Watershed Restoration: The Rest of the Story

Check out this video to watch the Watershed Restoration: The Rest of the Story.

Environmental Speaker Series

Bringing Land Use and Upper Watershed Processes into Focus

Brought to you by the College of the Environment and the Salish Sea Institute in partnership with the WWU Alumni Association
 

Land use regulations, non-point source pollution control, as well as "watershed and fish habitat restoration" efforts have disproportionately focused on the impaired water body with much less focus on the influences of uplands and upper watershed processes. Nonpoint pollution impaired waterbodies are a function of the condition of and services provided by the upper watershed. In the case of rural watersheds in northwest Washington, commercial forestry typically dominates. If these activities are compliant with federal, state, and local environmental regulations, there is a broad assumption made that these and other land uses have no impact on water quality or quantity. This assumption without objective analysis may lead to sustained nonpoint source pollution, changes to the hydrograph that relate to water supply, and further degradation of fish habitat creating a more severe cumulative impact when combined with continued climate change.

This talk will address these issues and summarize the novel work that the Nooksack Indian Tribe and collaborators have implemented in factoring in upper watershed processes and land use in overall watershed restoration practices in the Nooksack River watershed.

More information about the speaker series is available here, and past Environmental Speaker Series recordings are available here.

We are excited that we will be live-streaming from a WWU classroom for the webinar for our off-campus audience. Due to the pandemic, only WWU students will be in-person for the presentation but we look forward to welcoming you all to class virtually.

We have moved to a new event system! We encourage you to create a new profile and login when you register for this and future events, however, you are not required to login to register. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to contact us at alumni@wwu.edu and we will help you update your information. Thank you for joining us, and we'll see you soon!

Stefan Freelan is the coordinator of the Environmental Speaker Series. Send email to  stefan@wwu.edu or call (360) 650-2949 if you have any questions or comments.
 
There will be auto-captions available for this event.