Healthy rivers are supported by healthy land. The Upland Condition Index uses indicators from the U.S.D.A. Forest Service’s Watershed Condition Framework to assess the extent to which upland areas are functioning as would be expected in the absence of human activities.
Project Highlights
Human activities including unauthorized, user-created roads and overgrazing can lead to accelerated erosion and gully formation on the landscape. Process-based restoration heals the landscape by mimicking naturally occurring hydrologic processes. By understanding how water will flow over the landscape, we can install structures to slow the water down, allowing sediments to settle and regrade incised systems. This keeps soil and water on the landscape - building resiliency, reducing erosion, improving wildlife habitats, and reducing sedimentation downstream.
Prescott National Forest identified Munds Draw as a priority subwatershed in need of upland restoration and brought this project to the Verde Watershed Restoration Coalition (VWRC). Project implementation began in 2020 and included juniper thinning in grassland habitats and installing rock structures and juniper slash into gullies to reduce erosion. Since the 2020 report card, restoration crews and volunteers have installed, repaired and monitored 288 structures and thinned 575 acres at the Munds Draw site.
The Flowing Springs project on the Tonto National Forest involved installing pipe rail fencing to close a riparian and upland area to vehicles. This area was experiencing gullying and habitat degradation. The first step in a restoration project is to remove the stressor, in this case the vehicles. Now that the stressor is removed VWRC partners will work to identify next steps.
Gully Busters is a community science program developed by Verde Watershed Restoration Coalition, and led by Friends of the Verde River and Coconino National Forest. Community scientists collect data about accelerated erosion on the landscape. Their data informs land management decisions and identifies locations for erosion control structures.
How is it scored?
The U.S.D.A. Forest Service Watershed Condition Framework (WCF) is a 12-Indicator model covering the physical and biological characteristics of aquatic and terrestrial habitats. The framework has been applied to 12 digit hydrologic unit code watersheds within USFS lands at a national extent. Each indicator is ranked good, fair, or poor for each watershed. Of the 12 indicators 5 address Aquatic conditions (Water Quality, Water Quantity, Aquatic Habitat, Aquatic Biota, and Riparian/Wetland Vegetation). The remaining 7 indicators address terrestrial physical conditions (Roads and trails, and Soils) and terrestrial biological conditions (Fire regime or Wildfire, Forest Cover, Rangeland Vegetation, Terrestrial Invasive Species, Forest Health).
Because the Report Card contains aquatic and riparian habitat indicators developed by local stakeholders, it only uses the Terrestrial Physical and Biological indicators from the WCF. The Good, Fair, and Poor ranking provided for each indicator was first translated into a grade where "good" was given a score of 100, "fair" a score of 50, and "poor" is given a score of 0. These seven indicators were then aggregated up to a watershed score for each 12 digit watershed through the calculation of a weighted average using weights provided by the WCF technical documentation. Finally, we aggregated 12 digit watershed scores up to each reporting region by calculating an average weighted by the area of each 12 digit watershed.