Christopher Bridges
Riparian forests play a crucial role in aquatic ecosystems by filtering runoff, stabilizing streambanks and providing habitat. While a great amount of literature has documented pollution removal, few projects have conducted landscape-level, empirical analyses of riparian forest contributions to water quality. This poster describes how precision conservation technologies were used to develop a spatially-explicit inventory of Tennessee riparian forests, and to explore how this data relates to stream quality. National Land Cover Database tree canopy cover data was examined to quantify forest cover in riparian zones for 56,904 reaches. Comparisons were made between HUC-8 watersheds, HUC-12 sub-watersheds, and individual stream reaches based on status on the 2006 303(d) list. Preliminary analysis indicates significant differences, most notably that fully supporting streams exhibited 14.4 % greater canopy cover in 30m riparian zones than streams with impaired biological communities. Findings illustrate the significance of streamside forests and the need to target riparian restoration efforts in agricultural and urban catchments. Additionally, protected natural areas on the Cumberland Plateau provide extensive riparian forest cover along High Quality Waters (HQW). The methodology employed in this study indicates applicability for natural resource policy analysis, habitat conservation planning and the prioritization of streams for ecological restoration efforts.
Keywords: Riparian forests, Stream habitat, Freshwater ecosystem management, GIS