Please stand by for realtime
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Welcome to the sustainable operations. Learning series. My name is Katie and
I'm the sustainable operations coordinator for R egion six and I will be
coordinated the call today with Lara. I wanted to go over tech echo
differences because were writing is called differently. In the past on this
call, people have been muted unless they were going to ask a question right
now all of your lines are open. Please press mute on your phone. We hear
couple of connections to whether you were on the phone or computer please
mute your microphone. This webinar is being recorded. If you press more on the
top menu you should have closed captioning. We will go through the whole
presentation and have questions at the end. We will have time for questions at
the end.
Just reminder, mute your phones and we will get started. We have an exciting
webinar today. The topic is water from resource management to water c
onservation, connecting supply-side and demand-side analysis. I will pass
over to Laura to introduce our first speaker.
Thank you, I'm Laura and I'm the Region five sustainable operations
coordinator. Today are presentation will start with the forest to faucet
connection and Emily will talk about her work with the program. She's part of
the ecosystem services and market program area in state and private forest
three in the US forest service Washington office. She was formally eight PMF
and an excellent contribution to our workforce. Emily?
Thank you. How do we get water in our h omes? In 2011, the nature
Conservancy commissioned a poll that showed 75% of Americans don't know where
their drinking water comes from. 50% didn't even want to guess and of those
that but they knew whether water came from, only 50% got it right. I think a
lot of people see is as a lack box -- black box. We've got sophisticated
water systems that delivers water to our tap and this is meant the average
American doesn't think past their water bill for the source of their water. I
think we see the disconnect between the upstream supply of water and the
downstream use of water. Today we will be hearing -- but I will give a quick
overview on an effort to visualize the connection between supply and demand
with drinking water. [Background Noise].
Let's look at watershed area supply drinking water for public drinking water
systems. Here is the blue area that represents 78% of the lower 48 US land
area that is was in a particular watershed. This is a lot of land to p rotect,
conserve and maintain so how can we be more discerning about what areas -[Background Noise] and how can we make the forest to faucet connection.
[Background Noise]. The first thing we did was create a watershed index. It
models waterflow throughout the watershed and incorporates information on the
number of people and consumers, the proximity of intake where the water is
taken out of streams, lakes and reservoirs and water supply which is in
measure of precipitation minus evaporation. What you see on the map are the
areas of surface drinking water of importance the couldn't to our index. The
areas that are darker blue are higher on the importance index scale. You see
a lot of dark blue a reas. The eastern forest and hotspots in the Colorado for
range and the Sierras and the Pacific Northwest. This is dependent on the
number of consumers and so you see a lot of hotspots in more highly populated
areas and it areas that are more dependent on surface drinking water rather
than groundwater.
Here we consider the extent to which force are currently protect these areas
of surface water. In other words, these areas that are most important -[Background Noise]. The darker areas -- [Background Noise].
Let's go to the next slide. We have taken the map we saw on the last slide
and overlaid hot spots for three different sets of threats that includes
insect and disease, development and wildfire. You can see the different
colors on the index. We can start seeing interesting patterns and this can
start painting pictures of different types of strategies that might be
relevant for different areas. By combining these three elements, the areas
with demand for clean surface drinking w ater, areas that show a clear
connection between forest in drinking water and threats to existing
watersheds, we can start to see areas that might be good candidates for
watershed investment or for green infrastructure rather than great
infrastructure for this product. We see a bunch of circles on the map. The
first set of circles are the blue ones. These are areas with filtration
permits from EPA. These are cities doing some sort of watershed conservation
or green infrastructure approach to water quality to avoid -- and the green
circles are areas where the forest service has either already or is thinking
about developing some sort of watershed investment program where there is a
direct relationship with the national forest and ethnicity to protect drinking
water and water utilities. I'm sure a lot of people have heard that in
Denver, water has partnered with the forest service and is helping with $50
million of increased restoration projects. The yellow circles are areas where
we're starting to see creative new approaches to watershed protection. Looking
at the map, it is something to think about. Let's look at these other
hotspots and where are the gaps weather might not be some green
infrastructure approach and what are the other kinds of creative approaches
that might -- between forest and faucet. That is where I believe it now and I
will take questions at the end.
Thanks so much. Before lower introduces our next speaker, please put your
phone and your computer microphone on mute. Is background noise I suspect is
from the computer so it's important to put yourself on mute so we can hear the
speaker clearly.
That was an excellent introduction, thank you for laying the foundation and
helping us to start thinking about the various facets to water management as
it relates to our national forest. Like Emily said, we will take questions at
the end so write them down and save them for speakers. Our next speaker will
talk about tools for assessing climate change and she is Maria Janowiak of the
Northern Institute of applied climate science. Maria?
I hope you can all hear me. I think
if I need to speak up. What I want
affects the one side of the coin on
change impact on water and a little
more about the area you work in and
I can move my own s lides. You let me know
to do is talk about the impact and how it
water and talk about general climate
more information on how you can find out
applications for using that information.
As we just talked about, national forest and grasslands provide a variety of
ecosystem services related to water including drinking water and things like
aquatic habitat and there is a wide diversity of services our public lands are
tied to. When we are thinking about climate change which is the focus of
impact, a lot of the impact are driven by changes to the water.water. We
will be focusing on some of those and providing some broad overview.
