Watershed Research and Development in

The USDA Forest Service has a long history of watershed research and development intended to address issues facing land managers. Topics of study include development and testing of forest Best Management Practices to protect water quality, instream flow studies to evaluate effects of flow alterations on stream and riparian ecosystems, and effectiveness of measures to reduce risks to water resources after wildland fires. Forest Service research watersheds serve as sites for integrated ecosystem studies, including six that are formally part of the National Science Foundation’s Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network. Integration of watershed studies enables results to be applied to a variety of issues including protection and restoration of habitat for endangered fish and aquatic species, and impacts of air pollution in water quality. In the future, results of watershed studies will be synthesized more widely to address management and policy issues at larger scales of time and space