The Case for Regime-based Water Quality Standards

Poole, Geoffrey C.; Dunham, Jason B.; Keenan, Druscilla; Sauter, Sally T.; McCullough, Dale A.; Mebane, Christopher A.; Lockwood, Jeffrey C.; Essig, Don A.; Hicks, Mark Paul; Sturdevant, Debra J.; Materna, Elizabeth J.; Spalding, S.; Risley, John C.; Deppman, Marianne

doi:10.1641/0006-3568(2004)054[0155:tcfrwq]2.0.co;2

Cited by 85 publications

(113 citation statements)

References 12 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

111

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Our results suggest that management of hydropower operations, wetland mitigation, or conservation planning need to consider the natural temperature regime (Poole et al 2004) in its full complexity, rather than create predictions based on total temperature units delivered in a given period of time or lethal thresholds. Natural thermal regimes are complex (Arscott et al 2001) and the emphasis on lethal maxima which underlies most water quality standards may be …”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond the mean: The role of variability in predicting ecological effects of stream temperature on salmon

et al. 2012

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract. Alterations in variance of riverine thermal regimes have been observed and are predicted with climate change and human development. We tested whether changes in daily or seasonal thermal variability, aside from changes in mean temperature, could have biological consequences by exposing Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) eggs to eight experimental thermal regimes. Thermal variance impacted both emergence timing and development at emergence. Further, genetics influenced the magnitude of that response. Ecological implications include: (1) changes in thermal variability, independent of warming, have the potential to alter the timing of life history processes, (2) the commonly-used degree day accumulation model is not sufficient to predict how organisms respond to altered temperature regimes, and (3) there are likely to be genetic differences in how individuals and populations respond to future water temperature regimes.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond the mean: The role of variability in predicting ecological effects of stream temperature on salmon

et al. 2012

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In an excellent paper, Poole et al (2004) argue that rather than setting water quality standards (set levels) managers should work toward setting regime standards which describe a distribution of conditions over space and time that is desired. They argue that the concept of traditional standards arose in response to concerns over toxic materials that cause lethal conditions once they reach some simple threshold.…”

Section: Add Ecological Insurance To All Projectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, nonpoint source problems dominate restoration today and these problems vary tremendously over time and space. Setting a single threshold encourages "homogenization of naturally diverse and dynamic systems" (Poole et al 2004;page 157). Furthermore, it assumes that systems are unresponsive to gradually increasing stressors until some break point is reached and that ecosystems can not maintain their health when the threshold is temporarily exceeded or is exceeded in some patches but not others.…”

Section: Add Ecological Insurance To All Projectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reforming Watershed Restoration: Science in Need of Application and Applications in Need of Science

Palmer

2008

Estuaries and Coasts

195

159

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Coastal and inland waters are continuing to decline in many parts of the world despite major efforts made to restore them. This is due in part to the inadequate role that ecological science has played in shaping restoration efforts. A significant amount of fundamental ecological knowledge dealing with issues such as system dynamics, state changes, context-dependency of ecological response, and diversity is both under-used by managers and practitioners and under-developed by ecologists for use in realworld applications. Some of the science that is being 'used' has not been adequately tested. Thus, restoration ecology as a science and ecological restoration as a practice are in need of reform. I identify five ways in which our ecological knowledge should be influencing restoration to a far greater extent than at present including a need to: shift the focus to restoration of process and identification of the limiting factors instead of structures and single species, add ecological insurance to all projects, identify a probabilistic range of possible outcomes instead of a reference condition, expand the spatial scale of efforts, and apply hierarchical approaches to prioritization. Prominent examples of restoration methods or approaches that are commonly used despite little evidence to support their efficacy are highlighted such as the use of only structural enhancements to restore biodiversity. There are also major gaps in scientific knowledge that are of immediate need to policy makers, managers, and restoration practitioners including: predictive frameworks to guide the restoration of ecological processes, identification of social-ecological feedbacks that constrain ecosystem recovery and data to support decisions of where and how to implement restoration projects to achieve the largest gains. I encourage ecologists to respond to the demand for their scientific input so that restoration can shift from an engineering-driven process to a more sustainable enterprise that fully integrates ecological processes and social science methods.

show abstract

“…Thus, managing the flow regime is more relevant than regulating a mean annual flow. In a similar vein, Poole et al (2004) and Rieman et al (2006) challenge the validity of applying metrics developed from studies of individual organisms to whole populations and ecosystems. They contend that such threshold metrics are inappropriate because the inherent variability in aquatic ecosystems is crucial to their long-term productivity.…”

Section: Changing Scientific Understandingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Unfortunately, use of averages derived from an HRV-based snapshot understanding of past environments further obscures the fact that those environments are constantly in flux. The result is a fundamental incongruity between regulations and on-the-ground reality (Poole et al 2004): applying regulations based on environmental averages (such as stream temperature, turbidity, suspended sediment, etc.) in dynamic landscapes generates a policy inflexibility that does not allow for changes through time and across different scales, from stream reaches to large landscapes.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ecological History vs. Social Expectations: Managing Aquatic Ecosystems

Reeves¹,

Duncan²

2009

E&S

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

ABSTRACT. The emerging perspective of ecosystems as both non-equilibrium and dynamic fits aquatic ecosystems as well as terrestrial systems. It is increasingly recognized that watersheds historically passed through different conditions over time. Habitat conditions varied in quantity and quality, primarily as a function of the time since the last major disturbance and the legacy of that disturbance. Thus, to match the effects of historical processes, we would expect a variety of conditions to exist across the watersheds in a region at any time. Additionally, watersheds have different potentials to provide habitat for given fish species because of variation in physical features. This developing ecological understanding is often preempted by social desires to bring all watersheds to a "healthy" condition, which in turn is reflected in a common regulatory approach mandating a single condition as the long-term goal for all watersheds. Matching perceptions and regulations to the way aquatic systems actually change and evolve through time will be a major challenge in the future.

show abstract

The Case for Regime-based Water Quality Standards

Cited by 85 publications

References 12 publications

Beyond the mean: The role of variability in predicting ecological effects of stream temperature on salmon

Beyond the mean: The role of variability in predicting ecological effects of stream temperature on salmon

Reforming Watershed Restoration: Science in Need of Application and Applications in Need of Science

Ecological History vs. Social Expectations: Managing Aquatic Ecosystems

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About