1.1 Why do we need indicators?

The Feather River Watershed

The Feather River Watershed is located in California’s northern Sierra Nevada and encompasses a broad variety of terrain, climate, historic use, and flora and fauna. It drains over 6,000 square miles of landscape, from the Sierra Nevada crest westward into the Sacramento River. It is the largest tributary to the Sacramento River below Shasta Lake. Watershed elevation ranges from ~100 to over 10,000 feet, and annual precipitation varies broadly from more than 70 inches on the wet western slopes to less that 12 inches on the arid east side. Vegetation is diverse and ranges from productive agricultural lands, grasslands, and oak savannah in the west to sparse sage/yellow pine plant communities in the east.

The Plumas and Tahoe National Forests manage over 75 percent of the watershed, while the Sacramento Valley portions are predominantly privately owned and are agricultural. The Upper Feather River Watershed is a rural landscape and includes the small communities of Almanor, Quincy, Nevada City, and Grass Valley. The Lower Feather River Watershed is also predominantly rural, but does include the larger towns of Oroville, Yuba City, and Marysville.

The Lower Feather River Watershed supports salmon (predominantly fall-run; few spring-run), but there are no salmon above Oroville and Englebright dams. The Upper Feather River Watershed has several very active and successful watershed groups and agencies: FRCRM; Feather River, Butte, Nevada, and Sutter County Resource Conservation Districts; SYRCL; Friends of Deer Creek; and the Yuba Bear Watershed Council.

1.1 - Why do we need indicators?

Environmental, economic, and social indicators are used world-wide to report on the condition of human, natural, and combined human-natural systems. Indicator frameworks vary depending on what is being measured and on the intended reporting audience. The National Research Council (NRC, 2000) identified two types of frameworks: those that measure the status or condition of the system, and those that seek to identify cause and effect relationships. Many contemporary indicator frameworks incorporate both condition indicators and indicators of pressures or influences. This combination allows for a condition assessment and an evaluation of what may be driving condition. This reflects a common aspect of these frameworks — that they are practical and intended to support decision-making, usually in support of restoration, regulatory, or sustainability goals. This combination allows for evaluation and reporting on system attributes that are important for watershed and regional residents and stakeholders, as reflected in regional and local goals.

For the Report Card, the selection, analyses, and interpretation of indicators were conducted in an open, transparent process, which provides an educational (and networking) opportunity for all involved. Choosing indicators that reflect conditions and understanding how they might change in response to various influences facilitates a better understanding of how actions in a specific region can affect watershed function and processes. The largest watershed within the Sacramento River Basin, the Feather River Watershed, was chosen as the focus for this first phase of evaluating status and trends in watershed condition.

For this focus watershed, we evaluated aspects of the whole system (social, economic, and environmental conditions), at the watershed scale, in order to help us better understand some of the relationships between these conditions and watershed management actions. The value of protecting and restoring watershed condition (and by inference, watershed functions) is in direct proportion to the services well-functioning watersheds provide. Assessing the value of watershed services requires development of the appropriate tools, such as the indicator system described here. We developed the Report Card to describe the status and trend of the conditions in our focus watershed. To the degree that data sources allowed, each of the science-based indicators were assessed relative to social targets.