An Analysis of the North Fork and Catawba Creek Waterways by Travis Charlton*, Stacey Hollings*, Christine Gabbard**, and Jessica Dorr**

*Roanoke Valley Governor's School for Science and Technology
**Conservation Management Institute, Virginia Tech

In the United States, the quality of our waterways has declined. Stream pollution is defined within three categories in the order of greatest threat: sedimentation, excess nutrients, and toxics. Bank deterioration and sedimentation often occur from mowing stream banks, clearing riparian buffers for pasture, and free-ranging livestock with open access to waterways. In the Catawba Valley there are two predominant waterways: Catawba Creek and the North Fork of the Roanoke River. In order to quantify the degradation of waterways in the Catawba Valley, we classified waterway segments based on vegetative cover and erosion. At a scale of 1:3000, we delineated waterways in our study area using digital orthophotography from the Virginia Base Mapping Program. We added attributes for quality and length of segment, classifying quality as:
(1) woody vegetation abundant, overhead woody cover,
(2) some shrubby/woody vegetation to bank,
(3) pastureland/field surrounding bank,
(4) erosion/bare soil on bank evident.
We collected ground-truthing points in the field with a Trimble GeoXM GPS unit to confirm quality of sites. Ten percent of the total waterway segments classified had erosion evident, 25% had pastureland/field, 11% had some shrubby/woody vegetation, and 54% had abundant woody vegetation. This classification will help organize a community effort towards the restoration of Catawba Valley waterways. We will use these data to identify cost share programs so landowners will be better able to fence livestock out of waterways, and re-vegetate and stabilize existing vegetation in riparian areas.