watersheds; however, within larger watersheds protection is not as significant. Water security, however, decreases sharply under the strict and moderate diversion-guidelines, especially during dry years. Overall, results indicate that greater focus should be given to protecting streamflows in the smallest watersheds, and meeting human water needs during dry years, when agricultural water security is impacted the most.

Hydrologic Information Systems (HIS) have emerged as a means to organize, share, and synthesize water data. This work extends current HIS capabilities by providing additional capacity and flexibility for marine physical and chemical observations data and for freshwater and marine biological observations data. These goals are accomplished in two broad and disparate case studies – an HIS implementation for the oceanographic domain as applied to the offshore environment of the Chukchi Sea, a region of the Alaskan Arctic, and a separate HIS implementation for the aquatic biology and environmental flows domains as applied to Texas rivers. These case studies led to the development of a new four-dimensional data cube to accommodate biological observations data with axes of space, time, species, and trait, a new data model for biological observations, an expanded ontology and data dictionary for biological taxa and traits, and an expanded chain-of-custody approach for improved data source tracking. A large number of small studies across a wide range of disciplines comprise the “Long Tail” of science. This work builds upon the successes of the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc. (CUAHSI) by applying HIS technologies to two new Long Tail disciplines: aquatic biology and oceanography. In this regard this research improves our understanding of how to deal with collections of biological data stored alongside sensor-based physical data. Based on the results of these case studies, a common framework for water information management for terrestrial and marine systems has emerged which consists of Hydrologic Information Systems for observations data, Geographic Information Systems for geographic data, and Digital Libraries for documents and other digital assets. It is envisioned that the next generation of HIS will be comprised of these three components and will thus actually be a Water Information System of Systems. / text

Tribal water rights and instream flows for species listed under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) have been a source of tensions in the western United States, particularly when tribes have undetermined water rights to support tribal fisheries listed under the ESA. Understanding the mechanics of past tribal settlements and their strengths and weaknesses in resolving disputes over instream flows for tribal trust fisheries listed under the ESA will allow parties involved in negotiations to evaluate whether similar provisions should be incorporated into future settlements. A review of the 27 congressionally approved tribal water settlements for instream flow and ESA provisions revealed that instream rights were either established as junior rights or reallocated from existing rights. The ESA was a factor in many of the settlements; however, only one actively incorporated ESA tools as part of the benefits of the settlement. After this preliminary evaluation, a comparative analysis framework with 28 criteria for evaluating environmental conflict resolution was applied to the Nez Perce Water Rights Settlement and Pyramid Lake Paiute Water Rights Settlement to identify strengths and weaknesses of using tribal water settlements as a means to resolve disputes involving instream flow claims. From my analysis, I conclude that tribal water settlements offer unique opportunities to shift the status quo and address historic inequities while minimizing harm to existing water users; however, settlement agreements may not result in an outcome that reduces conflict without a concerted effort to establish a fair process and minimize the impacts of the agreement on other parties. Furthermore, despite the many benefits of settlement agreements, since they have not delivered time-immemorial rights for fisheries, other options will likely be a continued consideration for tribes seeking to restore fisheries. However, while litigation presents a risky though lucrative outcome, rights under state law are in line with what has been granted in settlements. Given the time, effort and cost associated with settlements, I suggest that since tribal water right settlements generally use state tools to establish instream flows, states and tribes may reduce future conflict by proactively working together to establish instream flows through existing state water reallocation mechanisms. / Graduation date: 2012