Alafia River Minimum Flows and Levels - Southwest Florida Water ...

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ATTACHMENT B From: Subject: Ann Hodgson [abhodgson@earthlink.net] Florida Coastal Islands Sanctuaries Program - Comments - Draft Alafia River Minimum Flows and Levels Freshwater Segment including Lithia and Buckhorn Springs Audubon of F lorida's Florida Coastal Islands Sanctuaries Program has reviewed the draft Alafia River Minimum Flows and Levels Freshwater Segment including Lithia and Buckhorn Springs [Kelly, M., A. Munson, J. Morales, and D. Leeper. 2005. Draft Alafia River Minimum Flows and Levels Freshwater Segment including Lithia and Buckhorn Springs. Ecologic Evaluation Section, Resource Conservation and Development Department, Southwest Florida Water Management District, Brooksville, FL]. Our programmatic concerns include managment of colonial nesting waterbirds, bird species generally, the habitats, landscapes, and forage species on which they are dependent. We compliment the authors and the Southwest Florida Water Management District (SWFWMD) on preparing a technically expansive analysis of potential MFL's for the Alafia River. Particularly, we note that this study is the first (to our knowledge) MFL report to include physical habitat simulation modelling (PHABSIM) (Bovee et al. 1998) integrated with HECRAS modelling, and we believe this multi-disciplinary approach will be appropriate for future studies. Our comments focus primarily on two areas: (1) maintenance of landscape level ecological integrity for riverflow- dependent species, including associated stream edge habitats, and permanent and intermitte nt floodplain wetlands; and (2) maintenance of an optimal 'forage fish' component for piscivorous birds. Our specific comments follow. Extent of analysis. Figure 4-1 shows the 'Alafia River study corridor' (yellow box), Figure 4-2 shows transects extending to U.S. 41, the text references 'Buckhorn Springs eastward to Aldermans Ford Park, and the report title is '... Freshwater Segment...', which we would assume includes the entire Alafia River from the headwaters westward to the mean high tide (or greater) upstream extent of the salinity prism. Estuarine-dependent organisms occur upstream to a temporally variable location east of U.S. 41 extending to approximately U.S. 301, or further. Similarly, freshwater-dependent species occur downstream until they reach the limits of their species-specific salinity tolerances. The analysis corridor should be additionally defined by geographic coordinates and a revised map. It would be helpful to portray the modeled extent of the estuarine effect because some bird species, while freshwater dependent, are more plastic than others, and others use freshwater during various lifestages, but not entirely (see the Tampa Bay Appendix C iv
Estuary Program 'Restoring the Balance' document (Lewis and Robison 1995)). Maintenance of landscape level ecological integrity for riverflow-dependent species. Many avian and fish species occurring in the Tampa Bay region have concommitant dependencies on estuarine and freshwater resources. While the proposed net change in freshwater discharge was incrementally small, it would be helpful to include an analysis of prospective change, if any, in the upstream extent of the salinity prism. Modal centrality of some estuarine organisms presumably will vary depending on shifts in salinity. We concur with the reported emphasis on the within-stream functional analysis of large woody debris. We suggest additional analysis related to the decrease in stream edge available foraging habitat (see the great blue heron habitat suitability model, and others). We also suggest some analysis of the off-stream, but still connected, smaller freshwater wetlands that are very important for foraging, aquatic invertebrate production (e.g., Orthoptera, crayfish, and others), and terrestrial invertebrate and vertebrate productivity. Maintenance of 'forage fish' for piscivorous birds. In these comments we use the term 'forage fish' specifically in reference to fishes (and invertebrates such as crayfish) providing forage for piscivorous birds. The USGS has published a list of 157 habitat suitability models (http://www.nwrc.usgs.gov/wdb/pub/hsi/hsiindex.htm). In addition to the fish species (red-breasted sunfish, spotted sunfish, coastal shiner, sailfin shiner, bluegill and largemouth bass) used to determine incremental instream flows (Kelly et al. 2005), we are concerned with the maintenance of endemic (preferably) and introduced fishes generally
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Alafia River Minimum Flows and Leve
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Table of Contents Table of Contents
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4.3.1 HEC-RAS Modeling ............
