EBS STAFF
On March 26, the Department of Ecology at
Montana State University will host visiting forest hydrologist Kelly Mott
LaCroix for a presentation on the relationship between forests and drinking
water. Held at 3:30 p.m. in Lewis Hall on the Bozeman campus, the talk is
titled “Beyond Timber and Trekking: Exploring the Role National Forests and
Grasslands Play in Protecting Drinking Water Supplies.”
Typically, when thinking about U.S.
Forest Service lands, event organizers say the public tends to think about the
readily-visible values of public forests, such as recreation, timber harvest or
mineral extraction. There are, however, inconspicuous benefits of national
forests, such as the role they play in providing abundant clean water for
drinking and irrigation.
When National Forest System lands were
set aside 100 year ago, it was considered a measure to protect water
supplies—today, one in five Americans rely on water supplies that originate on
national forest lands, the organizers say.
LaCroix’s presentation will explore the
history of watershed management and provide an analysis of the role these lands
play in protecting water supplies. She will draw upon surface and groundwater
data, and discuss some of the possibilities for innovative partnerships to
improve and protect watershed conditions on our nation’s forests and grasslands
in the future.
“Kelly’s work brings together mapped data
on drinking water sources and national forest boundaries to shed light on one
of the most important, but often underappreciated, values of our public lands,”
said Travis Belote, a research ecologist for The Wilderness Society and an
affiliate of MSU’s Burkle Lab. “It isn’t an exaggeration to say that national
forests literally serve as natural water towers for tens of millions of people.
If you live in an area with any visible mountains, chances are that those
mountains play some role in providing you with drinking water and they are
likely public land.”
LaCroix serves as the forest hydrologist
and watershed program manager for the Tonto National Forest in Arizona. Over
the past decade, she has worked at the national and state levels, as well as
within academia and the nonprofit sector on watershed hydrology, water
management and policy. She received her doctorate from the Arid Lands Resource
Sciences program at the University of Arizona, where she studied environmental
flow needs of desert ecosystems and effective mechanisms for stakeholder
engagement.
For
more information, contact Meghan Heim at (406) 944-2018 or meghan.heim@montana.edu.
