Understanding Water Availability Across Landscapes in a Time of Increasing Drought

The permanence of stream flow in stream networks is a critical driver of water quality, in-stream and riparian ecological processes, and downstream water availability. Scientists currently know remarkably little, however, about how water is distributed across landscapes and how water availability changes in space and time in relation to land cover, geologic, and climatic drivers. This webinar highlights the framework and early results from a new initiative to address this fundamental information gap: WATR (Water Availability and Thermal Regimes). The WATR effort was initiated in the Great Basin of the western United States where limited water availability influences a host of sensitive species ranging from native trout to greater sage-grouse. With establishment of the WATR effort in the Great Basin, Jason Dunham and his colleagues are hoping to motivate additional efforts in other regions of the Nation to better understand water availability at the landscape extent. This webinar was conducted as part of the Climate Change Science and Management Webinar Series, hosted in partnership by the USGS National Climate Change and Wildlife Science Center and the FWS National Conservation Training Center.