This allowed us to identify the areas where low OCs of shifting land use towards improving watershed services can result in high watershed service payoffs.
Drowned-river mouth embayments receive high watershed inputs, have short water residence times, and have a surface water connection with Lake Ontario [ 17].
We hypothesized that high nutrient inputs to embayments, from either high watershed flows (i.e., short water residence time) or high nutrient concentrations due to land use, would positively affect fish abundance and biomass [ 21, 22, 1] and negatively affect species diversity through loss of intolerant species [ 4, 23].
Construction of mega-projects in the higher watersheds, along with road networks that defy gravity in the slope lands, are indicated as direct triggers of an explicit human driver of landscape change.
Those regions were well endowed with water (in large rivers, as well as snow and ice) and presented the richest fodder base, because trees and bushes persisted in valleys, while higher watersheds were occupied by periglacial steppe.
Soil quality differences under ridge-till were found specifically for the backslope and shoulder landform elements, suggesting that soil quality increases on these landform elements are responsible for higher watershed-scale soil quality in the ridge-tilled watershed.
Disease rates are highest in watersheds with high Nitrogen-footprints and where nonnative algae have been chronically significant.
Thus, very high elevation watersheds that maintain cooler air temperatures and low watersheds that already have less snowpack are more resilient to CT than northern Sierra Nevada watersheds that reach the crest of the range.
The analysis considered conservation needs for a variety of natural resources including species, natural communities, high quality watersheds, wetlands, and sustainable forestry.
