Evolution and Application of Urban Watershed Management Planning

Abstract

The development of Watershed Management Plans (WMPs) in urban areas aids municipalities in allocating resources, engaging the public and stakeholders, addressing water quality regulations, and mitigating issues related to stormwater runoff and flooding. In this study, 124 urban WMPs across the United States were reviewed to characterize historic approaches and identify emerging trends in watershed planning. Planning methods and tools were qualitatively evaluated, followed by statistical analyses of a subset of 63 WMPs to identify relationships between planning factors. Plans developed by a municipality or consultant were associated with more occurrences of hydrologic modeling and site‐specific recommendations, and fewer occurrences of characterizing social watershed factors, than plans authored by agencies, organizations, or universities. WMPs in the past decade exhibited greater frequency in the use of pollutant load models and spatially explicit hydrologic and hydraulic models. Project prioritization was found to increasingly focus on feasibility to implement proposed strategies. More recent plans additionally exhibited greater consideration for water quality, ecological health, and public participation. Innovation in planning methods and consideration of future watershed conditions are primary areas that were found to be deficient in the study WMPs, although analysis methods and tools continue to improve in the wake of advancing technology and data availability.

Gestión integrada de las cuencas hidrográficas: hacia un nuevo paradigma en la gobernanza del agua

“…Para ser efectivo, un sistema de planificación y gestión participativa en recursos de agua debe ser capaz de proveer oportunamente información sobre qué tipo y calidad de agua está disponible y dónde, y sobre quién está usando el agua y con qué propósito (Mika et al, 2019;Giri, 2021). Por lo tanto, los sistemas de gestión de agua requieren de evaluaciones oficiales adecuadas, inventarios y catastros de fuentes y suministro de aguas, como también registros que estén al día con antecedentes de usos y descargas de agua, derechos de agua, y determinación de los beneficiarios de tales derechos con sus respectivas asignaciones de agua.…”

“…Para Cervantes Zavala y sus colaboradores (2009), el protagonismo social es la participación empoderada (plena, activa y colaborativa) de los grupos y organizaciones formales e informales existentes en la cuenca. El protagonismo busca fortalecer la autonomía de los participantes como sujetos de la trasformación de su realidad; ello implica que la población y sus organizaciones deben comandar su proceso de desarrollo, decidir y actuar por sí mismas en la planificación, implementación de acciones, monitoreo y evaluación (Cervantes Zavala et al, 2009;Mika et al, 2019).…”

Impacts of land use changes on discharge and water quality in rivers and streams: Case study of the continental United States

“…Therefore, models that treat all land uses as the same could be biased toward historical land development that does not represent the hydrologic impact of contemporary land use changes. For example, contemporary urban land development has to adhere to stricter stormwater treatment regulations that were not required for historical development (Mika et al., 2019); therefore, treating urban land use as one category fails to capture the difference in non‐point source runoff between historical and contemporary land uses. Defining the impact of more recent land use changes on receiving water quality through empirical analyses is an important gap because this understanding is needed to inform watershed management plans that can reach long‐term water quality goals.…”