watervulnerability

Gallatin National Forest Watershed Vulnerability Assessment, Northern Region (R1)
PARTNERS
Data were provided by:
• The Montana Natural Resource Information System (NRIS)
• Montana Bureau of Mines and Geology (MBMG)
• US Geology Survey (USGS)
• University of Washington Climate Impacts Group (CIG)
• Montana Fisheries Information System (MFISH)
• US Forest Service (USFS) R1 Geospatial Group
• Ecoshare
Assistance with the analysis was provided by:
• Kerry Overton et al., Rocky Mountain Research Station
• Ralph Martinez, Plumas National Forest
• Jim Morrison, R1 Regional Office
ASSESSMENT OBJECTIVES
The objective of this project was to develop a reliable method to prioritize all HUC-6 watersheds within
the GNF in order to focus forest resource conservation and restoration efforts. A watershed
characterization process was first developed to assess the relative sensitivity of the watersheds to
disturbance, based on various environmental parameters. A vulnerability assessment further prioritized
watersheds using the Watershed Condition Framework, resources of value, and exposure (climate
projections).
The proposed analysis has been developed in part to address the USFS initiative in considering climate
change in land management decisions. Current studies show climate change is occurring, but climate
model projections are uncertain and models at common management scales are nonexistent. Therefore,
alternative methods of examining the potential impacts of climate change and other environmental
stressors are needed. While this initial framework was originally designed from a watershed perspective,
the results can also have implications for terrestrial management, such as fire, rangeland and wildlife
management activities on the GNF. This process is intended to make it easy to update previous runs or
examine other resources simply by rotating in the appropriate datasets. This project will also provide an
example for other Forests in Region 1 to develop similar vulnerability assessments.
SCALE OF ANALYSIS
The scale of the analysis used in the GNF assessment was HUC-6 (12-digit) subwatersheds (Figure 2) and
HUC-5 (10-digit) watersheds (Figure 3).
32 Assessing the Vulnerability of Watersheds to Climate Change