Capacity being built to aid State agencies in protecting healthy streams

SCCWRP has partnered with two State agencies to build their capacity to systematically identify streams in good ecological condition that should be priorities for protection, as well as identify which stressors are most likely to threaten the long-term health of these streams.

The project, which kicked off in June, builds on a similar project originally launched in 2023 by the State Water Board to develop a dashboard that can help managers better prioritize which streams should become the focus of long-term protection and resiliency planning efforts.

As a result of restarting the project, researchers will be coordinating this time with the California Department of Water Resources, which is building a similar assessment dashboard.

The dashboards will take advantage of multiple recently developed stream health assessment tools, including the Stream Quality Index (SQI) and Rapid Screening Causal Assessment (RSCA) – both co-developed by SCCWRP.