A watershed assessment is a survey or inventory of natural and cultural resources within a watershed along with an analysis of how landscape and hydrologic systems function within the watershed (Community Watershed Assessment Handbook 2003). Assessment is a critical step in adaptive management cycle.
Watershed assessment provides guidance in identifying potential problems or concerns in watersheds by observing and evaluating how various land uses affect the environmental and economic health of a watershed. Identification of problems allows for the development of proper management strategies. After these strategies are implemented, further monitoring leads to data that can be used to assess the effectiveness of these management strategies. Thus, watershed assessment improves the management of watersheds for identified goals such as improved fisheries production.
CCWPAP Assessment Strategies
Watershed assessment must consider interactions among natural processes, human activities, and resource conditions to assess watershed health. CCWPAP recognizes that these watershed interactions are numerous, complex, non-linear, and may occur over extended periods of time and space. Furthermore, the forces or systems that drive or affect these factors may lie outside the watershed or occur at a much larger scale. Single cause-and-effect relationships may, therefore, be difficult to pinpoint.
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Assessment Questions
The program's work is intended to provide answers to six guiding assessment questions at the basin, subbasin, and tributary scales in coastal watersheds.
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Assessment Process
In order to answer the assessment questions above for a watershed, North Coast Watershed Assessment Program participants employ a six-step process for working with local stakeholders, the general public, the scientific community, and each other. The major opportunities for public input are during scoping, data compilation and review of the draft synthesis report, although stakeholders may also work with CCWPAP to collect data and to review the CCWPAP analysis of their data.
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Methods Manual
Further details of the assessment process can be found in the Methods Manual.
Available Data
Watershed assessment will differ in each specific watershed being assessed. This is due to natural variability between different locations as well as different human histories. Certain processes are more important in some watersheds than others and additionally, human tracking of these processes will differ in completeness. Therefore different watersheds will have different types of data available for use in assessments.
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