Building Resilient Watersheds
Watersheds will experience disturbances more frequently than in the past. At the same time, we are depending on these watersheds to provide a number of benefits to our communities and the public - water supply, recreation opportunities, wildlife habitat, beautiful landscapes, and economic stability. During these uncertain times, we need to be creative when designing resilient watersheds. Watersheds will have to be able to adapt to warmer and drier conditions as well as changed wildfire regimes. We are working on designing resilient watersheds for a range of forest types and community values.
Upper Poudre Watershed Resilience Plan
JW Associates is finalizing a project in the Upper Poudre (Cache La Poudre) watershed that identified post-fire priorities and completed a plan to increase watershed resilience for the Coalition for the Poudre River Watershed (CPRW) and its stakeholders. The High Park Fire burned a large area west of Fort Collins, Colorado in 2012. Following the High Park Fire many different agencies and groups completed numerous mitigation projects aimed at minimizing the negative effects of the fire. Due to different goals and objectives, as well as limits of funding, both in amount and restrictions, some additional post-fire restoration projects remained several years after the fire. The first part of this project identified remaining post-fire restoration projects and prioritized them for funding and implementation.
Colorado Springs Utilities Watershed Management
The Colorado Springs Utilities (CSU) & US Forest Service (USFS) Partnership is a collaboration with the goals of reducing the impacts of wildfires on water supply watersheds. The partnership is currently revising it's 5-Year Plan that identifies priorities for forest management treatments throughout CSU's large water supply drainage areas.
Colorado-Big Thompson Pre- and Post-Fire Planning
The Colorado-Big Thompson (C-BT) Headwaters Partnership is a collaboration between Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District, Bureau of Reclamation, National Park Service, Western Area Power Administration, Colorado State Forest Service, and U.S. Forest Service. The goals of the partnership are to; reduce wildfire risk to protect water supplies, minimize post-wildfire erosion and sedimentation to reservoirs, and restore areas that are currently recovering from past wildfires.