BLM Montana/Dakotas Aquatic Resources (water, riparian, and fish) Program
Administering Entity: Bureau of Land Management (BLM)
Entity Type(s): Federal
Water Resource: Lakes and Reservoirs, Rivers, Springs, Streams, Wells, Wetlands
Primary Data Type(s): Biology, Discharge, Geomorphology, Groundwater Level, Habitat-Instream, Habitat-Riparian, Instream Physical, Substrate, Water Chemistry
Primary Watershed Monitoring Objective(s): Aquatic Invasive Species, Baseline, Long Term Fixed Station, Permit Compliance, Pollution Source Assessment, Problem identification, Project Identification, Restoration Project Effectiveness, Streamgage, Trends, WQ Standards Attainment
Subbasins: Beaverhead, Belt, Big Hole, Big Muddy, Bitterroot, Blackfoot, Boulder, Box Elder, Brush Lake Closed Basin, Clark Fork Yellowstone, Flatwillow, Flint-Rock, Gallatin, Jefferson, Judith, Lower Bighorn, Lower Clark Fork, Lower Flathead, Lower Musselshell, Lower Tongue, Lower Yellowstone, Madison, Middle Clark Fork, Middle Fork Flathead, Middle Kootenai, Middle Musselshell, Poplar, Porcupine, Prairie Elk-Wolf, Red Rock, Ruby, Shoshone, Smith, Stillwater, Sun, Two Medicine, Upper Clark Fork, Upper Little Missouri, Upper Missouri, Upper Missouri-Dearborn, Upper Musselshell, Upper Mussleshell, Upper Yellowstone, West Fork Poplar, Yaak, Yellowstone Headwaters
Aquatic Invasive Species Type:
Counties: Statewide
Volunteers: yes
Contact Name: James Johnsen
Summary of Monitoring Objectives:
To ensure that BLM meets it's regulatory requirements.
To ensure that sufficient water is available when, where and of sufficient quality to meet the bureau's multiple use, sustained yield mandate. Water resource monitoring is typically tied to some BLM authorization and intended to inform management decisions.
We also evaluate riverscape health to prioritize, plan, design, and adaptively manage related restoration/conservation efforts. Here, we are focused on the Principles of Riverscape Health (Wheaton et. al, 2019), as they relate directly to hydraulic, hydrologic, geomorphic, and vegetation processes that maintain or improve water-related ecosystem services.