Greetings

Watershed Health describes how well ecological systems are functioning.

https://www.epa.gov/hwp/developing-watershed-health-index-introduction

https://www.epa.gov/hwp/basic-information-and-answers-frequent-questions#whathealthy

https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_are_the_signs_of_watershed_health

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/cf9a/432898602bd77383be524231f6e15cb30275.pdf

Well,

Watershed health, watershed sustainability and watershed stability are occurred naturally and synchronized with the factors of hydrological cycle, without any artificial effectiveness.

Regards

Off course , they compliment each other ....

Yes, they compliment each other. Healthy watershed or sustained watershed or stable watershed sometimes represent the same hydrological and ecological condition of a watershed.

Dear All

Thanks for your contribution to this discussion

It is appreciated if introduce some important papers or documents to show their calculation in watershed scale! as well as verify your opinions!

In my idea they could not considered same. I think there are some differences between them.

Greetings.

Interesting question. I believe that watershed health and watershed stability are part of the foundations for sustainable watershed. In other words, watershed health and stability contribute to watershed sustainability.

Best regards

I agree with Dr. Hezbavi, that there is some differences between them. But for sure they are interconnected. Health will contribute to stability of the watershed. watershed sustainability or sustainable development of a watershed is the ultimate goal.

However, watershed is a large scale area, with different components, from natural resources (water, soil, air and biodiversity), as well as, rural and urban communities. It is a challenging task to achieve the ultimate goal of watershed sustainability. There is technical considerations, as well as social, economical and environmental considerations and issue.

best wishes

Thanks Dr. Khorsandi

In your idea, can we say that the differences of the definitions may be related to the used indicators for assessing?

are the indicators for WH, WSu and WSt, same or different?

Are their measuring methods or approaches are different?

It is fine if let me know your ideas.

What do you mean by 'watershed sustainability'? I have done watershed engineering (predicting flood levels, managing point sources of pollution, regulating flows within the system to minimize extremes, etc), but I've never used those two terms together in that way. Do you mean the ability of the of the people living within the watershed, and reliant on only the ecological services of the watershed, to be able to meet their needs in less than 24h/d/ca?

Watershed stability means (to me, other understandings are sure to exist) that the system is in dynamic equilibrium, with a factor of safety of the channels and valleys in the long term of 1.0. That species succession is continuous. That the demands humans place on the watershed are significantly less that the assimilative capacity. And so on.

Watershed health would be the instantaneous measure of the way things are - we would use water chemistry as indicators of changes, or the presence of invasive species, or changes in channel migration rates. Inventories of wetlands and forest cover. Presence of fish species (trophic levels, sensitivity to disturbance, etc). Flow rates (especially if unusually high or low) and water temperature.

Impacts on Watershed Health may be an indication of Watershed Stability being decreased, but it won't be a direct 1:1 relationship.

Thanks Douglas Nuttall

Interesting view of point. I am searching for available definition/s of the mentioned terminology. I would like to know how we can understand the watershed is healthy but is not stable!

Or when the watershed could be healthy but not stable!

When it is possible the watershed could be sustainable but not stable!

I would like to know how they are different! IS it possible the time duration is an important as you mentioned, the WH is instantaneous measure. So how about the WSt and WSu?

I before have read that the WSt is a description of the dynamic properties. A watershed is considered stable or robust if it returns to its original state after a perturbation, exhibits low temporal variability, or does not change dramatically in the face of a perturbation.

I don't have any sources - sorry.

I don't like the idea of watershed sustainability unless one is including all of the social, economic, and ecologic functions simultaneously - I think 'sustainability' must be primarily humanocentric. While a watershed is a rational planning scale spatially, I don't know what the rational planning scale would be temporally. Longer than a human lifetime, clearly. At the scale of communities? So centuries to millennia? The Ottawa River flows in a rift valley 485 million years old, while it's tributaries formed on the bottom of a glacial sea, over the last 12000 years.

In human contexts, sustainability is expected to be able to be projected well past any rational planning horizon. Watershed sustainability could therefore be much longer than typical human time scales (I don't like the concept, but I'll play along).

