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Many of Western Pennsylvania Conservancy's projects involve waterways and their surrounding areas. At WPC's Watershed Assistance Center in Blairsville, Pa., stream assessments are part of routine fieldwork. Be it looking at the health of an entire watershed, evaluating the effects of abandoned mine drainage, or recording the changes of water quality after streambank fencing has been installed, a stream assessment is performed. To explain simply, a stream assessment is the visual evaluation of a length of stream, and the assessment protocol used by the Watershed Assistance Center has a number of different elements, each with a score rating of 1 to 10. Some of the elements include:

* Channel Condition	* Insect/Invertebrate Habitat
* Riparian Zone	* Canopy Cover
* Bank Stability
* Water Appearance	... and where applicable
* Nutrient Enrichment
* Fish Barriers	* Abandoned Mine Drainage
* Instream Fish Cover	* Sewage
* Embeddedness	* Manure Presence

Assessments are preformed in the field by staff members who travel along the stream and visually note the appearance of the stream, and then compare what was seen to what a healthy stream of the area should look like. Each pertinent element is then scored, scores are totaled and divided by the number of elements scored, providing the overall stream assessment score. This number will fall in a range between less than 6 to greater than 9, this range is divided into to different stream ratings. The ratings are:

So, a stream with an overall assessment score of 7.8 would warrant a stream rating of good. This information is used in a number of different manners. Maps are created with the stream ratings, suggested managements can be applied to areas, and communities can be educated on the health of their watershed. The Watershed Assistance Center offers training courses on how local groups can perform watershed assessment in their communities. For more information, please contact Nick Pinizzotto or Ben Wright at: Watershed Assistance Center, 246 South Walnut Street, Blairsville, PA 15717 (724) 459-0953.

In today's photos, the bottom right picture is of students from the Latrobe area being trained on how to perform stream assessments for the Loyalhanna Watershed Association. The upper left picture is of WPC's Technician II Jennifer Bennett recording information in the Loyalhanna Watershed, Westmoreland County.