Assessing landscape condition relative to water resources ly the western United States: A strategic approach

The Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program (EMAP) is proposing an ambitious agenda to assess the status of streams and estuaries in a 12-Stat e area of the western United States by the end of 2003. Additionally, EMAP is proposing to access landscape conditions as they relate to stream and es tuary conditions across the west. The goal of this landscape project is to develop a landscape model that can be used to identify the relative risks o f streams and estuaries to potential declines due to watershed-scale, lands cape conditions across the west. To do so, requires an understanding of qua ntitative relationships between landscape composition and pattern metrics a nd parameters of stream and estuary conditions. This paper describes a stra tegic approach for evaluating the degree to which landscape composition and pattern influence stream and estuary condition, and the development and im plementation of a spatially-distributed, landscape analysis approach.