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- Introduction
- Sacramento River Basin
- Sacramento River Basin Watersheds
- Water Quality Monitoring in the Sacramento River Basin
- Measuring the Health in the Sacramento River Basin
- Watershed Projects - Leading the Way
- Antelope Creek Watershed Stewardship - Lassen National Forest
- Battle Creek Restoration Project
- Bear Creek Meadow Restoration
- Bear River Setback Levee Project
- Cooperative Sagebrush Steppe Initiative - Butte Creek Project
- Cow Creek - Bassett Diversion Fish Passage Project
- HFQLG Forest Recovery Act, Pilot Project
- Hamilton City Levee Setback
- Iron Mountain Mine Superfund Cleanup
- Lassen Creek Stream and Meadow Restoration
- Lower American River Sunrise Side Channel Project
- Lower Clear Creek Floodway Rehabilitation
- Pit River Channel Erosion
- Red Bluff Diversion Dam Fish Passage Improvement
- Red Clover Creek Restoration Project
- Redding Allied Stream Team
- Sunflower Coordinated Resource Management Program
- Photo and Contributor Credits
- Resources
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- Conservation on Cache Creek
- Fixing Incised Creek Banks on the Feather River
- Flooding On The Sacramento River
- Google Earth Tour of Butte Creek
- Google Earth Tour of Cache Creek
- Google Earth Tour of the Feather River
- Google Tour of Northeast Subregion
- Google Tour of the American River Watershed and Truckee Watershed
- Google Tour of the Sacramento Mainstem
- Helicopter flight up the American River
- Resource Conservation in the Pit River watershed
- Restoring Fish Habitat on the Feather River
- Spring Run Salmon in Butte Creek
- Watershed work on the mainstem of the Sacramento River
- Wildfire Management in the Sacramento Watershed
- Sacramento River Basin Report Card
- Cover and Acknowledgements
- Table of Contents
- List of Acronyms
- Executive Summary and Report Card
- 1.0 Introduction and Background
- 2.0 Indicator Selection
- 3.0 Indicator Generation, Evaluation, Aggregation
- 4.0 General Methods and Principles
- 4.1. Reporting and analysis subwatershed units
- 4.2 Scoring: Distance to target/reference and scoring transformations
- 4.3 Trend/time series analysis
- 4.4 Confidence in Report Card findings
- 4.5 Spatial scale and aggregation of fine scale data to subwatershed
- 4.6 Temporal scale and aggregation
- 4.7 Cross-indicator score aggregation
- 4.8 Data management and transformation
- 5.0 Interpretation
- 6.0 Conclusions and Recommendations
- Appendix A: Glossary of Terms
- Appendix B: Indicator Selection Criteria
- Climate Change / Drought
- Flooding
- Invasive Plants
- Background on Invasive Plants
- Invasive Plants of the Sacramento River Watershed
- Invasive Plant Organizations
- Weed Management Areas
- Butte WMA
- Colusa, Glenn and Tehama WMA
- El Dorado County Invasive Weed Management Group
- Lake WMA
- Lassen County Noxious Weed SWAT Team
- Modoc WMA
- Napa County WMA
- Nevada/Placer WMA
- Plumas/Sierra Noxious WMA
- Sacramento WMA
- School Based Watershed Education - Upper Feather River
- Shasta WMA
- Siskiyou WMA
- Solano WMA
- Yolo WMA
- Yuba/Sutter WMA
- County Agriculture Departments
- Resource Conservation Districts
- State and Federal Agencies
- Non-Governmental Organizations
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- Resources
- Invasive Plant Mapping
- Projects
- Responsible Landscaping
- On-Line Regulatory Permitting Guide
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1.1 Why do we need indicators?
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.