One of the biggest things about climate change or global warming is the
warming of temperature which is relatively straightforward and most things are
expected to warm to some extent and it is just a matter of how much. When it
comes to the water, the impact is a lot more complicated and complex and
diverse. This can focus on a lot of different elements to the water cycle and
that includes things like the amount of p recipitation, are we getting more
or less. A lot of times it's maybe not intuitive but that the temperature
rises that allows the air hold more moisture. Even if we have a warming
temperature and no change of the precipitation, the changing temperature will
make drier conditions. The time in seasons, a lot of times we look at annual
changes and often that shows increases especially in the East were I work but
it really matters at the seasonal level because a lot of times you might have
decrease is during the growing season and increases during the winter or the
non- growing season. The timing in terms of if we are having rain or is it
coming in large? The type matters, rain versus snow and interactions with
part of parts of the cycle. It is a really complex and diverse set of impact
we are seeing. There were some really great work to assess the impact.
Property. Are expecting more work air temperatures and longer and drier
droughts in a lot of regions which we are seeing in a lot of places. The
changing it precipitation amount and timing and altered participation patterns
and an increase in precipitation that is rain instead of snow. A lot of work
has been done on extreme events and there is an increase so that includes
things like large thunderstorms or intense rain events were you might have
like a 50 years or event happening more frequently and the rises in
temperatures and other effects that can lead to loss of glaciers, rising sea
levels and a variety of impact.
The changes are going to be different depending on where you live. It is good
to talk about these impacts the people that really want to know the changes
in the place where I work. I want to shift over to talk about that a little
bit more. The -- is one place to get the information -- [Background Noise].
Data climate for the future -- climate change is an issue of interest and
there is a lot of discussion about climate change on different levels and
it's good to make sure we are using the best available science appropriately.
Future climate is predicted using general circulation models or global climate
models and eventually these are large global scale models that represent and
model with the ocean and atmosphere are doing and how they are interacting in
the used to simulate changes in climate. They are incredibly complex. I don't
want to go into detail but I want to point out there is a wide variety of
general circulation models out there. There are about 15 or so used. The each
work a little differently and they have strengths and weaknesses so it's
important too not just look at a single model or rely on an average of
multiple models but to look into the diversity of models out there because
they're all going to be a little different and it helps looking at multiple
models to get up better handle of the uncertainty out there. Another plan is
like you said there are global models which means -- [Background Noise]. We
can see in the picture on the left the pixels are the size of Iowa oral bio
are. And that is not -- [Background Noise]. Downscaling provide the process
where we can start -- where they train the global model with local
information. This is maybe a little more detail but this matters because
local climatic patterns are not necessarily well modeled. From the states were
I work, affecting temperature aren't -- and this happens in Western states
with things like mountains would you have rain and snow shadow effects from
high elevations so it's important to think about even with the downscaling
there are limitations in how well they can model some of these variations in
climate. The other point is to show you -- because there is a tendency where
you want to point to a particular place on a map and say this is where I work
and how this is going to change. Thinking about how course the resolution is
reminds us it's not appropriate to look at a point on a map or one specific
based or looking at some mid-level regional analysis.
There are different emission scenarios. Each one is a storyline. A high
emission center assumes things like rapid energy intensive development leaving
to fight ring gas emissions where the low scenario might assume things like
slower development or development using more sustainable -- so depending on
which emission scenario you use, you are also using different assumptions.
It's not feasible you look at every single permutation of climate model out
there because there really is a great variety but rather you can use a high
and low scenario and be able to compare them and get a better idea of the
range of variation out there because there is a lot of uncertainty
particularly with precipitation and we don't want to just pick one model and
run with it because it's almost certainly going to be wrong so we want to
look at the span of what is available. Now I want to give a short introduction
to the climate Wizard. It's not very long but it is very intuitive so I think
you will be able to use it and run with it and were going to try to make
available a handout or you can beat yourself to exercise to get more
familiar. It has the story climate data and projected future climate using a
variety of models and emission scenarios. Is that working okay for you guys?
I can see the
website.
Great. The tool is intuitive and easy to use. I'm going to give you a run
through to show you the highlights. In terms of analysis, you can choose the
US or global and you can also choose any of the particular states are looking
at if you want to focus in on a state level. In terms of the time period you
can choose past or future. I'm going to choose the past and try not to put do
this two q uick. I have chosen the past time period and a map change which is
the easiest to be able to look at things and for the sake I'm going to switch
to precipitation and summer because that is the season we are in and it is
the growing season and with this map we can see the precipitation trend over
the last 50 years. Is a lot of other things we can do in terms of looking at
monthly data or statistical confidence to see whether some of these changes we
are seeing are significant. I will let all of you look at that on your own. We
can also look at things like the end of century, a change of time period and
in this case we have the map change and summer precipitation and we can see
how those projections are in the future. The default is a high emission
scenario of the high, medium and low ones this tool has a vailable. The
default that -- we can pick a variety of scenarios that are available. Per
instance this one is kind of a middle of the road in terms of models
sensitivity with greenhouse gases and so it projects a moderate level of
change compared to some of the other models out there. One other feature I
like, of course that is a million you can go through, if you were to click
the compare and animate model under options, it takes you to two other places
they have available and if you click on future climate models, there is a
place for you can look at a variety of the models and you do the evaluation
of multiple climate models side-by-side without having to click a lot of
buttons. You can choose the analysis area and the time period and you can
try different models and emission scenarios from the panel and the center to
the side and if you click on any one of these maps it will show you
version and some additional things.
a larger
For the sake of time I'm not going to go into more detail, I'm going to go
back to the slides and I can answer questions we have at the end. In terms of
the climate Wizard, I think it's a good tool but there others that you can
access the same climate information. It is accessible and relatively easy to
use. It has bells and whistles in terms of a custom version were you can query
data and pull GIS data, I think it's a good starting point. There's more
information and you can work with scientist to identify stuff for your area,
but it's a good place to stop. It's limited to temperature and participation
so it doesn't tell you about extreme events, but it is a good place to start.
