Abstract
Water yield, water supply and quality, wildlife habitat, and ecosystem productivity and services are important societal concerns for natural resource management in the 21st century. Watershed-scale ecohydrologic studies can provide needed context for addressing complex spatial and temporal dynamics of these functions and services. This study was conducted on the 5240 ha Turkey Creek watershed (WS 78) draining a 3rd order stream on the Santee Experimental Forest within the South Carolina Atlantic Coastal Plain, USA. The study objectives were to present the hydrologic characteristics of this relatively undisturbed, except by a hurricane (Hugo, 1989), forested water-shed and to discuss key elements for watershed management, including water resource assessment (WRM), modeling integrated water resources management, environmental assessment, land use planning, social impact assessment, and information management. Runoff coefficients, flow duration curves, flood and low flow frequency curves, surface and ground water yields were assessed as elements of the WRM. Results from the last 10 years of interdisciplinary studies have also advanced the understanding of coastal ecohydrologic characteristics and processes, water balance, and their modeling including the need of high resolution LiDAR data. For example, surface water dynamics were shown to be regulated primarily by the water table, dependent upon pre- cipitation and evapotranspiration (ET). Analysis of pre- and post-Hugo streamflow data showed somewhat lower but insignificant (α = 0.05) mean annual flow but increased frequency of larger flows for the post-Hugo compared with the pre-Hugo level. However, there was no significant difference in mean annual ET, potentially indicating the resiliency of this coastal forest. Although the information from this study may be useful for comparison of coastal ecohydrologic issues, it is becoming increasingly clear that multi-site studies may be warranted to understand these complex systems in the face of climate change, sea level rise, and increasing development in coastal regions.
Highlights
Managing forested wetland landscapes to sustain water quality, water quantity, and productivity require a detailed understanding of functional linkages between ecohydrologic processes and management practices
These results seem to be in reasonable agreement within the standard errors, except for the 50and 100-yr periods with underpredictions as much as by 29%, compared to the results obtained for this study watershed using the United States Geological Survey (USGS) regional formulae [47] for rural coastal basins developed using data from South Carolina, North Carolina, and Georgia because of its location in rural areas of the South Carolina Coastal Plain
How do we develop research techniques to minimize landscape scale eco-hydrological effects of forest management treatments like prescribed fire or biomass treatment, fuel hazard reduction generally applied for improving the forest health in this landscape?
Summary
Managing forested wetland landscapes to sustain water quality, water quantity, and productivity require a detailed understanding of functional linkages between ecohydrologic processes and management practices. Recognizing the importance of long-term data from a relatively undisturbed large forested landscape in a rapidly changing coastal environment, the hydrologic monitoring was reactivated in 2005 by United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service (http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/charleston/) by installing a flow gauging station approximately 200 m upstream of the previous gauging station in collaboration with the College of Charleston and the United States Geological Survey (USGS) The goal of this multi-collaborative approach was to transfer sound science-based information and provide a basis for continuing and expanded interdisciplinary research to address critical issues surrounding the sustainable management of present and future water resources on the low-gradient forested landscape of the southeastern Coastal Plain region, as was synthesized recently by [7] for research studies conducted in last 10 years. The scale of the entire Turkey Creek watershed (not shown) with the 6th level 12-digit Hydrologic Unit Code (HUC) of 40 - 160 km drainage area is an intermediate one for analysis of watershed conditions but large enough to have many of the hydrologic complexities suggested and be addressed at national forest planning scales, but small enough to be effectively evaluated, managed and addressed at larger project and watershed improvement scales [28] [29]
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