
Forests for Clean Water in the Huron River Watershed
The Huron River Watershed faces numerous water quality issues that impact drinking water. Addressing water quality includes responsible management of forested private land within the watershed. The Forests for Clean Water project addresses the ways in which private land impacts water quality and thus drinking water. Forest land management starts with landowner engagement therefore we surveyed landowners and land managers responsible for privately-owned forests or wetlands within the Huron River watershed using Yale's School of Forestry and Environmental Studies TELE (tools for engaging landowners effectively) guide. The purpose of the survey is to understand landowner knowledge, values, and use of their land so that HRWC can provide them useful tools for protecting and managing their land in a way that is beneficial to the watershed. To understand the ecological effects of land management, we used the Stanford University InVEST (Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs) Model Suite’s Nutrient Delivery Ratio model to simulate nitrogen and phosphorus runoff under different development scenarios within the watershed. Additionally, we provided recommendations for HRWC's Bioreserve Map, which ranks natural areas in the Huron River watershed by their ecological quality. We added new metrics to the map and created an ArcGIS Online map that displays the bioreserve rankings interactively. Our findings will inform future decision making at the Watershed Council and provide valuable insight into stakeholder engagement, hotspots for nutrient runoff, and data display and communication.
William Sollish, MS (EPP/ESM); Jie Yan, MS (GDS); Sagen Fuller, MS (ESM); Jonah Pollens-Dempsey, MS (GDS/ESM)