Headwaters to estuaries: advances in watershed science and management - Proceedings of the Fifth Interagency Conference on Research in the Watersheds

Abstract

These proceedings contain the abstracts, manuscripts, and posters of presentations given at the Fifth Interagency Conference on Research in the Watersheds—Headwaters to estuaries: advances in watershed science and management, held at the Trident Technical College Conference Center in North Charleston, South Carolina, March 3-5, 2015. The conference was hosted by the USDA Forest Service, Southern Research Station, Center for Forested Wetlands Research.
The conference theme was selected to recognize the focus of many natural resource agencies and universities in understanding how ecosystems are connected from interior upland habitats to the estuaries, as land use in the upper portion of watersheds often affect hydrological, ecological, and sociological processes downstream. This theme builds on past ICRW programs held in Arizona, North Carolina, Colorado, and Alaska by delivering a strong southeastern coastal plain theme while maintaining a broad national focus that highlights ongoing interagency research and management initiatives.
The conference was structured to focus on key issues faced by managers and scientists throughout the US, with many of these issues having a strong coastal watershed focus. Thematic areas included managing forested wetlands and agricultural catchments, identifying research advances from experimental watersheds, tracking the fate of contaminants through landscapes, advancing restoration ecology of connected ecosystems, and understanding the role of climatic perturbations (e.g., drought, severe storms) on watersheds. In addition, the role that ecosystems play in water use and management was a focal point, including modeling and measuring evapotranspiration associated with land use change.

Titles contained within Headwaters to estuaries: advances in watershed science and management - Proceedings of the Fifth Interagency Conference on Research in the Watersheds

