EPA Research Partner Support Story: Watershed condition improvements

Partners: Washington State Department of Natural Resources, Washington State Department of Ecology, Nisqually Land Trust, Nisqually Tribe
Challenge: Improve watershed condition for salmon recovery, clean drinking water and other ecosystem services
Resource: EPA watershed restoration planning tools (VELMA, Penumbra) and technical support
Project Period: 2015 – 2022

Intensive forest management in the Pacific Northwest during the past century has emphasized clearcutting on short harvest intervals (40-50 years). This highly profitable practice has converted the region’s vast pre- settlement old-growth forests to young forest landscapes. This has fundamentally changed the functioning forest watersheds and their capacity to sustainably provide essential ecosystem services (nature’s benefits) for local and downstream communities. Provisioning of drinking water, flood protection, fish and wildlife habitat, and recreational and cultural opportunities have been significantly degraded in many places.

“Guided by sophisticated new modeling from EPA ORD’s Western Ecology Division in Corvallis, combined with modeling used by the Nisqually Tribe for salmon recovery, the community forest’s management team will selectively thin the property’s timber stands to encourage old-growth forest characteristics and increase stream flow during the fall spawning season.” – Nisqually Land Trust, Executive Director Joe Kane

Indicative of these widespread changes, Puget Sound salmon populations have declined sharply from historic levels. For example, 22 of at least 37 Chinook populations are now extinct, and many other species are listed as endangered. Communities, tribes and state agencies (Departments of Natural Resources and Ecology) are now collaborating throughout the region to implement salmon recovery plans that aim to restore hydrological and ecological processes critical to salmon recovery, and more broadly, to the functioning of entire watersheds and the ecosystem services they provide. A prime example is the Nisqually Community Forest (NCF), a novel collaboration of communities in southern Puget Sound aimed at acquiring private forest industry lands from willing sellers. The NCF is a working forest owned and managed for the benefit of local communities.

EPA ORD has developed and transferred modeling tools to NCF to support their salmon-recovery planning in the Mashel River watershed, a once prime salmon producing sub-basin of the Nisqually River. NCF staff are currently using EPA’s Visualizing Ecosystem Land Management Assessments (VELMA) watershed simulator to quantify long-term effects of alternative management and climate scenarios on key salmon habitat and water quality variables. A key NCF goal is to design sustainable management plans that emphasize forest thinning and robust riparian buffers, a strategy shown by VELMA simulations to restore greater summer stream flows favorable to salmon spawning. Other ongoing NCF projects using VELMA include prioritization of land acquisitions, community-based best management practices and long-term management strategies.

Additional Resources:

• Read about EPA’s 2022 PISCES award recognizing the Nisqually Indian Tribe leadership in this work.
• Access the keynote presentation describing this project titled How Visualizing Ecosystem Land Management
• Assessments (VELMA) modeling quantifies co-benefits and tradeoffs in Community Forest management.

Read the report titled Transferability and Utility of Practical Strategies for Community Decision Making: Results from a Coordinated Case Study Assessment.