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Development of Rapid Functional Assessment Methods for Headwater Streams
Objective:
Develop rapid field methods to assess functional attributes of headwater streams.
Approach:
- Assess the relationship between functional measures and the more traditionally-used structural characteristics.
- Evaluate effectiveness of rapid field methods to more time-intensive methods of measuring ecosystem functions in headwater streams across disturbance and hydrologic gradients.
- Functional measures include: organic matter breakdown, retention of organic matter, energy management, nutrient transport/uptake, benthic metabolism, primary production, and secondary production.
Why This Research Is Needed:
According to Section 404 of the Clean Water Act the Army Corps of Engineers (COE) and the USEPA must fairly assess potential impacts to stream functions and values associated with proposed activities for mitigation purposes.
Regulatory offices evaluate thousands of permit applications each year. In many parts of the country these applications are associated with headwater streams, such as road building and mining activities. Under time and resource constraints, many regulatory programs have relied on various qualitative assessment protocols to efficiently evaluate permits.
These protocols measure the structure of headwater streams and do not directly measure the ecosystem functions. Structural properties are measures of the organization and composition of components in a system (e.g., diversity, abundance), whereas functional properties are measures of processes or rates (e.g., metabolism). Functional measures may be preferred to structural measures because they can be more directly linked to economic value and TMDL-development than structural measures, such as macroinvertebrate diversity. For example, low retention of organic matter in headwater streams would result in more of this material to be transported downstream, resulting in greater amounts of carbon available for bacterial breakdown, and causing severe decline in dissolved oxygen. This would have economic consequences to downstream fisheries.
Expected Outputs/Outcomes:
The USEPA will have the tools to begin assessing ecosystem function appropriately for the majority of streams and stream miles in the United States.
Contact: Ken Fritz - fritz.ken@epa.gov - Cincinnati, OH