• Overview of forest conditions in coastal counties
• Regulatory overview
• Loss of forested wetlands - questions, answers, and more questions
• Emerging issues with silviculture practices in wetlands
• Effect of minor drainage on hydrology of forested wetlands
• South Carolina's best management practices for forestry for minor drainage
• Coastal plain soils and geomorphology: a key to understanding forest hydrology
• Ten years of real-time streamflow gaging of turkey creek - where we have been and where we are going
• Synthesis of 10-years of Ecohydrologic studies on Turkey Creek watershed
• Deciphering storm-event runoff behavior in a coastal plain watershed using chemical and physical hydrograph separation techniques
• Defining ecohydrological function to support low impact development in coastal South Carolina
• Enhancing hydrologic mapping using LIDAR and high resolution aerial photos on the Frances Marion National Forest in coastal South Carolina
• Francis Marion National Forest forest plan revision - ecosystems & restoration needs
• The long term agroecosystem research network - shared research strategy
• Perspectives on the developing common experiment across the 18 sites within the long term agroecosystem research network
• Storytelling to support watershed research on emerging issues
• The USDA-ARS experimental watershed network - evolution, lessons learned, and moving forward
• Central Mississippi River Basin LTAR site overview
• The southern plains LTAR watershed research program
• Impact of basin scale and time-weighted mercury metrics on intra-/inter-basin mercury comparisons
• Watershed cycling of mercury and controls on methylmercury production in Northern Minnesota landscapes
• Sensitivity of stream methyl Hg concentrations to environmental change in the Adirondack mountains of New York, USA
• Optimizing fish and stream-water mercury metrics for calculation of fish bioaccumulation factors
• Simulating mercury and methyl mercury stream concentrations at multiple scales in a wetland influenced coastal plain watershed (McTier Creek, SC, USA)
• Scaling up watershed model parameters - flow and load simulations of the Edisto River basin
• Evaluation of mercury loads from climate change projections
• Climate change and watershed mercury export in a Coastal Plain watershed
• The use of acoustic doppler meters to estimate sediment and nutrient concentrations in freshwater inflows to Texas coastal ecosystems
• Fusing long-term, historical, and high-resolution date to inform estimates of watershed-scale nitrogen retention
• Comparing nutrient export from first, second and third order watersheds in the South Carolina Atlantic coastal plain
• Quantifying in-stream nitrate reaction rates using continuously-collected water quality data
• A watershed-scale characterization of dissolved organic carbon and nutrients on the South Carolina Coastal Plain
• Evaluating hydrological response of future land cover change scenarios in the San Pedro River (U.S./Mexico) with the automated geospatial watershed assessment (AGWA) tool
• Echohydrology of a floodplain forest: relationships between vegetation and groundwater resources at Congaree National Park, South Carolina USA
• Relationships between wildland fires and watershed hydrology across the contiguous U.S
• Riparian area harvesting impacts on vegetation composition and diversity
• Advancing stream restoration design: a science-based approach using data and methodologies from the agencies
• Managing the space-time-load continuum in TMDL planning: a case study for understanding groundwaer loads through advanced mapping techniques
• The role of watershed characteristics in estuarine condition: an empirical approach
• Wetland extent and plant community composition vulnerability to climate change
• Land cover change in coastal watersheds 1996 to 2010
• Mapping variable width riparian buffers
• Paired forested watershed experiments in the Piedmont of North Carolina
• Verification of hydrologic landscape derived basin-scale classifications in the Pacific Northwest
• Watershed and longitudinal monitoring events
• A validation study of a rapid field-based rating system for discriminating among flow permanence classes of headwater streams in South Carolina
• Qualifying variability: patterns in water quality and biota from a long-term, multi-stream dataset
• Watersheds, ecoregions and hydrologic units: the appropriate use of each for research and environmental management decisions
• Environmental relations between inland rice culture and the Cooper and Wando River watersheds, South Carolina
• Clay is everything: archaeological analyses of colonial period inland swamp rice embankments
• Advanced geospatial techniques and archaeological methods to investigate historical rice cultivation at Wormsloe Historic Site
• Drought and coastal ecosystems: an assessment of decision maker needs for information
• Development of a coastal drought index using salinity data
• A watershed-scale characterication of dissolved organic carbon and nutrients on the South Carolina Coastal Plain
• The extent of tidal influence in the Waccamaw River, South Carolina
• Hydrologic change in a coast redwood forest, Caspar Creek Experimental Watersheds: implications for salmonid survival
• Impact of soil moisture deficit on ecosystem function across the United States
• Testing resiliency of hydrologic dynamics of a paired forested watershed after a hurricane in Atlantic coastal plain using long-term data
• Hydrological effects of tropical land use management incentives: Panama Canal Watershed
• Identification of temporal patterns of long-term hydrological signals in Lower Mississippi River Basin using wavelet analysis
• Integrating tidal and nontidal ecological assessments
• Development of an integrated ecosystem model to determine effectiveness of potential watershed management projects on improving Old Tampa Bay
• Watershed planning, implementation and assessment: the May River Watershed Action Plan case study
• The 2014 assessment of stream quality in the Piedmont and southern Appalachian Mountain region of southeastern United States
• CEAP watershed assessments: accomplishments and opportunities for new advances
• USDA's national institute of food and agriculture (NIFA): engaging knowledge and technology, incentives and policies to promote appropriate decision making in the management of water and watersheds
• Soil and stream chemistry relationships in high elevation waters
• Soil and salinity mobilization and transport in the Colorado River Basin
• Nutrient and salt mass balance on the Lower Arkansas River and a contributing tributary in an irrigated agricultural setting
• Evaluating the effects of woody biomass production for bioenergy on water quality and hydrology in the southeastern United States
• Underwater aeration and artificial floating wetlands to treat water quality nutrient issues in ponds
• Regional effects of agricultural conservation practices on nutrient transport