You do need to dig a little bit and that's one thing we found that is a
little tricky when we have been working with this t ool. It is there, but you
have to look for it and of course there is limitations on spatial scale. We
don't want to pick a certain point and run with it because that is not really
the source data. You want more information you can go to the climate change
resource Center. They are really good summaries of this tool and other tools.
It is a really good resource. In terms of potential applications, a lot of
this information can be used in vulnerability assessments which a lot of force
are working on right now as part of the climate change score card. And water
shed vulnerability assessments, there is some great recorded webinars
available. One of them I'm familiar with look at a variety of impact
associated with water and the hydrologic cycle. One is on -- and identified
locations where -- and infrastructure might be more vulnerable due to changes
in precipitation patterns and is also groundwater recharge and habitat so
there's a variety of places. To wrap up, there's a lot of information out
there and we need to think about how those changes will affect us by region
and location and there's a lot of assessments and good work going on and will
continue to provide more information in the coming months and years and while
they have a little bit of limitations in terms of resolution, they do provide
a good idea of general trends and what we can expect. They need to be
considered within the ecological and social context and a lot of the work we
have been doing is focusing on these changes and what they mean to the
ecosystem. You can also -- [Background Noise]. Thank you.
Thanks so much, that was a
the next speaker?
great
overview. Laura, do you want to
introduce
Absolutely. The next speaker will be Trista Patterson. She will provide
opening remarks about the concept of water footprinting and ecosystem service
demand. Trista is an economist and ecosystem services and the research lead
with the sustainable operations Western collective. Trista?
I don't have any slides but I thought it would be relevant to tell a little
story because oftentimes in talking about sustainability science, we get the
reaction from people of why are we doing it and why are we talking about
ecosystem service demand and does the term even represent anything new. I
thought I would make analogy but hopefully it will underscore the plan for
what Jamey is going to present. The way have been looking at it it is as if
-- imagine were living together in this future forward eco- friendly green
housing complex that has a green roof over us. We have been harvesting our
rainwater to meet our consumption needs underneath it all this time and it's
worked out well. We've done a bunch of cool stuff and grazing goats and
selling the goats to Congress and eight create a lot of jobs. We over
harvested are goats it takes maintenance over time. Congress is asking why
should we give you any more money, you're not giving us the goats we used to
have. Meanwhile, were looking at the roof above us and we are thinking our
job is to maintain this roof. We see it benefiting all the people in the
household underneath us. Think about that in the context of climate change.
What if with our household all of a sudden the climate shifted the way in
which rain was hitting the household. It used to fall on the East and we
header piping systems set up to collect the rain coming in on the East and
there were different uses but we figured out how to meet those needs. We left
that up to the plumbers and lost track to what happened downstream and were
not paying attention to how much water was being used on what it was being
used for even if people were using -- ultimately, it is becoming a big
issue because now the rain seems to be followed in different basis and are
plumbing system is out-of-date. We are seeing some maps that this is causing
a lot of grief in a lot of places. One specific example, I was on -- in the
Sierra Nevada and there was a case arising for the city of Los Angeles suing
Mammoth Lakes because Mammoth Lakes for the past 50 years has been using a
water resource that Los Angeles believes it has the rights to. Now Los Angeles
under extreme pressure you saying every drop counts and we've got to go back
and get that water. It as is if the cats and our household are fighting a lot
about this water. this water. When you think about the extension of her duties
within the forest service, oftentimes we have been called upon to provide a
resource to the p ublic, providing water, grazing area for timber and this is
a we we have stimulated the economy. What we have haven't made it to do is
address system limits. We haven't needed to go downstream or underneath the
roof to find out where the water is being used, and where the resources be
consumed. Are there some places that can be more cost effective in reducing
the water use and are there others that have less inflexibility? Are their
populations were places more former bull or less able to -- [Background
Noise]. Are we taking present consumption of water and making compromises for
future generations in terms of water usage? All of these things are r elevant.
To this point concerns about water ended when water flows off of national
forest land and we haven't talked about that from the inside. We haven't
effectively cultivate the discussion with the American public about the
resources it consumes and benefits from off the forest. As a result we can't
tell the story with very much relevant information to those who receive the
benefits downstream because you have someone in the household that asks
whether water is coming from. This illustrates the need for the forest
service and sustainable operations to take a more scientific based and
quantified approach to describing, mapping, characterizing and underscoring
the value of different ecosystem services -- and that reflects the paradigm
shift which I think Jamey will illustrate quite w ell. All of this brings
full circle a lot of current management problems. I'm excited for you to hear
about Jamey's presentation because it's one example how we brought together
ideas. One is the demand of the American public for the ecosystem services
which are being produced on national forest land and the second is the way in
which the forest service as an agency is metabolizing resources or using
resources in its own operations because it illustrates clearly the connection
between our activities and choices and trade-offs and budgets and decision
points with all the constraints in front of us including those that can be
sustained of the provided in perpetuity from the landscape. All of our fleets
can be managed within the bounds of which they create emissions and those
missions need a certain amount of forest to sequester the carbon the e-mail.
