A platform for research: civil engineering, architecture and urbanism
A platform for research: civil engineering, architecture and urbanism
Ocean Protection Through Watershed Planning
To return our coastal streams and rivers to a natural, healthy and functioning state requires approaching restoration on a watershed scale. Because everything that goes on within the boundaries of its drainage basin can affect the stream, restoration requires a comprehensive and coordinated approach to stream health. To be effective, restoration must address the underlying causes of degradation, not merely the symptoms. As a result, restoring watershed health often requires improving the land management practices that may have contributed to increased sedimentation or nitrate pollution, degraded habitat, or greater flood damage. Unfortunately, we've created a number of institutional barriers to working at a watershed scale. Political jurisdictions rarely correspond to watersheds. The major environmental issues in a watershed—fish habitat, water quality, land use, water diversions, flood control, storm water management—are usually the responsibility of separate local, state or federal agencies, whose programs and responsibilities seldom mesh with one another. The laws that created those programs rarely recognize that watershed issues are connected and should be managed together. Even the science is often fragmented by a continuing trend to compartmentalize disciplines, emphasize analysis rather than synthesis, and ignore the social and economic implications of watershed issues.
Ocean Protection Through Watershed Planning
To return our coastal streams and rivers to a natural, healthy and functioning state requires approaching restoration on a watershed scale. Because everything that goes on within the boundaries of its drainage basin can affect the stream, restoration requires a comprehensive and coordinated approach to stream health. To be effective, restoration must address the underlying causes of degradation, not merely the symptoms. As a result, restoring watershed health often requires improving the land management practices that may have contributed to increased sedimentation or nitrate pollution, degraded habitat, or greater flood damage. Unfortunately, we've created a number of institutional barriers to working at a watershed scale. Political jurisdictions rarely correspond to watersheds. The major environmental issues in a watershed—fish habitat, water quality, land use, water diversions, flood control, storm water management—are usually the responsibility of separate local, state or federal agencies, whose programs and responsibilities seldom mesh with one another. The laws that created those programs rarely recognize that watershed issues are connected and should be managed together. Even the science is often fragmented by a continuing trend to compartmentalize disciplines, emphasize analysis rather than synthesis, and ignore the social and economic implications of watershed issues.
Ocean Protection Through Watershed Planning
Thiel, Robert (author)
California and the World Ocean 2002 ; 2002 ; Santa Barbara, California, United States
California and the World Ocean '02 ; 433-435
2005-03-16
Conference paper
Electronic Resource
English
Ocean Protection Through Watershed Planning
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