Monday, June 4, 2007 - 3:15 PM
69

Ecological Limits of Hydrologic Alteration: An Approach for Setting Regional Environmental Flow Standards

Colin Apse1, Angela H. Arthington2, Brian P. Bledsoe3, Stuart E. Bunn, Prof.2, David Merritt4, Robert J. Naiman5, N. LeRoy Poff6, Brian Richter7, Kevin H. Rogers8, Rebecca Tharme9, and Andrew T. Warner7. (1) The Nature Conservancy, 108 Main Street, New Paltz, NY 12561, (2) Australian Rivers Institute, Griffith University, 170 Kessels Road, Nathan, QLD, 4111, Australia, (3) Civil & Environmental Engineering, Colorado State University, 1320 Campus Delivery, Fort Collins, CO 80523, (4) Rocky Mountain Research Station, USDA Forest Service, 2150 Centre Ave, Bldg. A, Suite 368, Fort Collins, CO 80526, (5) School of Aquatic and Fisheries Sciences, University of Washington, Box 355020, Seattle, WA 98195-5020, (6) Department of Biology, Graduate Degree Program in Ecology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523-1878, (7) Sustainable Waters Program, The Nature Conservancy, 490 Westfield Road, Charlottesville, VA 22901, (8) Centre for Water in the Environment, University of Witwatersrand, Johnannesburg, South Africa, (9) Global Change and Environment Group, International Water Management Institute, P. O. Box 2075, Colombo, Sri Lanka

In light of the accelerating degradation in freshwater ecosystems and biodiversity worldwide, there is growing expectation that water managers should meet human needs for water in an ecologically-sustainable manner.  There are limited resources available to determine the volume and timing of water flows, also known as “environmental flows,” that must remain in a river to support its ecological health and to date most of these resources have been focused on river-specific applications.  Thus, despite notable scientific progress over the last 20 years, none of the existing methods being applied in regional-scale water planning and allocation adequately address flow-ecology linkages in a manner that can be adapted for application globally across different regions and contexts. We present a general framework for developing scientifically-credible, environmental flow standards applicable at the multi-river (“regional”) scale, based on flow-ecology linkages, that can be applied anywhere in the world, across a range of data availability, scientific capacity and social/institutional context.  This proposed framework is a consensus view of a wide range of scientists actively engaged in the area of environmental flows and hydroecology.  We refer to this approach as the Ecological Limits Of Hydrologic Alteration, ELOHA.

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