Offer forest operations consume water. There's a certain amount of landscape
needs to provide that water in order to balance out. We can be a net zero
agency. We can be a net zero emissions agency as well. We can be a net zero
water agency as well, but it requires that vision. This piece Jamey is going
to provide helps us articulate that vision from a community and agency
integrated standpoint. I'm going to hand it off to her and you can hear more
about this specific example. This is one example of a number the science team
has running so any if you are speaking from a science perspective are looking
for applied science with respect to put Prince -- and hear more about this
applications, there is water for printing and other studies in progress right
now. I will hand it off to Jamey.
Thank you very much. That is great analogy and reminder to all of us to think
about looking underneath the roof to address management challenges whether
they are water related or otherwise. The next speaker will be Jamey Lowdermilk
ever talk about climate capacity and conservation. Jamey is a natural
resource specialist at Helena national forest and the culture it to Western
collective teams those being the sustainability science team and the
communications t eam. Jamey?
Hello everyone. Thank you. I know we're getting toward the end so whatever you
need to do it deskto shake up energy, do that now because this is the last
one and then we would have some good discussions.
Right now I'm talking about watersheds. For the less than two years, I have
been leading a research project that examines water demand drivers and the
goal is to look at ecosystem capacity and resource management. Were going to
discuss climate change model application, demand impact, border foot painting
and associated implications. The goal here and hopefully this looks like a
forest ranger to you, but the goal is to try and answer a couple of questions
that seem to keep coming up. Those are called border all the ways in which we
are using the water available within a local watershed? To what extent is this
impacting our watershed and the associated management object it's we have for
this area? What can we do about it?
We've been wrestling with this question is for decades. This is a letter or
excerpt from a letter from the Mount Hood national Forest to this data for
Oregon. You can see the date is 1932. The forest supervisor -- I cannot see
the state's argument. What is the little garbage in this dreamlike the
Columbia as compared with the huge amount of sewage from the many cities
upstream, the factory refuse from the woolen Mills and I daresay a pulp mill
or two. The garbage will serve as fish food or the other sewage is fish
poison. How we trained to use the water in the Columbia? How does that impact
the river? It would be great to know what this means for us and what we can do
about. Before we continue I would like to ask everyone to participate in a
quick visualization with m e. For every you are in your office or the
conference room or if you are at home, if you could close your eyes. I know I
can see you to hold you to it but just close your eyes for a second. And like
you to imagine your favorite stream or river. Maybe this from your childhood.
Maybe it is close to where you live now. You right there next to it. You can
remember what it feels like with the air temperature I like, the sound, the
smell. And where the river is headed.
You can open your eyes. It's important to remember that Rivers and streams are
also places we value and love and oftentimes were focused on one place for
one reason, but it's having a trade-off on another place. This is the upland
Missouri River. It's a river I had a chance to get to know and it is a
beautiful place.
These three questions about water, there are some things we know about the
water situation today. We know it takes a lot of water to do what we want to
do and in the forest service, at home, it's embedded in our food and
purchasing choices. Here are a few numbers from our 2000 national environmental
foot print. Forest service water consumption and the water energy nexus. We
know we are facing water sources right now. There are some awful droughts
going on across the country and we will probably continue to see some of
those in the future. I'd like you to remember this photo. It is the first of
two national maps I was sure this presentation. The next one I think is
pretty inspiring. We thought let's initiate a pilot project and see what we
can figure out from one watershed and look at what is happening on the ground
and how it might relate to what we are doing.
I see we have a little formatting issue. We decided to use a methodology
called water footprinting. Waterford printing is related to environmental
analysis tools. You maybe familiar with -- Waterford to summarize is water
use and did this case were looking at a geographic context at an actual place.
Waterford trades are divided into three components, blue, green and gray
water footprints. You're probably most blue with a blue water footprint -[Background Noise]. There is the green Waterford which is humane use of
precipitation offered through evaporation and that is the big one when we are
looking at land managed by the forest service. There's also the gray Waterford
print which is the water needed to needed to assimilate -- this is left out
when we think about water balance or water availability. When were digging
into this research, it turned out there was a model that had been created by
the Eastern forest environmental threat assessment Center in North Carolina.
That is a water supply stress Index model. This functions as a monthly water
balance model sensitive to land cover, claimant and water consumption. UK
project things going forward or look retrospectively. The WaSSI model is
parameterized for all -- across the country. The link is here. I would
recommend going there and see what is going on. For this study we downscaled
precipitation and climate data to the 12 digit hydrologic unit culpable for
the upper and middle sections of the 10-mile watershed. With WaSSI we applied
the US GS dated to that existing f ramework.
