No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

Political boundaries make watershed planning difficult despite the influence of many state and federal programs. Broad, top-down, watershed initiatives fail to reach many municipalities due to human resources, time and legalities. Thus, a watershed ecosystem based approach to city planning should be utilized in order to integrate a holistic and scientific foundation for land use decisions. However, there is a need for research for developing and applying a watershed approach to urbanizing watersheds. The goal of this study is to provide a series of science based transferable recommendations upon which municipalities can make land use planning decisions. These recommendations are informed by a watershed modeling and prioritization study conducted with the community of Northampton, Massachusetts. Analyses of water resource planning options were made concerning future development scenarios using an approach which links water quality and quantity, land use and government. A required component of the ecosystem approach, stakeholder participation, applied the Deliberative Attribute Prioritization Procedure (DAPP) for the first time in this context to assess the relative of different environmental concerns. The results of these stakeholder focus groups showed the importance of several key attributes including land use, water quality, water quantity, and impacts to neighborhing communities that were utilized in the watershed models. This thesis provides an integrated tool for water resource planning at the municipal level. However, without the effective transfer of these recommendations into existing policies like zoning, the results of the study have limited use. Therefore implementation of recommendations within municipal planning documents is an important component. This information will be utilized to evaluate priority water resource protection overlays by providing quantitative information and decision making within a community. A citywide watershed model and analysis used to guide policy-making and decision-making will assist in fulfilling the community of Northampton’s continuing commitment to work toward economic, environmental, and equitable sustainability, as well as provide a model for other communities.

The Mississippi River Valley Alluvial Aquifer (MRVAA) is one of the most productive agricultural regions in the United States. The main objectives of this research are to identify long term trends and change points in hydrological variables (streamflow and rainfall), to assess the relationship between hydrological variables, and to evaluate the influence of global climate indices on hydrological variables. Non-parametric tests, MMK and Pettitt’s tests were used to analyze trend and change points. PCC and Streamflow elasticity analysis were used to analyze the relationship between streamflow and rainfall and the sensitivity of streamflow to rainfall changes. PCC and MLR analysis were used to evaluate the relationship between climate indices and hydrological variables and the combined effect of climate indices with hydrological variables. The results of the trend analysis indicated spatial variability within the aquifer, increase in streamflow and rainfall in the Northern region of the aquifer, while a decrease was observed in the southern region of the aquifer. Change point analysis of annual maximum, annual mean streamflow and annual precipitation revealed that statistically decreasing shifts occurred in 2001, 1998 and 1995, respectively. Results of PCC analysis indicated that streamflow and rainfall has a strong positive relationship between them with PCC values more than 0.6 in most of the locations within the basin. Results of the streamflow elasticity for the locations ranged from 0.987 to 2.33 for the various locations in the basin. Results of the PCC analysis for monthly maximum and mean streamflow showed significant maximum positive correlation coefficient for Nino 3.4. Monthly maximum rainfall showed a maximum significant positive correlation coefficient for PNA and Nino3.4 and the monthly mean rainfall showed a maximum significant positive correlation coefficient of 0.18 for Nino3.4. Results of the MLR analysis showed a maximum significant positive correlation coefficient of 0.31 for monthly maximum and mean streamflow of 0.21 and 0.23 for monthly maximum and mean rainfall, respectively. Overall, results from this research will help in understanding the impacts of global climate indices on rainfall and subsequently on streamflow discharge, so as to mitigate and manage water resource availability in the MRVAA underlying the LMRB.

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This paper examines vineyard perceptions and adoption of climate change adaptation and water conservation measures in the Paso Robles American Viticultural Area (AVA). A survey was distributed to all 220 vineyards and vineyard management companies that operate in the AVA, with a 53.64% response rate. The objective of the survey was to determine vineyard manager and owner attitudes towards climate change and adaptation, as well as their perceptions of how these threats would impact their operation. A second objective was to document the current level of water conservation and climate adaptation while identifying the barriers and opportunities for further adoption of these practices. The third objective was to share a climate projection to assess perceived impacts, attitudes, and perceptions of the projection and capacity to adapt. The final objective was to develop a typology to assist targeted outreach of vineyards. Our results showed that the most important current climate impact is heat, with water regulations and supply being the biggest concern in the future. Vineyards were also found to be relatively unsure about their capability to further implement adaptation measures, with relatively low adoption of most practices already. Decision support tools, like the climate projection, were found to be useful and desired by vineyards for management. Results of our study showed that trust in the information source can be a barrier to use of these tools. We identified further barriers to adoption of practices and identified an outreach strategy using a typology of vineyards, which focused on smaller vineyards and those without wineries. These results can be used to increase efficacy of government and NGO programs that aim to support climate adaptation and water conservation in the region.