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Table of Figures Figure 1-1. Buildi
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Figure 2-33. Phosphorus concentrati
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Figure 5-12. Habitat Gain/Loss for
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Table 5-2. Mean elevation, local (c
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flow, with the exception that withd
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Acknowledgement The authors would l
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9) Water quality; and 10) Navigatio
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Water Management District typically
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Peace River at Zolfo Springs, FL. s
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Period of Record Median Daily Flows
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to enhance understanding of histori
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River watershed, to the east by the
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an adjacent area locally known as t
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Water in the surficial aquifer is r
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The Upper Floridan aquifer (UFA) sy
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Figure 2-4. May and September 2001
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head differences indicating breache
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data (multiple regression) analyses
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2.2 Land Use Changes in the Alafia
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Before discussing individual sub-ba
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Table 2-2. Land use and land cover
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Table 2-3. Land use and land cover
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Figure 2-13. 1972 and 1999 Land use
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2.2.4 Lithia Springs Sub-Basin The
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2.3 Hydrology The assessment of min
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occurred during the spring were sim
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Conversely, since most of the Unite
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extending from 1940 to 1969 can be
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third highest flow occurred early i
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Flow (cfs) Alafia River at Lithia,
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100 North Prong Alafia River at Key
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Flow (cfs) South Prong Alafia River
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Alafia River at Lithia - Water Qual
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South Prong Watershed Above USGS Ga
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Comparisons of land use changes and
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Comparison of Median Daily Flows fo
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Comparisons of Annual 25% Exceedanc
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Figure 2-25. Lithia Springs Major b
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2.3.4.3.2 Discharge from Lithia Spr
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Relationship Between Lithia Springs
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Buckhorn Spring Main Discharge (Wit
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versus flow. The third plot typical
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Alafia River at Lithia, FL Phosphor
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While elevated phosphorus concentra
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Peace River at Arcadia, FL 20 Phosp
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Alafia River at Lithia, FL Nitrate/
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2.4.2 Potassium and Trend Analysis
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Alafia River at Lithia, FL 14 Potas
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Table 2-10. Results of Kendall's ta
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Chapter 3 Ecological Resources of C
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1) maintenance of minimum water dep
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flow regimes and these life history
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subsidy of water and nutrients that
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Chapter 4 Technical Approach for Es
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4.2.1 HEC-RAS Cross-Sections Cross
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PHABSIM analysis required acquisiti
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Figure 4-5. Upstream vegetation cro
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level, whenever possible. Immature
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major parameter altered during the
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Alafia River - Cross Section 64 - W
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Delphi method lacks the rapid feedb
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TOTAL DAYS OF INUNDATION DURING THE
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Wetted Perimeter - USGS 84.5 - SWFW
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Alafia River Station 91.5 Stage in
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section sites and corresponding flo
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4.9.1.2 Recreational Use Assessment
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Chapter 5 Results and Recommended M
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greater than 25 cfs would inundate
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For the USGS Lithia gage site, the
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40 35 30 25 20 15 10 T20 T21 T27 T3
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Wetted Perimeter (linear feet) 2000
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dominant vegetation zones, mucky so
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5.5.1 Application of PHABSIM for Bl
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5.5.3 Flow Relationships with Woody
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River begins on October 28 and ends
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Table 5-4. Maximum monthly percent-
Page 165 and 166: 5.6.3 Short-Term Compliance Standar
Page 167 and 168: Table 5-5. Maximum monthly percent-
Page 169 and 170: 5.8 Short-Term Compliance Standard
Page 171 and 172: Table 5-7. Proposed Minimum Flows f
Page 173 and 174: Biological Services Program Report
Page 175 and 176: Jones, G.W., and Upchurch, S.B., 19
Page 177 and 178: SDI Environmental Services, Inc. 20
Page 179 and 180: Upchurch, S.B. and J.R. Littlefield
Page 181 and 182: A Review of “Alafia River Minimum
Page 183 and 184: The draft report for setting MFLs f
Page 185 and 186: methodologies, analyses, and conclu
Page 187 and 188: The SWFWMD has employed a building
Page 189 and 190: MFLs for the Alafia and Myakka rive
Page 191 and 192: RALPH PLOTS AND ANALYSES Recent and
Page 193 and 194: then used to estimate percent of fl
Page 195 and 196: necessary. Such a framework should
Page 197 and 198: to use to meet the criteria of no s
Page 199 and 200: Shaw, D.T., C.N. Dahm, and S.W. Gol
Page 201 and 202: The District has added to Chapter 4
Page 207 and 208: Attachment A June 15 th , 2005 Mrs.
Page 209 and 210: The Kelly (2004) report includes a
Page 211 and 212: Figure 1. Box-and-whisker plots of
Page 213 and 214: As shown in Table 1, a nonparametri
Page 215: “augmentation” - be performed a
Page 219 and 220: APPENDIX D - District's response to
Page 221 and 222: educed by no more than 8 percent on
Page 223 and 224: sites with comparable temporal reco
Page 225 and 226: gradually removed (this appears as
Page 227 and 228: 1) The DISTRICT acknowledges the ma
Page 229 and 230: Mark Hammond, Director, Resource Ma
Page 231 and 232: Table 1. Mann-Whitney Statistical A
Page 233: Comparison of July Rainfall Totals
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