Treesearch

Following wildfires, burned areas are assessed by special teams to determine if emergency watershed rehabilitation measures are required to restore watershed function and minimize damage to soil resources. The objective of burned area emergency rehabilitation (BAER) treatments is to restore watershed condition and reduce erosional losses on hillslopes, in channels, and on road surfaces and peripheral areas such as ditches. In the Western United States, a project is currently in progress to determine the costs and effectiveness of BAER projects in restoring watershed function. Results of...

Minnesota’s agricultural landscape is changing. The increasing use of woody perennials in agricultural fields, living snow fences, windbreaks, and riparian areas has important watershed management implications for agricultural watersheds in northwestern Minnesota. These changes in land use could lead to reductions in annual water yield, annual flood peaks, and dry season flows, with reduced non-point source pollution of streams, lakes and ground water. Where woody crops become an important part of a watershed, we expect a reversal of hydrologic changes on agricultural lands that have...

The Sonora River watershed is located in the central part of the state of Sonora,Mexico, and is one of the most important watersheds in the region. Much of the state's economy depends on the natural resources, products, and productive activities developed in this watershed. Many natural areas along the river and its tributaries have been converted to a large variety of agroforestry systems, providing the inhabitants of the region with food, timber, medicines, economic inputs from agricultural crops, forage for livestock, and services like recreation. Land tenure forms are private and...

Water repellent layer (WRL) in the Casuarina plantation near Taichung harbor in Central Taiwan is mainly due to the development of filamentous fungi. Not only are hyphae of the isolated fungi, the metabolites of fungi strongly hydrophobic, TCHC-5 and TCHC-20 are also significantly hydrophobic. Humic substances decrease the phosphorus fixation and contribute to the formation of WRL. The hydrophobic properties of humic substances are unfavorable for the nutrient cycling at this area. Wetting angles of fulvic acids and humic acids are pH-dependent. Increasing solution pH reduces hydrophobic...

Remote sensing techniques have been demonstrated to be very effective tools to help detect, analyze, and evaluate land cover changes in natural areas of the world. Changes in land cover can generally be attributed to either natural or anthropogenic forces. Multitemporal satellite imagery and airborne videography were used to detect, analyze, and evaluate land cover changes in the central region of the Mexican State of Sonora. Observed land cover changes were analyzed in terms of the productive activity most likely responsible. The ecological consequences for the different impact intensity,...

Effects of watershed management practices on suspended sediment concentrations from ponderosa pine forests and pinyon-juniper woodlands in the Southwestern United States are examined. Completely cleared and strip-cut ponderosa pine watersheds produced higher sediment concentrations than the control. Likewise, cabled and herbicide-treated pinyon-juniper watersheds yielded higher sediment-laden streamflows than the control. Soil disturbances associated with vegetative manipulations on these watersheds are the assumed causal factor. Management implications of the reported effects are described.

Grazing exclusion and channel modifications were used to restore wet meadows along a stream on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation. The efforts are reestablishing functional processes to promote long-term restoration of wetland health and species conservation.

Rock structures, road closures, fencing and revegetation methods were employed to restore a culturally and ecologically important spring that had been damaged in the aftermath of a wildfire. The project has reestablished the stability of the spring and has moved it closer to its former condition. School groups were an essential part of the restoration project, and their involvement has helped to communicate the results to members of the community.

Various restoration techniques were employed to restore an ecologically and culturally important stream on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation. The methods were specially developed to address the unique character of this water body. The results show promise for restoring steep gradient riparian ecosystems.

This article demonstrates the application of EXCEL® spreadsheet linear programming (LP) solver to a watershed management multiple use goal programming (GP) problem. The data used to demonstrate the application are from a published study for a watershed in northern Colorado. GP has been used by natural resource managers for many years. However, the GP solution by means of EXCEL® spreadsheet presented here is thought to be novel.