Water, Air and Soil
Water, air, and soil are three natural resources that we cannot live without. The Forest Service strives to protect, maintain, and restore these valuable assets now and into the future.
Water is one of the most important natural resources flowing from forests. The Forest Service manages the largest single source of water in U.S., with about one-fifth originating from 193 million acres of land which provides drinking water to 180 million people every day.
Soil provides nutrients, water, oxygen and heat to natural land areas. Understanding the ability and capacity of soil to support an ecosystem plays an important role in land management decisions.
Air is a third critical resource for humans, plants, animals and all other organisms within a natural area. Air must be monitored in order to control and lower pollution levels, control smoke caused by wildland fires, and to monitor air quality. The Forest Service monitors the effects of air pollution that may impair visibility, harm human health, injure trees and other plants, acidify or cause unnatural fertilization of streams and lakes, leach nutrients from soils, and degrade cultural resources, like archeological sites and historical buildings. Forest activities that can affect air quality such as prescribed burning, ski areas, and mining are also monitored to ensure compliance with air regulations for human health and to monitor possible impacts to natural resources.
Watershed Program
A watershed is the area of land that collects rainfall and snowmelt which later flows into a stream. Because water from the Blue Mountains is important for so many uses, the Umatilla National Forest strongly emphasizes proper management of these watersheds. The goal of the watershed management program are:
- to maintain streams that are cold, clean, and free of excessive sediments and human-caused pollution
- to keep streambanks, channels, wetlands, and adjacent floodplains healthy
- to restore damaged lands to their previous, productive condition
- to maintain near-natural amounts of runoff water
The Umatilla National Forest Plan includes important direction for achieving these goals. The Plan envisions a basic three-point program for managing Forest watersheds:
Proper management of Forest watersheds requires a good understanding of its basic components - soil, water, climate, and vegetation. The Umatilla National Forest upgrades its resource information base by conducting the following inventories and surveys:
- soil
- water
- fishery resources
- potential watershed improvement projects
- riparian zones (areas adjacent to streams and lakes)
These watershed surveys provide vital information for improving the management of surface water resources.
National forests are not "idle lands." They provide a variety of forest products and recreational opportunities for the public. However, unless carefully managed, some activities such as livestock grazing, timber harvesting, mining, and recreation can affect the watershed's ability to produce the quality and quantity of water needed to maintain soil, habitat, riparian zones, and water quality.
The Umatilla National Forest has developed "Best Management Practices": policies, standards, and methods of operation designed to reduce harmful effects on water while still allowing use of other resources. Maintaining stream surface shading to prevent fish-bearing waters from overheating during the summer is an example of general practices applied throughout the forest. Others are developed specifically for a particular activity.
Forest managers work together in the project planning stages to identify the nature and risk of potential hazards to water resources. As a result, projects can be modified to avoid problem areas and reduce water resource damage.
The forest's watershed management program emphasizes the prevention of problems before they occur. However, it is sometimes necessary to treat watershed problems resulting from past practices. Such treatments might include restoring wet meadows, recontouring gullied lands, or stabilizing eroding streambanks.
Recently, the Umatilla National Forest began a program to control and treat the acidic wastewater draining into a forest stream where salmon and steelhead spawn. These wastes, produced by abandoned gold mines, are now treated in man-made bogs, where toxic metals and other harmful substances are filtered out. Initial results have shown a dramatic recovery in water quality.
The Umatilla National Forest developed an extensive water-monitoring program. It measures success in achieving the goal of maintaining healthy and abundant water resources. Monitoring stations are strategically placed at Umatilla National Forest management projects and measure:
- stream flow
- water temperature
- suspended sediment and turbidity
- shape and condition of stream channels and riparian areas
- precipitation, snow pack and other climatic factors
- the soil's ability to infiltrate and hold precipitation
- physical, chemical and biological components of water quality
These measurements provide a better understanding of how management activities affect water resources and whether our efforts are effective in maintaining high water quality.