Taxpayer dollars can be used more efficiently by land management agencies to monitor streams if agency-wide monitoring protocols are adopted. To address this issue, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) developed the National Aquatic Monitoring Framework (NAMF) to implement standardized assessments of stream condition and trend in the Western United States. As one of the first applications of the NAMFI sought to develop and apply an analytical framework to determine the biological condition of streams, extent of in stream stressors and their impact on biological condition, and anthropogenic sources of stressors in Northeast California and Northwest Nevada over three years at a cost of $80,000. I measured biological, chemical, and physical attributes to determine the condition of stream sat 70 spatially distributed random locations. I found 45% of BLM stream km in the study area have degraded biology, 68% have excessive total nitrogen (TN), 43% have canopy cover below expected conditions, and 37% have excessive total phosphorus (TP). Excessive TN and TP and degraded riparian complexity (RC) were most strongly related to degraded biological conditions. The occurrence of excess TN and TP was most associated with livestock grazing. RC was identified as a stressor, but was not associated with land uses. This study provides an example of the data and analytical approach needed to help the BLM adaptively manage streams and rivers in compliance with federal regulations while efficiently using taxpayer dollars.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UTAHS/oai:digitalcommons.usu.edu:etd-8320 |
| Date | 01 August 2018 |
| Creators | Cappuccio, Nicole |
| Publisher | DigitalCommons@USU |
| Source Sets | Utah State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | All Graduate Theses and Dissertations |
| Rights | Copyright for this work is held by the author. Transmission or reproduction of materials protected by copyright beyond that allowed by fair use requires the written permission of the copyright owners. Works not in the public domain cannot be commercially exploited without permission of the copyright owner. Responsibility for any use rests exclusively with the user. For more information contact digitalcommons@usu.edu. |
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