Ecological Health Assessment for Reclamation Managed Reservoirs

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The proposed research, developing and applying an ecological health assessment (EHA) for reservoirs, will play an important role in identifying a balance between water management, habitat requirements for fishes and environmental health. This research is also matched with a priority area of the Science and Technology Program emphasizing climate impacts because of the potential to recognize fluctuation of hydrologic and thermal regimes that could be due to climate change. The development of a web-based database that could apply an EHA for a reservoir could be a valuable tool for general characterization of the aquatic ecosystem and making comparisons between Reclamation reservoirs. Also, such a database could be used to describe baseline conditions for future reporting and coupled with literature reviews to design more specific studies when necessary. Furthermore, these data would be very important sources for long-term trends because individual parameters would be varied widely due to an ecological complexity. If made available on the web (intranet) the potential for use (and improvement) would be increased over time.

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