Is Impervious Cover Still Important? A Review of Recent Research

A presentation at the 2nd Symposium on Urbanization and Stream Ecology, May 2008.

The Impervious Cover Model (ICM) has attracted considerable attention in recent years, with nearly 250 research studies testing its basic hypothesis that the behavior of urban stream indicators can be predicted on the basis of the percent impervious cover (IC) in their contributing subwatershed. The majority of research published since 2003 has confirmed the basic premise of the ICM, but has also revealed important caveats and limitations to its application, and tested the possible effect of watershed treatment, such as stormwater treatment practices and riparian forest cover. The ICM continues to be a useful planning and forecasting tool, and provides a useful foundation for designing regional subwatershed management classification systems. The paper concludes with recommendations for improving the consistency of future stream research studies, and testing the watershed treatment hypothesis.

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