Applying EPA’s National Nutrient Inventory to quantify landscape nutrient inputs and interception to support state and local water quality objectives

Hosted by the US Environmental Protection Agency

1. An Introduction to the EPA’s National Nutrient Inventory– Meredith Brehob, U.S. EPA Office of Research and Development (ORISE)

   The National Nutrient Inventory (NNI) provides estimates of major nutrient fluxes within the contiguous US. This presentation will highlight key features of the NNI, describe major insights into nutrient pollution trends, and introduce a suite of related water quality modeling projects in the Nutrient Inventory Portfolio.

2. Quantifying 30 Years of spatially explicit catchment and watershed nutrient budgets through the NNI in StreamCat  – Selia Markley, U.S. EPA Office of Research and Development (ORISE)

   This presentation will discuss the benefits of incorporating the NNI into StreamCat, providing annual time series (1987-2017) of nitrogen and phosphorus inputs, removal by crop harvest, and management relevant metrics for all 2.6 million stream catchments and watersheds across the conterminous U.S. These data points in StreamCat can assist users in developing watershed-specific nutrient management plans. We present uses of these data for assessing surface and groundwater areas and discuss possible future research.

3. Past, present, and potential landscape nutrient interception by wetlands across CONUS – Scott Alford, U.S. EPA Office of Research and Development (ORISE) 

   Wetlands are effective in reducing nutrient loads in surface waters, but there is a need to optimize allocation of conservation efforts to efficiently maximize the likelihood of water quality improvements. This presentation describes efforts to quantify nutrients flowing through wetlands and identify existing and potential wetlands that maximize attenuation of excess landscape nutrients across the conterminous United States (CONUS). This analysis and database will provide an optimized CONUS-wide wetland conservation framework to aid local communities in tailoring their nutrient reduction strategies.

Presenters and Moderator 

• Meredith Brehob, EPA Office of Research and Development (ORISE) | Meredith Brehob is an aquatic ecologist with an ORISE fellowship at the U.S. EPA’s Office of Research and Development. In this role, she works on applying national data to assess nutrient impacts on freshwater ecosystems and drinking water systems. Meredith has a Master of Science degree in Natural Resources and Environmental Science from the University of Nevada, Reno. 
• Selia Markley, EPA Office of Research and Development (ORISE) | Selia is a post-bachelors ORISE fellow within the Pacific Ecological Systems Division working with Marc Weber, Ryan Hill, and Jana Compton. She earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia in environmental sciences and statistics. Her studies and work have focused on nutrients, water quality, and statistical modeling.
• Scott Alford, EPA Office of Research and Development (ORISE) | Scott is an ORISE postdoctoral fellow with the US EPA’s ORD Freshwater Ecology Branch in Corvallis, Oregon under the mentorship of Dr. Ryan Hill. Scott holds a PhD in Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences from the University of Florida and has a background in estuarine ecology. Scott’s ORISE project focuses on using spatial analyses to quantify nutrient interception by wetlands across CONUS. 
• Moderator: Robert Sabo, EPA Office of Research and Development | Robert is a scientist at the EPA’s Office of Research and Development and is the research lead for ORD’s National Nutrient Inventory Research Portfolio, a multi-agency effort