Watershed Indicators Report - Content Descriptions

POLLUTION LOCATOR|Water| Watershed Indicators Report - Content Descriptions

Watershed Indicators Report - Content Descriptions

This report profiles the health of watersheds in a region by summarizing information from EPA's Index of Watershed Indicators. This index characterizes the condition and vulnerability of aquatic systems, and provides a summary measure of overall watershed health.
Data Source: Scorecard's profiles of watershed indicators are derived from U.S. EPA's Index of Watershed Indicators, a science-based but limited analysis that uses varying amounts and quality of data. The most recent available Index is from 1999 and is based on information gathered between 1990 and 1999.
NOTE: Data quality problems limit the reliability of comparisons across geographic areas. IWI makes use of data collected by a regulatory and scientific agencies for a variety of different purposes, and relies on extensive scientific judgement to construct indicators of watershed health. Because of data limitations, differences in IWI indicator scores may not correspond to meaningful differences in environmental quality.

Map Showing Watershed Status
Scorecard maps the location of watersheds in a county or state. A pie chart indicates the number of watersheds that fall into EPA's seven overall indicator categories (ranging from serious problems/high vulnerability to better water quality/low vulnerability). At the watershed level, the map is shaded to show which category each watershed has been assigned. More on Scorecard's mapper.

Summary of EPA Watershed Indicators
This section reports the number of watersheds that are contained within a geographic area and shows the distribution of these watersheds among EPA's overall watershed health categories.

EPA Water Quality Indicators
These seven indicators profile the current condition of aquatic resources in an area. For each indicator, the report displays the number of watersheds in a geographic area that have better water quality conditions, less serious water quality problems, more serious water quality problems, and insufficient data to to make an assessment. See data limitations.

EPA Watershed Vulnerability Indicators
These nine indicators profile the vulnerability of aquatic resources to future degradation and are designed to indicate where pollution discharges and other activities put pressure on the watershed. For each indicator, the report displays the number of watersheds in a geographic area that have low vulnerability, medium vulnerability, high vulnerability and insufficient data to to make an assessment. See data limitations.

Take Action
Scorecard enables people to take a variety of actions to protect water quality in this community: send messages to regulatory and legislative decision makers about water quality, volunteer with environmental groups working on water problems, or share your opinion about water issues in your community.

Links
Scorecard provides links to additional online resources on surface water quality, and to Scorecard reports profiling other pollution issues in your community.