I presented from the hello national Forest supervisor's office in Helena
Montana. We are discussing 10-mile Creek and upper and middle portions of the
upper watershed. This creek Creek originates on the eastern side of the
Continental divide and flows 12 miles north through primarily steep evergreen
forests. The upper part of the watershed is rich in mind history so we
wrestled quite a few water quality impact. The primary lease the petition -[Indiscernible]. Here we -- it's a beautiful place that a lot going on in
this difficult place. This slide provided a quick index. It's critical to
public water supplies. Both of these areas have a number of exceed a total
maximum daily loads which are water quality indicators by EPA. According to
WaSSI this area is pretty stressed out. This is a summary of the blue and
green Waterford print and in the finalization of this ation of this research
-- [Phone line on hold beeping]. If your computer is not muted, if you could
take time to do that, that would be helpful.
The finding support of what we have seen on the ground, -- that's a little
bit of the case. We know every summer that 10-mile offered runs dry beef load
the city water diversion. It's important this research highlights the demand
impacts that we are trying to manage for all kinds of things. In this area and
areas across the country when we are discussing stream temperature or water
quality or habitat or climate change resilience, all of these indicators to
some extent relate to assimilation and would improve if there were more water
in the stream. I have been out in Helena and surrounding areas and every
event someone says I remember when I could fish out of 1 0-mile. Is a big part
of our history. People really care about this place.
Here is our second map. You remember the doom and gloom water met. This is our
inspirational map and the map of national forests and grasslands. It's
inspirational because if we were ever going to successfully link communities
and people with the resources and consequences, [Background Noise]. We more
so than any other federal agency are integrated in cities communities. We
manage these resources, we care about these places and we have been practicing
conservation education for decades. All that we cover a lot of -- it's really
important water.
Not only are we poised but are supported in this effort. This is language from
the USDA strategic land 2010-2015 talking about watershed pining and health
and collaborative watershed partnerships. I see three components. There is our
efforts and resource management looking at current and future climate change
and demand impact through these watersheds, this also the resource
conservation piece and particularly our internal activity. There's a
partnership an education piece and that is our external activities. We have
made some great strides. You've heard about the forest to Fossett effort,
this WaSSI tool and a number of climate change models are available and
hopefully water demand studies, depending on how much detail you want to
pull can be relatively easy to incorporate into traditional watershed
planning. Wherever possible we need to continue to try and include
environmental flow requirements. It is a challenge but a challenge we should
try to meet. Related to watershed conservation, is a lot going on. I
highlighted within our agency focus across the country and high-performance
sustainable buildings which are forest service owned or leased buildings over
5000 square feet and were doing a lot inside and outside to try and conserve
water but is also lots innovation and energy and creativity on the ground.
One I like to talk about is the rainwater harvesting
project. They apply for sustainable operations grant and they are now
using rainwater to wash fire engines and do a lot of other work. There's also
the piece around water partnerships. Emily touched on a few of those examples
occurring out West and some of those -- and a lot of water conservation we
could do in some places trying to do it. I know about the Yellowstone
coordinating committee that is put together and outreach flyer available in
visitor centers the talks about how important it is to conserve water outside
the park and the national Forest to the watersheds in the Yellowstone
National Park and the surrounding national Forest.
Maybe you're thinking that was the big picture and I don't know what you're
asking me to do and that is fair, but what is awesome is there is a role for
everyone in this. Maybe you are a planner and you could help reframe some of
the conditions in forest plans with language around ecosystem capacity and
demand management. Maybe you are an engineer, and there's lots of options and
opportunities at our facilities. -- there is a national cadre of people ready
to help this e ffort. If you are scientist, we could use a lot of help
advocating -- you heard me talk about consumption numbers, there is so much
those don't account for and so much we don't know about water demand. Maybe
you are public affairs conservation and education, and there's a lot we could
do to highlight the role resource consumption plays. You can get involved
with your green team on the how and the here and this is a picture of us in
front of evergreen wall. On the 10th mile Creek, it actually flows into our --
[Background Noise]. kground Noise]. One of the things we are interested in
looking at is a zeros gaping project. We have been brainstorming with the
city about the partnership and how they can help and maybe this could be a
showcase p roject.
The final point I want to make is for the blue water foot print, and you were
remember that is the surface and groundwater consumption off of Ten Mile, the
biggest user of that surface and groundwater was not irrigation, it was not
livestock or similar things we think of as big layers in diverting water, it
was the public and this is a city water supply, but the public is not so
nebulous. It is me and it is you. Anywhere you can conserve, whether it's
turning off your computer at the end of today or reducing some of the waste,
the Waterford print is huge. Any of the little places you are saving water.
Remembered the letter from are forest supervisor back in 1932, we have dealt
with garbage and have dealt successfully with liver. [Background Noise].
What is the role we're going to play in communicating what we do and the
choices we make to impact the resources we are working so hard to manage
effectively.
Thank you, Jamey. That was not only educational but also inspiring and it
probably made a lot of us reflect back to time like the likely before we
were able it with the forest service. Now we could turn it over to Trista
Patterson to provide some closing remarks for this section of the webinar.
