US EPA

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) is working with its regional offices, states, tribes, and other entities to establish Regional Monitoring Networks (RMNs) at which biological, thermal, and hydrologic data are collected from freshwater wadeable streams to quantify and monitor changes in baseline condition, including climate change effects.

RMNs have a been established in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, and Southeast, and efforts are underway to expand into other regions. The need for RMNs stems from the lack of long-term, contemporaneous biological, thermal, and hydrologic data, particularly at minimally disturbed sites.

RMN surveys build on existing bioassessment efforts, with the goal of collecting comparable data that can be pooled efficiently at a regional level. Data collected at RMNs can be used to:

• detect temporal trends;
• investigate relationships between biological, thermal, and hydrologic data;
• explore ecosystem responses and recovery from extreme weather events;
• test hypotheses and predictive models related to climate change; and
• quantify natural variability.

This final report describes the development of the current RMNs for riffle-dominated, freshwater wadeable streams. It also contains information on selection of candidate sites, expectations for data collection, the rationale for collecting these data, and provides examples of how the RMN data can be used and analyzed.

We are working with states, tribes, river basin commissions (RBCs), and other entities in different parts of the country to establish Regional Monitoring Networks (RMNs) to collect data that will further our understanding of biological, thermal, and hydrologic conditions in freshwater wadeable streams and allow for detection of climatic changes and trends. The document describes the framework for the RMNs that have been developed in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, and Southeast regions for riffle-dominated, freshwater wadeable streams, so that other regions can initiate similar efforts. Current RMNs requested documentation of this work, and interested EPA Regions and states also requested a blueprint for developing such RMNs. This report fulfills both requests.

U.S. EPA. Regional Monitoring Networks (RMN) to Detect Changing Baselines in Freshwater Wadeable Streams (Final Report) . U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, EPA/600/R-15/280, 2016.