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Biological and
Physical Resources

Updated: 11/02/2023

Training

Image of a tear drop shaped drawing of a Forest landscape with text Water Resource Management for Line and Staff Officers below.Water Resources Management for Line and Staff Officers (WRMLO)

This course explores the demands, values, tensions, and opportunities related to water and the management of National Forest System lands. Instructors include Forest Supervisors, technical experts and applied researchers, academic professionals and representatives from the broader water user community.

The training course is designed to provide Line and Staff Officers with information essential for effective leadership of Forest Service water resource issues and activities. The course is focused on providing Forest Supervisors, District Rangers, Staff Officers, and Program Managers with foundations in the legal basis for water management on NFS lands, along with philosophical insights needed to strategically guide water resource and watershed activities at the Forest and District level.

Attendees will learn:

  • How important water is in a global and national context
  • The role the Forest Service plays in water resource management
  • The shared responsibility the Forest Service has with other federal and state entities in water resource development, water quality protection and management
  • The complex nature of water allocation and management issues and the importance of values in water issues
  • The importance of leadership to effectively focus talent and resources in the complex multi-agency water management arena
  • How to position your National Forest to deal effectively with current and emerging water issues

 

WRMLO Information

Contact: Dave Levinson, PhD, david.levinson@usda.gov

Three stacked pictures of a culvert system with a stream running through each showing different aquatic organism passage types.Stream Simulation Design Approach for Providing Aquatic Organism Passage at Road-Stream Crossings

This 4.5 day workshop presents the USDA Forest Service’s stream simulation method, an ecosystem-based approach for designing and constructing a channel through the road-stream crossing structure that reestablishes physical and ecological continuity along the stream corridor. The premise of stream simulation is that if the design channel simulates the dimensions and characteristics of the adjacent natural channel, fish and other aquatic organisms should experience no greater difficulty moving through the structure than if there were no crossing. Water depths, flow velocities, and flow paths in the channel through the road-stream crossing are designed to be as complex and diverse as those encountered in the adjacent natural channel.

This workshop teaches participants the necessary skills to design road-stream crossing structures that provide unimpeded fish and other aquatic organism passage through the structure, restore natural channel characteristics and fluvial processes through the structure, and maximize the long-term stability of the structure.

AOP Information

Contact: Dan Cenderelli, PhD, dan.cenderelli@usda.gov

Two people wearing hip boots working on an aquatic ecology project in the forest.Aquatic Monitoring – Eastern

Objectives are to introduce the conceptual framework, legal policies, biological/physical/statistical principles, and field techniques needed to develop an effective aquatic resource monitoring program. Elemental knowledge of aquatic ecology, basic life histories of aquatic biota, fluvial geomorphology, hydrology, water chemistry, and sampling design/statistical considerations needed specifically for monitoring will be presented. Part of time devoted to field demonstration of data collection techniques and relevant equipment. Case studies which illustrate successful applications of monitoring information will be presented, covering such issues as grazing, timber harvest/roading, and chemical pollution, aquatic TES species population viability, and land use effects on wetlands and lakes. Participants will design an aquatic monitoring program for actual use on their field units.

AM Information

Contact: Brett Roper, PhD, brett.roper@usda.gov

 

More information on training opportunities can be found at WFWARP Continuing Education Program

 

 

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National Stream & Aquatic Ecology Center