Small Watershed Planning

Recipes for crafting an effective local watershed plan.  Here you will be able to access technical publications such as our restoration manuals, watershed user's guides, and articles from the Practice of Watershed Protection.  Links to some of the watershed plans we have developed are also available.

Guidebooks

The Practice of Watershed Protection: Techniques for Protecting our Nation’s Streams, Lakes, Rivers, and Estuaries
Editors: T. Schueler, H. Holland Released: 2000
Cost: Hardbound Book $80 Add to Cart
CD of all 150 Articles in PDF $20 Add to Cart
Download for Free: Individual Articles

This comprehensive reference contains 150 articles on all aspects of watershed protection and represents a broad interdisciplinary approach to restoring and maintaining watershed health.

Urban Subwatershed Restoration Manual No. 2: Methods to Develop Restoration Plans for Small Urban Watersheds (Version 2.0)
Authors: T. Schueler, A. Kitchell Released: 2005
Cost: $45 Add to Cart
Download for Free: Manual 2

Manual 2 contains detailed guidance on how to put together an effective plan to restore urban subwatersheds. The manual outlines a practical, step-by-step approach to develop, adopt and implement a subwatershed plan in your community. Within each step, the manual describes 32 different desktop analysis, field assessment, and stakeholder involvement methods used to make critical restoration management decisions.

Urban Subwatershed Restoration Manual No. 1: An Integrated Framework to Restore Small Urban Watersheds (Version 2.0)
Authors: T. Schueler Released: 2005
Cost: $30 Add to Cart
Download for Free: Manual 1

Introduces the basic concepts and techniques of urban watershed restoration, and sets forth the overall framework we use to evaluate subwatershed restoration potential. The manual emphasizes how past subwatershed alterations must be understood in order to set realistic expectations for future restoration. Presents a simple subwatershed classification system to define expected stream impacts and restoration potential. Defines seven broad groups of restoration practices, and describes where to look in the subwatershed to implement them. Presents a condensed summary of a planning approach to craft effective subwatershed restoration plans.

Impacts of Impervious Cover on Aquatic Systems
Authors: Center for Watershed Protection Released: 2003
Cost: $25 Add to Cart
Download for Free

A comprehensive exploration of more than 225 multi-disciplinary studies documenting the hydrological, physical, water quality, and biological impacts of urbanization and its accompanying impervious cover. Covering many different eco-regions, climatic zones and stream types and with more than 100 graphics and tables, this 150-page report represents the Center's most thorough examination of imperviousness to date.

Impervious Cover and Land Use in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed
Authors: K. Cappiella, K. Brown Released: 2001

This report summarizes a Center study that analyzed 12 suburban land uses in four Chesapeake Bay watershed communities. The study derived impervious cover-land use coefficients that can be used along with land use data to estimate current and future impervious cover in your own watershed. Included in the report is a method of using these numbers to estimate impervious cover, a detailed study methodology, a review of other methodologies, and an analysis of research documenting the relationship between impervious cover and stream quality.

Urban Subwatershed Restoration Manual No. 8: Pollution Source Control Practices (Version 2.0)
Authors: T. Schueler, C. Swann, T. Wright, S. Sprinkle Released: 2005
Cost: $35 Add to Cart
Download for Free: Manual 8

This manual presents several methods to assess subwatershed pollution sources in order to develop and target education and/or enforcement efforts that can prevent or reduce polluting behaviors and operations. Manual 8 outlines more than 100 different "carrot" and "stick" options that can be used for this purpose. The manual also presents profile sheets that describe 21 specific stewardship practices for residential neighborhoods, and 15 pollution prevention techniques for control of storm water hotspots.

A User's Guide to Watershed Planning in Maryland
Authors: Center for Watershed Protection Released: 2006

This guide for developing watershed plans in Maryland provides a common planning framework for Maryland communities, assembles planning resources into one place, integrates regulatory drivers, and presents methods necessary for completing a watershed plan. The guide represents a compilation of information gathered from 25 interviews with state agency program managers and local government staff and incorporates a review of more than 47 local watershed planning surveys.

Reports and Surveys

Watershed Planning Needs Survey of Coastal Plain Communities
Authors: Center for Watershed Protection   Released: 2008

This memorandum summarizes the methods, results and analyses of a web-based survey developed and implemented by the Center to assess the needs and current practices of watershed planning in coastal communities. The information generated from the survey, designed around the eight tools of watershed protection, will be used to determine the watershed techniques that are most commonly applied, the major gaps in watershed management, and examples of innovative programs and practices in the Coastal Plain.

CD Resource

Approaches to the Eight Tools of Watershed Protection CD
Authors: Center for Watershed Protection Released: 1999
Cost: $25 Add to Cart

A comprehensive guide to proper watershed management and includes detailed discussions of land use planning, land conservation, aquatic buffers, better site design, erosion and sediment control, stormwater management, non-stormwater discharges, and stewardship. PC/Mac compatible. PowerPoint a requirement for running on Mac OS.

