Stakeholders in the Yampa and White Watersheds in northwest Colorado expressed interest in quantifying the flows needed to sustain conservation and recreation values associated with streams and rivers. Several long-standing methods exist for quantifying water needs, but these methods are typically focused on individual river segments, primarily oriented toward fish, and often expensive to implement, making it cost-prohibitive to apply them across all streams and rivers in a watershed. The Watershed Flow Evaluation Tool (WFET) was developed to fill the need for a broadly applicable assessment of flow-related conservation and recreation attributes. The WFET was developed using the Ecological Limits of Hydrologic Alteration (ELOHA) framework (Poff et al. 2010). This study provides a regional framework for understanding flow-related ecological risk for environmental attributes and establishes a baseline for recreational flow needs in the Yampa and White Watersheds.
Citation: Sanderson, J., B. Bledsoe, L. Poff, T. Wilding and N. Fey. 2012. Yampa-White Basin Roundtable Watershed Flow Evaluation Tool study. Prepared by CDM Smith for The Nature Conservancy.
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