Quantifying floodplain health in the contiguous United States using an index of integrity
Date
2022
Authors
Simonson, Kira, author
Morrison, Ryan, advisor
Nelson, Peter, committee member
Wohl, Ellen, committee member
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Abstract
Despite the numerous hydrological, geological, and ecological benefits produced by floodplain landscapes, floodplains continue to be degraded by human activities at a much higher rate than other landscape types. Although this large-scale landscape modification has been widely observed, a comprehensive, national dataset quantifying the degree to which human activities are responsible for this degradation has not previously been evaluated. Floodplain integrity can be defined as the ability of a floodplain to support essential environmental functions that sustain diversity and ecosystem services through geomorphic, hydrologic, and ecological dynamics. In this research, I seek to analyze floodplain integrity at a national scale for the United States by spatially quantifying the impact of anthropogenic stressors on essential floodplain functions. I assess the prevalence of human modifications through widely available geospatial datasets, which I then use to quantify indicators of floodplain health for five essential floodplain functions. The five essential floodplain functions include flood attenuation, groundwater storage, habitat provision, sediment regulation, and organics and solute regulation. Rather than focusing solely on the ecological health within the floodplain, I develop a more comprehensive integrity evaluation by assessing both the biological and hydrogeomorphic functioning ability of the floodplain. I extend a previously established methodology for quantifying floodplain integrity to better understand the impact that human development has had on floodplain health and critical floodplain functions at the national scale. Additionally, I apply this methodology using land use change data for a 60-year period to analyze how land use has impacted floodplain integrity over time. Quantifying the health of spatially explicit floodplain elements will allow for restoration efforts to be targeted to the areas in most desperate need of preservation.
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Subject
integrity
floodplain