Just for quick comment, to remind everyone this is uncharted territory for
much of the agency to be moving into increasingly. As such, this is an area
of a lot of experimentation and working with ways to make these concepts
relevant to a much broader audience than we have traditionally have spoken to
and articulated these ideas to. That is very much a work in progress. Again,
I would encourage all of you interested in quantification of what happens to
the benefits we provide from the national Forest to user communities to get
involved and get familiar with some of the studies that are ongoing. Is a lot
of interesting analysis starting up within the science team and the first
publications will be out this year. We look forward to them and we look
forward to announcing the emerging reorganization of our website to make those
publications more accessible to you all. If there are topical matters you
would like investigated in this particular area, especially on the demand side
or as a pertains to quantification and sustainability science, bring it too
was and we will see if we can't figure out a way to meet some of those
research needs. I will turn it back for questions at this point.
Thanks so much. This has been a fantastic presentation. If you go to
questions, we wanted to remind you of a couple of -- [Background Noise]. The
next peer learning webinar will be on Wednesday, S eptember 5 at 10:00 10:00
Pacific. Now we will going to the questions. There are two ways to ask
questions, either over the phone or on the webinar. On the top bar there is a
question and answer tap and if you would prefer you can type your question
there. If you ask a question over the phone, please keep yourself muted until
you were speaking and introduce yourself with your name and your unit so we
have a good idea of who we are speaking to. At this time, I'd like to open it
up to questions.
This is Joey with the lake Tahoe basin management unit. In the first
presentation by Emily, we noted there are couple of things that might shift a
little bit if you included a stronger emphasis both on groundwater and on the
interplay between surface water and groundwater. I just got the impression
there was a sense that maybe a lot of the benchmarks were looking at the
impact of surface water of various things including climate change but not
necessarily acknowledging a lot of the surface water is there because of the
groundwater and a lot of what happens to surface water gets exacerbated by not
keeping a good I am at groundwater so that would be one quick comment. The
everything was in our forest like a lot of them, we don't have quite the
conceptual simplicity you might have when you explain the upper part of the
watershed is largely occupied by the forest and everything flows downstream to
users better downslope. That conceptual model doesn't work as well for us
because we have an enormous Seamount of urban -- into the forest areas. We
have a forest boundary that goes down to the lake in many cases and in many
cases doesn't extend within a mile and a half or two of the lake. The use of
water whether it's from the streams were groundwater is occurring within the
downstream boundary. It's not just -- we have a -- [Background Noise] were
this quite a bit of development. It's not an easy clean picture to say what
is downstream versus what is literally in the watershed. I just wanted to
throw that out and ask if that is something you will maybe take a stronger
look at in the future. It seems like there's a bit more eastern United States
flavor to what you are presenting than some of the stuff we work with.
Thanks for that comment. You have identified one of the weaknesses of this
project. Our limitation is we are focusing on surface area drinking water and
incorporating groundwater. We have done that for couple of reasons. First of
all, with the surface water processes we are creating flow models and it's
pretty straightforward to do that with surface water. We can do that based on
elevation but with groundwater is a lot more complicated in there isn't really
good nationwide data like there is for surface water. You are right. In areas
that depend more on groundwater, but for drinking water it's not going to
show up on the map we have. Ultimately, this project is here to provide
broad pictures across the United States to get us thinking about this
connection and some areas that might be important but I think what is really
important for folks to take away is that this is providing broad pictures and
of course it's really important to use locally available data if you are
focusing in on a national Forest or other smaller landscape. In those
situations, you can incorporate localized models for groundwater and surface
water and be attuned to those local conditions. Thanks again for your
comments.
This is Jamey, can I jump onto that answer as well? I just wanted to add I
really glad you part of the groundwater issue. As Emily said, it's hard to get
good data. I work with the city of Helena to get are publicly consumed water
numbers. It wasn't until I was hiking up on the river and saw there was new
groundwater diversions in the upper part of the watershed that I went to the
city and set the consumption numbers you gave didn't account for these two
groundwater wells. And they said we really don't think about those but we do
use them in times of tight trip entity or low flow. Is not only an issue
that there's a lack of data, is a lack of conscientiousness around the extent
to which we are using groundwater is possible to bring it up to see where
science can contribute to that as a whole.
I appreciate answers from both of you. I would just point out your fortunate
up there in Montana. You got one of the force service authors of the
groundwater handbook and a lot of the examples are drawn from your region and
as a teaser, also next door in Idaho, it is clear their logic situations
where groundwater usage has actually dried-up streams. The snake River itself
as a go between twin thralls and a thousand springs for quite a stretch and
that's a result of too much groundwater lowering the groundwater level to the
point where the stream what eam what subsurface. You can actually see the
course itself change where there's a lot of groundwater use around the stream
over a period of decades that narrows down and isn't continue to have the form
it has historically. A lot of good stuff being done. The USGS has a lot of
data out that supports what is in that handbook and you will see some maps
that show for a lot of streams in the northern states as well as into the West
that groundwater provides upwards of half the water in the streams so it's
extremely important to understand interconnections and that is actually
recognized -- that is been sent around for review.
The point about upstream downstream is very well taken. In the future, we've
got some documentation coming out and potentially an opportunity to look a
little closer at some of the Western case studies where things are densely
populated within the watershed system. Those opportunities are forthcoming
specifically related to the city or any data -- are dated to Sierra Nevada.
If you'd like to send me an e-mail, I be happy to get to feedback because the
partnerships between the municipalities and the people living in the watershed
and the different land covers is a really important piece and to simplify to
much by the upstream downstream analogy doesn't leverage those partnerships
significantly where they exist on certain sites so we would like to learn from
that experience.
