Watershed Condition Assessments
Bureau of Land Management
National Headquarters
Washington, DC 20240
United States
6103 (HQ200) P
The Conservation and Landscape Health Rule (commonly known as the “Public Lands Rule”), which became effective June 10, 2024, advances the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) multiple use and sustained yield mission by prioritizing the health and resilience of public lands. Conservation1 is a use of public lands on equal footing with other uses and is necessary for the protection and restoration of important resources. The Public Lands Rule will help safeguard the health of our public lands for current and future generations by ensuring we:
- Protect the most intact, functioning landscapes;
- Restore degraded habitats and ecosystems; and
- Use science and data, including Indigenous Knowledge, as the foundation for management decisions across all plans and programs.
This Instruction Memorandum (IM) provides guidance to implement 43 CFR 6103.2 (Inventory, Assessment, and Monitoring), which requires the completion and use of watershed condition assessments (WCAs) to inform conservation actions and promote healthy and resilient ecosystems on BLM-managed lands. It is the BLM’s intent to implement these provisions of the Public Lands Rule through an interdisciplinary team, forthcoming technical guidance, and pilot efforts in ways that will streamline field work and support decision making
Mission Related
As provided for in 43 CFR 6103.2(a), the BLM must complete WCAs at least once every 10 years and use them to inform the protection of intact landscapes (§ 6102.2), inform land use planning (§ 6103.2), inform restoration planning (§ 6102.3.1), manage for ecosystem resilience (§ 6102.5), and complete land health evaluations (§ 6103.1.2).
This IM describes the components of WCAs, outlines the process for developing a consistent technical approach for conducting and using WCAs, and directs authorized officers on the use of WCA results.
What are Watershed Condition Assessments?
- WCAs assess and synthesize information on the condition of soil, water, aquatic and terrestrial habitats, and ecological processes within watersheds following the BLM’s land health fundamentals. They include assessments of watershed physical and biological characteristics, land health, landscape intactness,2 and disturbances.
- WCAs function as the foundation to understand land health by identifying and assessing the watershed-scale drivers (natural and anthropogenic) that control soil, water, habitats, ecological processes, and ultimately healthy, resilient ecosystems across all lands. They provide nationally consistent inventories of public lands, their resources, and other values following the directive in the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 (FLPMA) to prepare and maintain an inventory of all public lands and their resources and values, 43 U.S.C. § 1711(a), and provide summaries of resource conditions, issues, and restoration opportunities within and across watersheds that are within the scope of BLM management.
- WCAs utilize a consistent approach that includes standardized publicly available data, including Assessment, Inventory, and Monitoring (AIM), disturbance tracking, and remotely sensed data, as well as core indicators to inform assessments of the national land health standards3 across all lands and program areas.
- WCAs follow guidance in MS-4180, Land Health (Rel. 4-110), by recognizing the importance of broad-scale perspectives to properly evaluate certain standards, to identify specific areas for protection and restoration, and to prioritize locations where additional data or locally relevant high-quality information may be needed to inform management alternatives.
- WCAs focus on fifth-level, 10-digit Hydrologic Unit Code (HUC)4
Watersheds. What will Watershed Condition Assessments be Used For?
- Authorized officers will use WCAs, when available, to: 1) inform the context for land use planning decisions, including the affected environment and analysis of the management situation (AMS), and implementation-level NEPA analyses; 2) identify intact landscapes; 3) inform land health evaluations; 4) identify and prioritize landscapes for conservation or restoration; and 5) inform the development of restoration plans.
- WCAs inform land health evaluations and restoration plan development in that they provide context, identify issues, and give a summary of natural resource conditions relative to national land health standards (Attachment 1). Local data can and should be used when appropriate to supplement this information and help inform land management decisions.
Process for Developing and Completing Watershed Condition Assessments
- The BLM must complete WCAs at least every ten years.
- The National Operations Center (NOC), in collaboration with BLM Headquarters and state office staff, will develop an interdisciplinary WCA advisory team to inform implementation.
- The WCA team, co-led by HQ and the NOC, will conduct pilot WCAs, including evaluating land health using AIM and remotely-sensed data based on the six national land health standards.
- Where pilot WCAs are available, State offices will review WCA outputs and provide timely feedback to the WCA team.
- The WCA team will use the results of pilot WCAs, including feedback from the field, and existing guidance for conducting land health assessments to inform the development of a WCA technical reference.
- The WCA technical reference will outline a nationally consistent approach including: 1) standardized indicators and processes for assessing resource condition relative to national land health standards; 2) remotely-sensed and field-based data sources for each indicator; 3) workflows for state offices to supplement WCA results, if needed; and 4) processes for using WCA results to inform land use planning, restoration plans, land health evaluations, and other decisions.
- The NOC will assess all fifth-level, 10-digit HUC watersheds with more than 15% BLM surface management using the nationally consistent WCA approach.
- States offices are responsible for using NOC-completed WCAs to inform land health evaluations and management decisions. State offices will evaluate whether there is a need to supplement WCAs with locally available information to complete land health evaluations, causal factor determinations, restoration prioritization and planning, and other management alternatives.
- WCA results will be stored centrally by the NOC and made publicly available
Effective immediately.
Implementing these aspects of the Public Lands Rule is anticipated to require some shift in focus, work and priorities. The BLM will coordinate across offices to determine the best allocation of staff capacity and financial resources within the agency’s existing budget to meet this priority. However, implementation of the Public Lands Rule is expected to yield long-term efficiencies and thus cost savings (for example, by completing land health evaluations at landscape scales and managing resource data in a nationally consistent manner).
The BLM manages approximately 245 million acres of public lands, roughly one-tenth of the country. Invasive species, increased extreme wildfire events, prolonged drought, habitat fragmentation, climate change, and other factors have caused increased habitat degradation on our public lands. It is the BLM’s responsibility to restore degraded habitats and ensure land health on the public lands consistent with managing under principles of multiple use and sustained yield mission consistent with FLPMA. To support these activities, the Public Lands Rule applies land health standards to all BLM-managed public lands and uses, codifies conservation tools to be used within FLPMA’s multiple-use and sustained-yield framework, and revises existing regulations to better meet FLPMA’s direction that the BLM prioritize designating and protecting areas of critical environmental concern. The Public Lands Rule also provides an overarching framework for multiple BLM programs to promote ecosystem resilience on public lands
The following existing guidance documents are affected by this IM:
- BLM MS-4180, Land Health (Rel. 4-110)
- BLM H-4180-1, Rangeland Health Standards (Rel. 4-107)
- BLM MS-6720, Aquatic Resource Management (Rel. 6-118)
- BLM MS-6500, Wildlife and Fisheries Management (Rel. 6-114)
- BLM MS-1601-1, Land Use Planning Handbook (Rel. 1-1693)
- BLM MS-6600, Fish, Wildlife, and Special Status Plant Resource Inventory and Monitoring (Rel. 6-117)
- BLM MS-9214, Fuels Management and Community Assistance Manual (Rel. 9-428)
- BLM H-9214, Fuels Management and Community Assistance Handbook (Rel. 9-429)
If you have any questions about this policy, please contact Scott Miller, Program Lead, Aquatic Resources, at swmiller@blm.gov.
The IM was developed by an intra-agency team from Field Offices, District Offices, State Offices, National Operations Center, and Headquarters. The IM was coordinated with the Resources and Minerals Committee and the Field Committee.