So you could be implying 'Health' is immediate - a drought will negatively impact watershed health - maybe in the order of a couple of years or less. Then Stability would be in a human time scale, say 20 to 50 years, and Sustainability would be in a community time scale - say 200 years or so.

Healthy but not Stable - a change in conditions has triggered downcutting, increasing the rate of sediment transport, but the indicators used to predict watershed health (species diversity, biomass at specific trophic levels, area of forest cover, etc) do not indicate a problem.

Unhealthy but stable - thermal regime changed due to stormwater management, native species eliminated and invasive species dominating. Entire watershed is developed, and not allowed to be dynamic. Not at all healthy, but not in flux.

Stable but not sustainable - stable now, but human activities will eventually cause the system to be not as supportive of human life in a foreseeable future - agriculture is causing de-carbonization of the soils, which will lead to the need for significant nutrient additions and thus will contribute to eutrophication in a foreseeable future.

Sustainable but not stable - I'm not aware of any sustainable communities that I can use as an example. We could imagine the 'rules' of sustainability (people can meet all of their needs in 24h/d/ca or less, using only the resources and ecological services that they manage or comanage, and the people's skills, in perpetuity) are being met within a watershed, but that the watershed is in a state of flux at a human time scale - maybe we're converting marginal farmland into wetland forests, or actively eliminating invasive noxious species.

Very excellent explanation.

So, let to hear other ideas in this regards if any.

Thanks again.

Greetings

Watershed Health describes how well ecological systems are functioning.

https://www.epa.gov/hwp/developing-watershed-health-index-introduction

https://www.epa.gov/hwp/basic-information-and-answers-frequent-questions#whathealthy

https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_are_the_signs_of_watershed_health

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/cf9a/432898602bd77383be524231f6e15cb30275.pdf

A healthy watershed, contributes to watershed stability. Different types of internal habitat and structure diversity also help to diversify the system and provide for increased stability .

https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1890/14-0326.1

https://cfpub.epa.gov/watertrain/pdf/modules/WatershedEcology.pdf

http://www.ierstahoe.com/pdf/research/watershed_management_guidebook.pdf

Excellent discussion of watershed sustainability by Douglas Nuttall.

watershed sustainability is in fact sustainable development of watershed. A critical issue which should consider environmental, economics and social aspects.

http://www.cwejournal.org/vol9no2/watershed-sustainability-index-assessment-of-a-watershed-in-chhattisgarh-india/

http://www.pjoes.com/Watershed-Sustainability-Index-Development-and-Application-Case-Study-of-the-Motru,69935,0,2.html

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4425197/

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/rra.2978

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/d4cb/858f7f77bc1c2db8b0fa0fcbe4018a8bae2c.pdf

https://www.watershedsustainability.org/

Hope all of these helps.

Good luck and regards

Nice. Succinct and with references even.

I would caution not to try to make a continuum from Sustainability through Stability to Health. You'd be trying to take a set of {social, economical, ecological}, to be contiguous with a set of {geomorphological, ecological, hydrological}, to end up at {biological, ecological, chemical}. I think you would be better off looking at them all separately, for different purposes. Sure the ecological component is present in them all, but if that's all you're looking at, you wont get any of Sustainability, Stability, or Health.

Ultimately, purpose matters. If you are trying to monitor, you're going to use indicators. If you are trying to design, you're going to use units, and the units (and relationships between them) will be unique to the approach you are taking. Trying to improve watershed health (typically non-human) does nothing to improve watershed sustainability (typically humanocentric).

Bunch of thanks to Dr. Khorsandi and Dr. Nuttall

Very interesting opinions. Sure I will read the suggested references. Of course some of them were studied, before. But I think, it is essential to have a review on them. I hope to find the intrinsic relationships between the mentioned terminologies. I got very important notes from your explanations.

Best Regards

Replying from practical experience in India - A well treated Watershed will remain stable and is Sustainable.

Dear Dr. Emmanuel Vijayanand Murray

Thanks for your contribution tho this discussion.