Indicators

Water Quality

• Water Quality Index – The Water Quality Index assesses whether water samples from a given region exceed standards for water quality.
• Water Quality Certainty – This indicator measures to what extent water quality samples in a region are adequate to provide reliable assessments of water quality.
• Turbidity – Turbidity, or water clarity, affects how easy it is to treat water.
• Macroinvertebrates – Benthic macroinvertebrates, small freshwater organisms that live in streams and on river bottoms, are good indicators of stream health because they respond quickly to environmental stressors.

Water Quantity

• Base Flow – Baseflow is the amount of water flowing in the river at the driest time of year, when the river is most at risk of drying up.

Water Management

• Surfacewater BMPs – This indicator measures if surfacewater users have adopted best managment practices and installed infrastructure that reduce the waste of surfacewater. 
• Groundwater BMPs – In the future it will be beneficial to measure the extent to which best management practices concerning groundwater use have been implemented throughout the watershed.

Upland Habitat

• Upland Condition Index – The Upland Condition Index uses multiple indicators to assess if upland areas are functioning as they would in the absence of humans.

Riparian Habitat

• Riparian Birds – Riparan birds, the birds that live in forests near the water, are more likely to be present in healthy forests than unhealthy forests.  

Aquatic Habitat

• Fish – This indicator compares the fish species present in an area to Arizona Game and Fish Department's managment goals.

Community Vitality

• Healthcare – This indicator is the proportion of people in each region with health insurance.
• Education – This indicator is the high school graduation rate in each region.
• Unemployment – Access to employment was measured as the proportion of the community that is unemployed.
• Affordable Housing – This indicator compares the proportion of households spending more than 30% of their income on housing to the national average. 

Community Engagement

• Civic Engagement – This indicator measures the number of times water-related topics were discussed in local government meetings.
• Digital Engagement – Digital engagment was measured as the number of times water-related topics were searched for on Google.

Community Recreation

• Recreation Planning – This indicator assesses the quality of recreation plans for land management agencies in the watershed.
• Visitor Satisfaction – Vistor satisfaciton was measured as the proportion of people satisfied with their experience on U.S.D.A. Forest Service lands.
• Recreation Access – Recreation Access measures the proportion of people with an outdoor recreational opportunity near their home. 

Other

• Overall Health Index – This indicator measures the overall health of the Verde River Watershed.