• Assessment of forestry best management practices, I: stream water chemistry natural variability and fertilization influences
• Assessment of forestry best management practices II: patterns in stream biological endpoints in terms of natural variability and fertilization
• Continuous water-quality monitoring to improve lake management at Lake Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuge
• Managing watersheds to change water quality: lessons learned from the NIFA-CEAP watershed studies
• The physical and geochemical interaction between a tidally-dominated estuary system (Wassaw Sound, GA) and a river-dominated estuary (Savannah River, GA) through salinity and inorganic carbon
• Water sources in mangroves in four hydrogeomorphic settings in Florida and Mexico
• Designing a mangrove research and demonstration forest in the Rufiji Delta, Tanzania
• Watershed management to support coral reef recovery and resiliency
• Watershed processes from ridge to reef: consequences of feral ungulates for coral reef and effects of watershed management
• Linking statistically-and physically-based models for improved streamflow simulation in gaged and ungaged watersheds
• Blizzards to hurricanes: computer modeling of hydrology, weathering, and isotopic fractionation across hydroclimatic regions
• A watershed-based spatially-explicit demonstration of an integrated environmental modeling framework for ecosystem services in the Coal River Basin (WV, USA)
• Watershed modeling and development of ecological flows in the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint River Basin, Alabama, Florida, and Georgia
• Interannual variability in the extent of wetland-stream connectivity within the Prairie Pothole Region
• Understanding the linkages between a tidal freshwater forested wetland and an adjoining bottomland hardwood forest
• Biogeochemicl and surface elevation controls over tidally influenced freshwater forested wetlands as they transition to marsh
• Tracking salinity intrusions in a coastal forested freshwater wetland system
• Linking freshwater tidal hydrology to carbon cycling in bottomland hardwood wetlands
• Determining volume sensitive waters in Beaufort County, SC tidal creeks
• Stormwater runoff in watersheds: a system for prediciting impacts of development and climate change
• Spatio-temporal variation in distribution of aquatic species and their habitats in a reservoir transition zone
• Environmental sustainability of intercropping switchgrass in a loblolly pine forest
• Management of riparian and aquatic ecosystems using variable-width buffers
• Wild salmon response to natural disturbance processes
• An ecological assessment of land use impacts in small watersheds of the Chesapeake Bay
• Insights from long-term research on the Fernow Experimental Forest
• Long-term hydrologic research on the San Dimas Experimental Forest, southern California: lessons learned and future directions
• Water-limiting conditions based on monthly water balances and potential evapotranspiration at Panola Mountain Research Watershed, Georgia, U.S.A
• Changes in baseflow conditions over a 42 year observation period for the Little River Experimental Watershed in South Georgia
• Thirty-year results from a paired-catchment study of upland flowpath responses to forest cover conversion in northern Minnesota
• Long term records provide insights on the relative influence of climate and forest community structure on water yield in the southern Appalachians
• Evaluating biological and physical drivers of evapotranspiration trends at northeastern US watersheds
• Understanding and managing the water use of planted forests in a changing environment
• Comparative analyses of measured evapotranspiration for various land surfaces
• Urban evapotranspiration in a humid environment - Orlando, Florida, USA
• Operational ET remote sensing (RS) program for irrigation scheduling and management: challenges and opportunities
• Advanced image processing approach for ET estimation with remote sensing data of varying spectral, spatial and temporal resolutions
• Estimating watershed evapotranspiration across the United States using multiple methods
• Long-term trends in climate and hydrology in an agricultural headwater watershed of central Pennsylvania, USA
• The Walnut Gulch LTAR
• Long term acroecosystem research in the Southern Plains
• Gulf Atlantic Coastal Plain Long Term Agroecosystem Research site, Tifton, GA
• Reynolds Creek long-term agricultural research
• An interactive tool for processing sap flux data from thermal dissipation probes
• The Conewago Creek initiative: a model for community watershed engagement and restoration
• Conewago Stream Teams - including youth in watershed restoration creates local watershed connections, prompts community service, and increases water literacy in youth
• Changes in sediment yield and stream morphology in an actively managed forested watershed due to upstream disturbances
• Real time monitoring of nitrogen, carbon, and suspended sediment flux in two subbasins of the Choptank River Watershed
• Albemarle Sound demonstration study of the national monitoring network for US coastal waters and their tributaries
• Publically accessible decision support system of the spatially referenced regressions on watershed attributes (SPARROW) model and model enhancements in South Carolina
• The Mid-Atlantic Regional Wetland Conservation Effects Assessment Project
• Guam Pago Watershed Conservation
• Has the promise of DNA barcoding been achieved? a critical look at the application of eDNA barcoding to biomonitoring
• Assessing the relationship between forests and water in the High Rock Lake Watershed of North Carolina
• Integrated research - water quality, sociological, economic, and modeling - in a regulated watershed: Jordan Lake, NC
• Water use efficiency at basin and farm scales
• Developing a drought early warning information system for coastal ecosystems in the Carolinas

• Precipitation partitioning in short rotation bioenergy crops: implications for downstream water availability.

• Variations in canopy and litter interception across a forest chronosequence in the southern Appalachian Mountains
• Restoration of southern Appalachian riparian forest affected by eastern hemlock mortality
• Physiological responses of eastern hemlock (Tsuga Canadensis) to biological control and silvicultural release: implications for hemlock restoration
• Regional efforts to promote forestry best management practices: a southern success story
• Water use assessments supporting company-specific growth and sustainability goals

Keywords

Coastal plain, forest hydrology, land use, watershed science

Citation

Stringer, Christina E.; Krauss, Ken W.; Latimer, James S., eds. 2016. Headwaters to estuaries: advances in watershed science and management - Proceedings of the Fifth Interagency Conference on Research in the Watersheds. March 2-5, 2015, North Charleston, South Carolina. e-Gen. Tech. Rep. SRS-211. Asheville, NC: U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service, Southern Research Station. 302 p.