Watersheds are very complex systems! There are numerous relationships between what is occurring on the land and what we measure in the streams. In addition to recent trends, the history of what has occurred previously on the lands of our watersheds is also having enormous impacts today.
GVWA is steadily expanding our knowledge of what is occurring on the land as well as what is happening in the streams in order to improve our understanding of causes and effects in our local watersheds. Learning more about stormwater events is particularly important due to the outsized impacts these events are having on the health of our streams.
Green Valleys’ newsletter provides current information on watershed topics; the following links go directly to Streamlines articles.
Green Valleys overarching goal is protect and restore watershed ecosystems. One essential ingredient to accomplishing this is the ability to successfully identify causes and effects–so that we may then address the correct causes. This process involves identifying issues on the land, separately identifying issues with what we measure in the streams and then beginning the process of drawing a cause and effect line between issues in the streams to problems on land. This process is called attribution.
Attribution is an iterative process, where possible cause and effect relationships are identified and then tested. For some issues, like litter in streams, the attribution process is straightforward–litter along stream corridors is washed or blown into the streams. For other issues, such as observed bacteria levels, the data requirements are high, the cause and effect relationships unclear, and the attribution process is moving slowly.
