Watershed Assessment

Few examples of balanced economics and ecosystems exist among managed lands. The key to successful long-term natural resource protection and/or restoration lies in the sustainability of economic activities in the watershed.

Five E's Unlimited employs principles of landscape ecology in its work on watershed-wide resource management and planning because this approach simultaneously emphasizes understanding the ecological, social, and economic consequences of changes in urban and rural land-use and design. Blending principles from geography, sociology, economics, and ecology, this approach avoids short-sighted solutions and instead demands a comprehensive understanding of how humans interact with the built and natural environment to ensure sustainable land-use that coincides with protection of both natural resources and cultural assets.

WE CAN MEET YOUR NEEDS in developing adaptive watershed management strategies for protection and restoration of valuable natural resources by working with you in the following areas.

• Classifying critical watersheds to establish priorities for conservation through the development of land-use diversity and management strategies.
• Identifying critical threats, such as surface and groundwater pollution, to a watershed's integrity in order to protect its resources and value to society.
• Making watershed management recommendations to ensure sustainable, clean water flow and the maintenance of productive aquatic resources.
• Identifying system-wide controlling processes and mechanisms to distinguish environmental indicators for ecosystem health evaluation.
• Recommending land-use impact mitigation, habitat restoration programs, and other remediation techniques in watershed disputes.
• Analyzing the socio-economic value of watersheds and their environmental services for policy development and management planning.

Some of the different types of client work that Five E's Unlimited has performed in Integrated Watershed Assessment includes the following.

• Investigation of interactions among land-use patterns, community practices, water users, and industries to design actions toward advancing equity, participation, and water resources sustainability for multiple watershed users.
• Development of a management protocol for sustainable ecosystem restoration of coastal bay watersheds with recommendations for tools to evaluate restoration efforts using process/parameter indicators.
• Use of remote sensing techniques in combination with historical and new ground-truth verification data to evaluate the success of ecosystem protection goals in mid-Atlantic coastal bay environments.
• Leading of multi-discipline teams assuming responsibility for sound water resources use, information needs research, and community-based environmental protection activities.
• Design of tributary strategies in coastal bay watersheds that emphasize enhanced vegetated buffer areas between upland development and coastal waters, significantly decreasing both nutrient and suspended sediment flow to coastal bay waters.
• Provision of technical advice on sedimentation control, forestry and range management, water conservation management, wastewater treatment facilities design, and technical information dissemination systems.
• Design and facilitation of public participatory approaches to integrated water resources decision-making.
• Conduct of conflict resolution processes to develop consensual use of water resources among competing stakeholders and recommendation of institutional arrangements to achieve adaptive, integrated watershed management.