Biological Credit for Stream Mitigation Projects in Kentucky
Rob Lewis
Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources
Kentucky Wetland and Stream Mitigation Program
Frankfort, KY
Authors: Rob Lewis and KY ILF Program Staff
The Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources (KDFWR) sponsors the Kentucky Wetland and Stream Fees-In-Lieu-Of (FILO) Mitigation Program. The program, established in 2002 under Kentucky statute, has dozens of approved projects. Much of stream restoration occurs within a regulatory scheme for impact mitigation purposes. In Kentucky, the crediting/accounting system for valuing the biological component of restoration projects is underdeveloped. For the past several years we have been considering and developing ways to measure change in biological characteristics of stream restoration projects.
In Kentucky, there are very good, established methods and indices for assessing fish and macroinvertebrate health in watersheds. However, these indices appear to be too coarse to describe detailed changes in restoration projects. Looking deeper into the sub-metrics in the indices helps, but they still are not habitat-specific enough to measure and assess the functional changes in stream restoration design and implementation goals and objectives. Our approach includes the KY indices and builds on those with additional but significantly different rapid sampling that can be utilized within the current credit accounting (ecological lift calculation) methodology. The value accounting methodology may be customized to fit many site-specific needs and accounting algorithms.
The presentation will provide justification for the need, as well as examples for sampling and credit calculation methods. The objective of the effort should provide a cost-effective solution for determining if restoration implementation directly induced positive (or negative) change in the biological functions for a restoration site. As a corollary, the same procedure can help inform attainable (and measurable) objectives for stream restoration designs.
About Rob Lewis
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