That would be great, I will send
you
an e-mail.
This a couple I think follow-up questions on the chat. I wanted to let you
know, I've put up a website. We have a couple questions about the presentation
and the transcript being available. Both a PDF of the PowerPoint and the
transcript of the audio and the recording of the presentation will be
available in a few days on the website I put on the screen. I will read the
follow-up question that anyone can feel free to answer. I will read the book.
The first says what about the byproducts from consumption of a resource? I
think that was the follow-up to the initial question. The second one says
within the agency, if not on the question of advancing the science, the
organization it's a defense policy and management. The big question is how do
we get the national ran water post in praise -- place?
I bet you have something to say
Can you read the first
about the graywater
for print?
question again?
What about the byproducts from
consumption of
a resource?
I think that is an excellent question and I do have some ideas but it's
important to start out that this is so new and sometimes I'm uncomfortable to
answer questions like this because you have ideas and you don't know how to
pan out but were always looking for more. If you have some ideas, let's
brainstorm. One idea I had using the footprinting methodology to apply to a
small project -- [Background Noise]. The Waterford print came about as a
about as a way to access the first one that was sent in this state on a
national scale was by the nature Conservancy with Coca-Cola on there borrowing
program.
Similar -- has been done. How can we can we incorporate that into
somebody environmental analysis we already do. It would take a little bit of
creativity and energy and maybe a case study but I think there's a lot of
opportunity and what's wonderful is the methodology exist and were starting to
build a network research scientist interested in looking at this. I think if
we are correct in our projections, that is to say climate change and
consumption and urban planning are going to continue to go we think they're
going to go, I would expect in a couple years we will start to ask for those
numbers. The more market the stress evolve to want to know that kind of
information, the more were going to have to be prepared to answer those kinds
of questions so I would like to think were just getting comfortable with what
is going to be and do expectation in the future. Did I answer that question?
Just underlined the definition of the graywater foot print is the amount of
fresh water required to dilute discharged pollutants such that the remaining
water meets water quality standards. That is to say if you have a waste or
byproduct in the process of consuming something, you would need a certain
amount of water that would basically dilute that to meet water quality
standards and that can be quantified so that's how it's getting into the water
for rent. Whether or not that is been associated to a specific consumption
process is it just to be seen and that has a lot to do with it has been
investigated on a case-by-case basis but as Jamey mentioned, it's a form of
analysis still in development just like lifecycle analysis.
This is court grant, can I ask a question? Other research hydrologist. I
want to thank all the speakers for an interesting presentation covering a
diverse range of topics. I had the impression as I was listening to the
talks, the basic footprint and demand is leaving a large elephant sitting in
the middle of the room that I did not hear much talk about and I wonder -this is a subject that contrary to a lot of verbiage that says the opposite,
the forest and the forest service as a manager are an enormous consumer of
water. I guess this would fall under the heading of green water but it's a
very big number and I was surprised that you said that a guest user of water
in the watershed was the public. I would be willing to bet more was consumed
by the vegetation. This seems to me to raised explored policy and management
issues particularly as the stressors on the forest need for water by the
force themselves. That's not water for the creek water for the trees needs to
increase even more than it is now. How does that conception fit into this
overall thinking about demand downstream and so forth?
That's a great question. When I talked about the public, I was talking about
the blue water footprint which is the consumption of surface groundwater.
You're talking about the forest cover, you're talking about the green
Waterford print. I haven't seen the numbers very recently, but if I remember
correctly, the forest were the major consumer in the green water footprint
and I'm still wrestling with ways on how to showcase those numbers as I
finalize then in the next month. The point I think I want to make to that is
the fully transparent and inspiring opportunity to say that if we want the
forest and these are all of the systems the forest service provides, it's
going to take this amount of water and that's what I love about WaSSI and
water footprinting. WaSSI can look at those trade-offs particularly as we
start to talk about carbon storage. It is an excellent discussion and to some
extent these models are helping us answer it, but it's going to be a
challenging discussion to have because the forest do consume quite a bit of
water. Again, all the more reason to do a study on the ways we are asking a
watershed to provide those services and how we are going to balances into the
future.
This is Trista, I think it is a great point and he would be a wonderful
reviewer for the pieces of the manuscript to make sure we are addressing
those points. In describing this approach to ecosystem services, part of what
is embedded in that concept is the systems involved have upper limits of
production. The upper limits of production are determined -- and I guess the
first example that comes to mind is the interface between the Denver public
water utility and the front Range questions -- one land management plan would
sit just it is may be beneficial to take trees off a stand so you can control
a certain amount of waterfall whereas on the other side of the watershed
keeping trees on the stand seems to provide a desirable kind of stream. What
is necessary is an interaction is a description of what our minimum
environmental flows within a watershed, what those look like and what the
system integrity and the resiliency thresholds demand for certain amounts of
water so we don't lose stocks of natural capital overtime. That is one piece
of information and questions of the desire plan cover is another piece of
information and downstream the things we can control in terms of consumption.
In many cases municipalities are asking us to provide more and more water
without necessarily looking inwardly to see what can be controlled within
demand and without real awareness and what minimum environmental flows look
like. I think these are all great points some of which are currently being
accounted for but obviously we have been focusing on a certain number of key
points we want to get a cross.
