Accommodate – Work together with water users and project proponents to process new water development permits under the auspices of the Forest Plan Revision. (see Entertain)

Achieve – To accomplish through management or direct actions by the Forest Service.

Appropriate – A level of compliance that meets the prescribed needs through cooperative and cost-effective methods.

Baseline Value – A component of the forest natural resources that are flow dependent and are wide-spread and relatively common throughout the GMUG National Forests, (e.g., willows, cottonwoods, trout, fishing, groundwater recharge, wildlife and stock watering).

Bypass flow – An administratively required condition of use related to Forest Service issued water-related, special-use permits where a volume of water decreed to the user is required to remain in the stream, by-passing the point of diversion. It may also apply to reservoir operations where specific releases of water are required to provide for downstream flow.

Ecosystem – The community of plants and animals and their interrelated physical environment. Generally, the focus is on larger landscape units such as a mountain range, a river basin, or an entire watershed.

Ecosystem integrity – The complex interactions and interrelationships of the components of a healthy or properly functioning ecosystem.

Entertain – Receive and process new water development permit applications that comply with all other aspects of the Forest Plan and provide protection of species of concern populations and habitats.

Flow-dependent – A resource or use that is directly linked to surface water flow as part of its lifecycle or as a component of its overall viability.

Flow regimes – The cumulative effect of a stream’s hydrograph where there is variation in flow volumes, typically related to specific seasons of each year.

Flow related – An action or activity that involves some aspect of surface water flow, either in volume or timing.

HUC – Hydrologic Unit Classification. River basins are delineated based on the their composite of smaller watersheds forming the larger basin. The ordering or sequence of numbering, based on this US Geological Survey-derived system, is that the larger the watershed basin, the lower the number. First level HUCs are the major river basins in the United States, such as the Colorado, Mississippi, or Columbia, ranging downward in size to the larger numeric levels. The Gunnison River basin and the Upper Colorado River basin are characterized as 2nd level HUCs. The 7th, 6th and 5th level HUCs were evaluated in this planning effort and data were usually sorted and quantified to the 7th level watershed. A 7th level HUC would generally have a watershed area of less than 10,000 acres.

Not precluded – Not eliminating or ignoring those factors or values in the process of developing other uses.

Preserve – To keep in its current or existing condition, not provide for change.

Protect – To ensure the continued existence of an existing value or use.

Recognize – To formally state the presence of an act, law, regulation, right or statute.

Restoration – The act of returning a system or hydrologic regime to some level or semblance of a former condition, not necessarily in the exact form or condition, but to a functional state with similar or like attributes.

Seek – To pursue through legal or management actions a desired outcome or result.

Self-sustaining – Pertaining to natural resource functions or populations that are able to reproduce or perpetuate themselves naturally and without human assistance or intervention.

Scrutinize – Review and evaluate new water development permit applications with respect to overall instream flow needs for the watershed and only entertain those new applications where baseline recreational and ecological values are not unacceptably impaired.

Species of concern – Those plant or animal species whose habitat have a flow related component and that, because of limited populations or declining habitat, have become reduced in number or are no longer able to sustain themselves naturally in the environments where they traditionally have been found and therefore have received special recognition and management emphasis by federal or state agencies. These species include federally listed threatened and endangered species that have flow-dependent habitats.

Unacceptable impairment – A degradation of a value to the point that it is not functioning.

Unique attraction – A feature or attribute of the natural environment that tends to have higher than average visitor use or is special to the region. Limited availability, one of a kind.

Watershed – Those lands that comprise a continuous hydrologic unit that drains into a specific stream. The hydrologic unit contains upslope land areas that all drain toward only one stream.

Yield – The volume of surface water that is generated by a watershed and is generally measured on an annual basis.