Description: The Healthy Watersheds map service provides a series of nested maps and ranked scores for each NHD+ catchment in the state. Each map layer shows scores related to each catchment’s health or vulnerability to future degradation. The map layers are arranged as indices and subindices (in the future we plan to add additional layers showing metric scores that the indices and subindices are based on). The ranked scores can be used to determine which catchments could be prioritized for protection efforts for watersheds that are currently healthy but may be vulnerable to future degradation.
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Description: Watershed Vulnerability Index scores represent an approximation of the potential for future degradation of aquatic ecosystem health. They depict projected changes in natural and anthropogenic watershed characteristics that are related to aquatic ecosystem health rather than explicit changes to the physical, chemical, and biological makeup of a stream, lake, or wetland. The index is most valuable when used in conjunction with information on watershed health, such as Landscape Condition Index scores and/or Aquatic Ecosystem Health Index scores.
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Description: These metrics describe the extent of natural land cover throughout the watershed and in key functional areas, and connectivity between intact natural areas. They characterize the landscape condition attribute of watershed health.
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Description: Species presence/absence records for each of the four aquatic invasive metrics (EWM, CLP, SW, ZM) were acquired from WDNR (Jennifer Filbert, personal communication). These data denote whether each species is presently established in nearly 1,300 lakes throughout the state. For each species, data were summarized by WHD catchment, with catchments assigned a value of 1 if the species was reported to be present and a value of 0 is the species was reported to be absent.
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Description: The Healthy Watersheds map service provides a series of nested maps and ranked scores for each NHD+ catchment in the state. Each map layer shows scores related to each catchment’s health or vulnerability to future degradation. The map layers are arranged as indices and subindices (in the future we plan to add additional layers showing metric scores that the indices and subindices are based on). The ranked scores can be used to determine which catchments could be prioritized for protection efforts for watersheds that are currently healthy but may be vulnerable to future degradation.
Name: Habitat Condition and Geomorphology Sub-Index
Display Field: CATCHID
Type: Feature Layer
Geometry Type: esriGeometryPolygon
Description: The term habitat encompasses a host of physical, chemical, and biological characteristics of aquatic ecosystems and the optimal set of conditions for aquatic life will vary from one species to another. Here, habitat condition is assessed from multi-scale stream and wetland habitat characteristics. Several of these directly or indirectly reflect aspects of fluvial geomorphology, such as channel shape or bed substrate. Selected metrics are therefore grouped as habitat condition and geomorphology metrics.
Five metrics are used to describe habitat condition and geomorphology. Metric data sources and calculation methods are summarized below:
Stream Patch Size
Road Crossing Density
Canal/Ditch Density
Stream Habitat Rating
Reed Canary Grass Dominated Wetlands
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Description: A stream’s biological condition can be described by the abundance, diversity, and functional organization of fish, invertebrates, and other aquatic fauna. A healthy biotic community demonstrates a natural balance of native species that are integrated across trophic and functional levels and are able to adapt to short- and long-term variation in ecosystem conditions. Healthy watersheds support biotic communities with these characteristics due to hydrologic, geomorphic, and water quality regimes that provide habitat of sufficient size, variety, and connectivity.
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Description: Under natural conditions, stream and lake water chemistry varies within a characteristic range. For example, reference concentrations of total phosphorus have been reported to average 30-40 μg/L in Wisconsin’s nonwadeable streams (Robertson, et al., 2006). Aquatic biota have adapted to such conditions, and the presence of water quality parameters in their natural range is a key feature of healthy streams.
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Description: A stream’s flow regime refers to its characteristic pattern of flow magnitude, timing, frequency, duration, and rate of change (Poff, et al., 1997). The flow regime plays a central role in shaping aquatic ecosystems and the health of biological communities. Aquatic organisms have adapted to the range of physical and chemical conditions brought about by natural flow patterns. Alteration of natural flows (e.g., more frequent floods) can reduce the quantity and quality of aquatic habitat, degrade aquatic life, and result in the loss of ecosystem services.
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Description: Climate change metrics are quantified from runoff and pollutant load projections acquired from WDNR (Theresa Nelson, personal communication). Gridded projections were obtained for the years 2010 and 2050 for mean growing season (May-September) surface runoff, TN load, TP load, and TSS load.
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Description: Natural land cover maintains hydrologic processes within a watershed, protects aquatic ecosystems from nonpoint sources of pollution, provides habitat for aquatic biota, and supports connectivity between habitat patches. Future changes in land cover will occur with the expansion of urban and agricultural lands. Projected Change in Anthropogenic Land Cover is therefore included as a metric of watershed vulnerability.
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Description: Surface and groundwater withdrawals can greatly alter a watershed’s natural hydrologic regime, and thus, the health of aquatic ecosystems. Future water demand will increase beyond current levels with population growth and expansion of agriculture, industry, and mining. Projections of future water use are not presently available for Wisconsin at a scale that is compatible with the Assessment. For this reason, current Groundwater Withdrawal Volume is used as a metric of water use vulnerability under the assumption that future patterns of water use will follow patterns of the present day.
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Description: Catchments identified as both very healthy and highly vulnerable to degradation in Wisconsin’s Healthy Watersheds Assessment. Specifically, such catchments are those that are simultaneously within the top 25% of rank-normalized catchments for both health and vulnerability.
Description: Catchments upstream of those that were identified as both very healthy and highly vulnerable to degradation in Wisconsin’s Healthy Watersheds Assessment. Specifically, such catchments are those that are simultaneously within the top 25% of rank-normalized catchments for both health and vulnerability. Upstream catchments were constrained to those within the same HUC12.
Description: HUC10 watersheds with higher nitrogen levels in well water compared to other watersheds in Wisconsin were identified on a statewide basis. The analysis included both the number and percent of public wells with nitrate concentrations of 5 mg/L or greater. The threshold of 5 mg/L was chosen as being well within the range of “human activity influenced” groundwater degradation for this nutrient, and is also thought to place the public system at greater risk of exceeding the enforcement standard of 10 mg/L. The top 10% of HUC10 watersheds statewide are considered as the top group.
Description: Watersheds were analyzed according to SPARROW model incremental yields and median stream concentrations of phosphorus monitored during the growing season. The top group HUC 10 watersheds listed below comprises about 10% of the HUC 10 watersheds in the Mississippi River Basin. They are either the top 20% for both SPARROW incremental yield modeling and stream monitoring growing season concentrations, or the top 10% of either SPARROW incremental yield modeling or stream monitoring growing season concentrations, or the top 30% for the other.