The occurrence of global changes and new legislation supported by federal and regional governments has led to an increasing interest in managing freshwater inflows in order to conserve and restore estuarine health and functioning of rivers and new regulations are being implemented to address environmental flows (Acreman, M.C. 2004). For example, in Texas, USA, the 2007 Senate Bill 3 addresses the need for environmental flow provisions including maintenance of freshwater inflows to estuaries. Management initiatives are now being geared towards preserving or restoring natural flow regime patterns in order to create sustainable estuaries.
In order to meet the growing need of information on managing freshwater inflows, this web site has been created as a decision-support tool. The next section will discuss some current decision-support tools and their frameworks.