Alabama & Mobile Bay Healthy Watersheds Assessment
In June 2014, the US Environmental Protection Agency, Mobile Bay National Estuary Program (NEP), Alabama Department of Environmental Management (ADEM), and a number of other partners completed the Alabama and Mobile Bay Basin Integrated Assessment of Watershed Health, a statewide and basin-wide report on the status and vulnerability of watershed health. The assessment, supported by EPA’s Healthy Watersheds Program, integrates the best available data from state and federal agencies to characterize relative landscape condition, watershed health, and watershed vulnerability to climate change, land use change, and water use. Recognizing the health of Mobile Bay is governed in part by the health of the waters it drains, the assessment team conducted an analysis of hydrologic connectivity between headwaters within Mobile Bay basin to the estuary itself. The watershed health, vulnerability, and connectivity assessment results are intended to help guide Alabama’s and Mobile Bay NEP’s efforts to protect their healthy watersheds and to enhance the condition of Mobile Bay so that the public can continue to enjoy the many benefits and services their waters provide.
