Forests to Faucets: Percent Threatened by Insects and Disease
Summary
The Forests to Faucets project uses a GIS to model and map the land areas across the United States that are most important to surface drinking water sources, as well as to identify forested areas important to the protection of drinking water and areas where drinking water supplies might be threatened by development, insects and diseases, and wildland fire. The results of this assessment provide information that can identify areas of interest for protecting surface drinking water quality. The spatial dataset can be ncorporated into broad-scale planning and can help identify areas for further local analysis. In addition it can be incorporated into existing decision support tools that currently lack spatial data on important areas for [...]
Summary
The Forests to Faucets project uses a GIS to model and map the land areas across the United States that are most important to surface drinking water sources, as well as to identify forested areas important to the protection of drinking water and areas where drinking water supplies might be threatened by development, insects and diseases, and wildland fire. The results of this assessment provide information that can identify areas of interest for protecting surface drinking water quality. The spatial dataset can be ncorporated into broad-scale planning and can help identify areas for further local analysis. In addition it can be incorporated into existing decision support tools that currently lack spatial data on important areas for surface drinking water. This project also sets the groundwork for identifying watersheds where a payment for watershed services (PWS) project may be an option for financing conservation and management on forest lands. In addition, this work can serve as an education tool to illustrate the link between forests and the provision of surface drinking water – a key watershedbased ecosystem service.