Description: <DIV STYLE="text-align:Left;"><DIV><DIV><P><SPAN>Development of the Maryland Healthy Watersheds Assessment (MDHWA) establishes a framework of watershed health and vulnerability metrics for assessing Maryland waters and watersheds. Development of this statewide assessment was built upon the previously completed Chesapeake Bay Healthy Watersheds Assessment (CHWA, Roth et al. 2020), making use of more recent and refined regional data, and also integrating state-specific data where possible. The assessment is intended to inform watershed management decision-making to sustain the health of state-identified healthy watersheds, which have been defined in Maryland as the watersheds associated with its designated high-quality, Tier II waters. The proposed MDHWA and its suite of health and vulnerability metrics provide information related to specific threats facing Maryland. The MDHWA will increase State capacity to better understand the broad spectrum of health and vulnerability issues affecting Maryland’s streams and healthy watersheds. Data are intended to be useful to the State’s Tier II waters program, especially for assessing vulnerabilities of healthy watersheds to future degradation and helping to target and inform management efforts in these areas. </SPAN></P><P><SPAN>The MDHWA will serve as a model that can be replicated in other jurisdictions and updated in future assessments. Some of the data sets used to build the MDHWA are regional or national in scope and therefore readily available for use in other jurisdictions. Some data sources used in analyses are Maryland-specific, such as data from the Maryland Biological Stream Survey (MBSS), but will serve as examples of the types of data that may be available or could be pursued in other jurisdictions. While the MDHWA will be customized to Maryland’s specific issues, concerns, and data sources, the approach and framework developed for Maryland is intended to be customizable for other locations. </SPAN></P></DIV></DIV></DIV>
Service Item Id: 86d4093de7a34ad1a6fc2afe9f77c115
Copyright Text: Nancy Roth, Brian Pickard, Ph.D.
Mark Southerland, Ph.D.
Paige Hobaugh