Abstract
AbstractRecent court cases have questioned whether all headwater streams are jurisdictional waters under the US Clean Water Act. Rapid field-based indicators of hydrologic permanence are needed for making jurisdictional determinations. Our study objectives were to: 1) identify physical characteristics of forested headwater streams that best distinguish perennial, intermittent, and ephemeral reaches and 2) assess the applicability of existing rapid field-based tools for classifying hydrologic permanence across a wide geographic range. We surveyed reach- and drainage-scale characteristics at 113 sites across 10 study forests in the US. Streams in 4 core forests (61 core sites) were sampled over 2 consecutive years and were used in model construction. Streams in 6 satellite forests (72 satellite sites) were used to validate the models over a broader geographic range. Discriminant function models successfully differentiated hydrologic permanence categories at core sites. Drainage area, the Ohio Environmental ...
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