Example Watershed Plans

Guánica Bay Watershed Management Plan
Authors: Center for Watershed Protection  Released: 2008

This report by the Center for Watershed Protection for the Puerto Rico Department of Environmental and Natural Resources presents a framework for managing the Guánica Bay watershed in southwestern Puerto Rico.

James River Vulnerability Analysis
Authors: Center for Watershed Protection Released: 2007

A vulnerability analysis of James River sub-watersheds to identify which watersheds contribute the most sediment to the James River from stormwater runoff. The project evaluates existing information for sub-watersheds and identifies priority watersheds for protection.

Coral Bay Watershed Management Plan: A Pilot Project for Watershed Planning in the USVI
Authors: Center for Watershed Protection Released: 2007

This report presents a framework for managing the Coral Bay Watershed, St. John, USVI based on a pilot watershed planning study conducted primarily with the USVI Department of Planning and Natural Resources Division of Coastal Zone Management.

Bronx River Watershed Assessment and Management Report
Authors: Center for Watershed Protection, Biohabitats, Inc. Released: 2007

In 2005, the Center with Biohabitats, Inc. conducted extensive Bronx River Watershed Stream Corridor and Upland Assessments, and in 2007 finalized the Bronx River Watershed Assessment and Management Report.

Little Lick Creek Local Watershed Plan
Authors: Upper Neuse River Basin Association, Center for Watershed Protection, North Carolina Division of Water Quality Released: 2006

The Little Lick Creek (NC) Local Watershed Plan recommends nine comprehensive watershed management strategies for restoring the Watershed’s water quality and aquatic habitat in the short-term and protecting them in the long-term.

Centennial and Wilde Lake Watershed Restoration Plan
Authors: Center for Watershed Protection, Tetra Tech, Inc. Released: 2005

This watershed management plan provides a summary of the recommendations for Centennial and Wilde Lake watersheds (Howard Co. MD) from a baseline analysis, stream assessment, upland pollution prevention, and retrofit fieldwork and stakeholder process.

Paxton Creek Baseline and Stormwater Retrofit Assessment
Authors: Center for Watershed Protection Released: 2003

Result of a detailed stream and subwatershed assessments in the Upper Paxton Creek North and Lower Paxton Creek North subwatersheds - a restoration plan for the two Paxton Creek North subwatersheds that summarizes baseline conditions, outlines goals and recommendations, and identifies priority restoration projects with conceptual designs for future implementation.

Powhatan Creek Watershed Management Plan
Authors: Center for Watershed Protection, James River Association, James City County Released: 2001

This Virginia watershed management plan is designed to protect and restore this historically significant creek.

Yarmouth Creek Watershed Management Plan
Authors: Center for Watershed Protection, James River Association, James City County Released: 2003

This watershed management plan identifies critical issues and an action plan to protect this relatively pristine Virginia watershed.

The Practice of Watershed Protection Articles

Below are articles from The Practice of Watershed Protection that pertain specifically to this topic. To purchase the hardbound book or CD of these articles, please visit our store. For citing these articles, add the article author and title to the following: The Practice of Watershed Protection. 2000. T. Schueler and H. Holland, eds. Center for Watershed Protection. Ellicott City, MD. Authors of each individual article can be found underneath the title in the file. To view comprehensive list of all downloadable articles from this book, visit the Practice of Watershed Protection Articles page.

27. The Tools of Watershed Protection
28. Basic Concepts in Watershed Planning
29. Crafting Better Watershed Plans
30. Economics of Watershed Protection
31. Microbes and Urban Watersheds: Implications for Watershed Managers
32. Methods for Estimating Effective Impervious Area of Urban Watersheds
128. Choosing the Right Watershed Management Structure

Links

Protecting Water Resources with Higher-Density Development

This EPA report examines the impacts of high- and low-density development on water resources by modeling three scenarios of different densities at three scales—one-acre level, lot level, and watershed level—and at three different time series build-out examples. It then examined storm water runoff from different development densities to determine the comparative difference between scenarios.

Draft Handbook for Developing Watershed Plans to Restore and Protect Our Waters

EPA’s Office of Water has released a 415-page guidebook for communities, watershed groups, and local, state, tribal, and federal environmental agencies to be used as a tool in developing and implementing watershed plans. Intended to supplement existing watershed planning guides, this handbook provides specific guidance in quantifying existing pollutant loads, developing estimates of the load reductions required to meet water quality standards, developing effective management measures, and tracking progress once the plan is implemented.

Watershed Plan Builder & Webcast

An interactive, Web-based tool to improve efforts by states and local communities in protecting and restoring local water resources. EPA hosted a Webcast on the Watershed Plan Builder in May 2007.

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