I appreciate that. I think it needs to be thought through. When we put out
there the idea of ecosystem services which are often characterized in terms of
things like production of cold clear water of national forest lands, we are
doing the fact we are consumers and we are big-time consumers of water. I see
a train wreck are coming. I see as being in the situation where we have not
fully articulated exact the what you are saying which is the need for water if
we want to maintain the greater good of the forest on national public lands.
To balance back, I like the concept of transparency. I think that is the
right way to go but I caution a fully transparent accounting is going to show
us as one of the largest consumers of water in the country and the languages
typically been -- and I think it is 180 degrees off.
I couldn't agree more. It will be really fun to write up exactly that point to
make sure it is getting hit in as many ways as possible. When characterizing
it as a certain way of framing the argument but the terms you are using is
spot on. Another example is characterizing the water put rent of different
consumer products based not only on what took to grow this timber products as
well as the kind of but read it takes to process, manufacture, transport and
consume and dispose of those pieces. They are all part of the story but we are
learning a lot about how to tell the story differently and I think everyone
on the sustainability science team definitely shares that we see a massive
bottleneck in terms of how the discussion is with the American public and we
would like on more why that's going to present an enormous problem for the
American public at large but then how the forest service can present the
argument in the information such that we can't open it up and make more
possibilities or options for better management for the f uture.
Thank you. We have a paper
thing out.
the
Super. I will send an e-mail.
people in review right now that
lays this
Thank you for the great discussion. We have a couple more questions I didn't
want to lose. The first one says can we get a publication number for the
groundwater guidance or how can we obtain a copy?
[Background Noise].
I just wanted to make sure we
covered it.
We could put that at the same place were going to post
you want me to read the questions one at a time?
The
first is, to trees and forest animals
have a legal
this presentation. Do
water right?
Are we going to wind up fighting in the future for water rights -- and the
Fish and Wildlife Service? At the question I don't think we can answer right
now but I think it is just a thought.
It's almost like a philosophical question but it's something already coming up
particularly for fish and we've been able to garner a little support for
environmental flow our minimum flow for the fish and what is interesting for
me about that is what we have done is we are leaving more water in 10-mile and
we are taking a lot of money in seeking it to take more water out of the
misery and again it is the trade-off. Coming from an economic background I
have read quite a few studies for your return on investment managing demand
and looking for ways to reduce consumption versus managing supply to get more
out of those dollars, but what made sense here is too we could pump more
water upstream. There is a water right fight going on right now.
Thanks, Jamey. I think this might have been addressed but I'm going to read
it anyway. It is from -- how many forests are providing water -- such as the
village of you dose of which obtains about 40% of their water from wells on
forest service service land. [Background Noise].
There've been some estimates in the forest service water climate change
general technical report but a better answer is I don't know we know and it
would be such an awesome number two have.
I don't have a number, but I think there is data
could answer it but I don't have the answer.
and models out there that
One of the best documents that may have answers is one of the documents we
referred to earlier, I was one of the authors on that and I saw a lot of
pushback when I was asking for data and questions about the demand side of the
story and I felt like -- they are just not easy numbers so we need to
allocate more resources to finding ways we can get this kinds of answers.
Without answers too very important questions like that, we cannot tell the
story of the value of that water or the value of management or the upstream
resources to the American p ublic. It is a gap and we know what is a gap and
it still seems to be outside the way in which water demand is addressed. Some
of the descriptions of water vulnerability also do not account for that
element of demand in this description of vulnerability. I guess I would
advocate for broadening of some of the definitions as well as some specific
resource allocations toward chasing after some of those numbers
think it is an important thing.
and that I
Thanks everybody. If there's any follow-up information as we gather that info
and data, we can add it to the website. There is one more Internet question
and that we have a couple questions until we hit our 90 minute mark so I will
read this question and maybe one more over the phone. Julie was to know, are
climate change scenarios going to be overlaid on Emily Weidner's w ork?
That is a goal. That is the goal and do something you can't do with WaSSI in
a fairly straightforward way. [Background Noise]. I think the research is
going to continue and were going to see how we can
improve it.
I think we have time for one
question?
Okay.
For a copy of
that?
more question, does anyone on the
the transcript, can you remind us
Can you see the website I typed
I don't have an open screen in
on
again how to get a hold
a
of
the screen?
front
I can send it out. It's a little
phone have
of me.
bit cut off that I
can
send it.
We usually send out an e-mail to everyone who has participated in the webinar.
I usually get the names in different ways so I'm hoping to still get the names
of the website on the screen, it is a little bit cut off so after the word
implementation -- hopefully that is clear to everybody. We will post a PDF of
the presentation of the recording, a transcript of the presentation and any
other handouts or follow-up. Maria referenced the climate Wizard handout
which was attached to this meeting. We will also put it there at that
website. That is where the follow-up information will be. If you have any
partners, that is forest service only, so if you have any partners you would
like to provide this service f or, you can e-mail me and I can provide the
documents.
It is 11:30 so if you think of any follow-up questions, it's okay to contact
the speakers or you can e-mail Laura or Katie with any questions you think of.
I wanted to think the speakers. This is been a great hesitation in good
discussion questions so thank you for sticking with us. As a reminder, we will
have a -- we will have enough what on September 5.
Thanks to everyone for being
Thanks everyone. [Event
with us.
Concluded]