Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation
 

Policy Patterns across Riverscapes : Riparian Land Standards in the Oregon Coast Range

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https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/concern/graduate_thesis_or_dissertations/6w924f34d

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  • Land management policies are ideas about nature projected onto the landscape. Culminations of social, economic, and scientific influences, these policies create standards affecting the function of ecological systems. In the case of riparian lands in the Oregon Coast Range, policy requirements vary considerably across federal, state, and private land ownerships. Protective measures, such as the adoption of fixed buffer widths for maintaining vegetation, are intended to preserve natural processes important to instream habitat and water quality. However, the "policy landscape" of variable management standards can result in a fragmented approach to policy protection. This fragmentation complicates recovery efforts for threatened anadromous fish species such as coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch), which require connectivity in suitable habitat segments throughout the river network. Taking a riverscape perspective, this study evaluates how aquatic protections vary across the river and its valley. To explore the patterns created from variable standard, the study first delineates categories of riparian management standards in the Oregon Coast Range. Using a geographic information system (GIS), these standards are mapped across the river networks of this region. The extent of each policy category is quantified in stream kilometers in order to evaluate policy efforts within and across the riverscapes of the Oregon Coast Range. A model of intrinsic potential for coho salmon habitat is used to identify the policy standards in stream reaches where flow, valley constraint, and channel gradient are appropriate for coho salmon habitat. A second model of the stream network (hydrography) is developed to evaluate how differences in stream delineation can influence policy patterns. Results indicate that riparian lands of the Oregon Coast Range are protected by variable standards for land management, including buffer widths that range from 0 to ~152m. In streams important to coho salmon, a lower proportion of the stream network was found to be protected by policy standards compared to the watershed and ESU scale. A lack of stream data central to policy application (fish use, stream flow duration, mean annual flow, water use) complicated our ability to attribute stream segments with specific land management requirements. The choice of hydrographic data was also found to influence the proportional extent of policies within riverscapes. This framework for assessing the spatial distribution of policies can provide insights for future studies of riverscape systems.
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file details BoisjolieBrettA2016.pdf 2017-08-09 Pubblico Scaricare