Monitoring watersheds and streams

Abstract

Regulations increasingly require monitoring to detect changes caused by land management activities. Successful monitoring requires that objectives be clearly stated. Once objectives are clearly identified, it is important to map out all of the components and links that might affect the issues of concern. For each issue and each component that affects that issue, there are appropriate spatial and temporal scales to consider. These scales are not consistent between and amongst one another. For many issues, unusual events are more important than average conditions. Any short-term monitoring program has a low probability of measuring rare events that may occur only once every 25 years or more. Regulations that are developed from observations of the consequences of small "normal" storms will likely be inadequate because the collected data will not include the critical geomorphic events that produce the physical and biological concerns.

Parent Publication

• Proceedings of the conference on coastal watersheds: the Caspar Creek story. May 6, 1998, Ukiah, California

Citation

Ziemer, Robert R. 1998. Monitoring watersheds and streams. In: Ziemer, Robert R., technical coordinator. Proceedings of the conference on coastal watersheds: the Caspar Creek story, 6 May 1998; Ukiah, California. General Tech. Rep. PSW GTR-168. Albany, California: Pacific Southwest Research Station, Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture: 129-134