Truckee River Ecological Integrity Assessment

The Truckee River faces the compounding stressors of climate change and human modification, altering natural flow regimes and threatening river health and ecological integrity. These highly dynamic but heavily regulated conditions have complicated land use planning decisions in the Truckee River watershed, including where to prioritize key investments in habitat restoration or locate new development. Such decisions are made more challenging by the lack of a central repository to aggregate and synthesize available data (like indicators of streamflow alteration, threats, and river health along with upland vegetation indices) that could be used to inform a variety of planning and prioritization efforts. To meet this need, we are partnering with The Martis Fund to lead an assessment of the anthropogenic factors impacting ecological integrity in the Truckee River watershed and to develop a publicly accessible, interactive web tool synthesizing the results of our analysis and the contribution of specific threats to declines in ecological integrity, along with key environmental data layers. This work will augment the capacity of local and regional organizations implementing restoration in the watershed to more effectively identify and prioritize restoration needs and aid in land use planning and development siting efforts.