Ecological Monitoring and Compliance Program Fiscal/Calendar Year 2004 Report

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Bechtel Nevada

2005-03-01

The Ecological Monitoring and Compliance program, funded through the U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration Nevada Site Office, monitors the ecosystem of the Nevada Test Site and ensures compliance with laws and regulations pertaining to Nevada Test Site biota. This report summarizes the program's activities conducted by Bechtel Nevada during the Fiscal Year 2004 and the additional months of October, November, and December 2004, reflecting a change in the monitoring period to a calendar year rather than a fiscal year as reported in the past. This change in the monitoring period was made to better accommodate information requiredmore » for the Nevada Test Site Environmental Report, which reports on a calendar year rather than a fiscal year. Program activities included: (1) biological surveys at proposed construction sites, (2) desert tortoise compliance, (3) ecosystem mapping and data management, (4) sensitive species and unique habitat monitoring, (5) habitat restoration monitoring, and (6) biological monitoring at the Hazardous Materials Spill Center.« less

Identifying Ecosystem Services of Rivers and Streams Through Content Analysis

EPA Science Inventory

While much ecosystem services research focuses on analysis such as mapping and/or valuation, fewer research efforts are directed toward in-depth understanding of the specific ecological quantities people value. Ecosystem service monitoring and analysis efforts and communications ...

Skylab/EREP application to ecological, geological, and oceanographic investigations of Delaware Bay

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Klemas, V.; Bartlett, D. S.; Philpot, W. D.; Rogers, R. H.; Reed, L. E.

1978-01-01

Skylab/EREP S190A and S190B film products were optically enhanced and visually interpreted to extract data suitable for; (1) mapping coastal land use; (2) inventorying wetlands vegetation; (3) monitoring tidal conditions; (4) observing suspended sediment patterns; (5) charting surface currents; (6) locating coastal fronts and water mass boundaries; (7) monitoring industrial and municipal waste dumps in the ocean; (8) determining the size and flow direction of river, bay and man-made discharge plumes; and (9) observing ship traffic. Film products were visually analyzed to identify and map ten land-use and vegetation categories at a scale of 1:125,000. Digital tapes from the multispectral scanner were used to prepare thematic maps of land use. Classification accuracies obtained by comparison of derived thematic maps of land-use with USGS-CARETS land-use maps in southern Delaware ranged from 44 percent to 100 percent.

Ecological Monitoring and Compliance Program Fiscal Year 2002 Report

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

C. A. Wills

2002-12-01

The Ecological Monitoring and Compliance program, funded through the U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration Nevada Operations Office, monitors the ecosystem of the Nevada Test Site (NTS) and ensures compliance with laws and regulations pertaining to NTS biota. This report summarizes the program's activities conducted by Bechtel Nevada (BN) during fiscal year 2002. Program activities included: (1) biological surveys at proposed construction sites, (2) desert tortoise compliance, (3) ecosystem mapping and data management, (4) sensitive species and unique habitat monitoring, and (5) biological monitoring at the HAZMAT Spill Center. Biological surveys for the presence of sensitive species andmore » important biological resources were conducted for 26 NTS projects. These projects have the potential to disturb a total of 374 acres. Thirteen of the projects were in desert tortoise habitat, and 13.38 acres of desert tortoise habitat were disturbed. No tortoises were found in or displaced from project areas, and no tortoises were accidentally injured or killed at project areas or along paved roads. Compilation of historical wildlife data continued this year in efforts to develop faunal distribution maps for the NTS. Photographs associated with the NTS ecological landform units sampled to create the NTS vegetation maps were cataloged for future retrieval and analysis. The list of sensitive plant species for which long-term population monitoring is scheduled was revised. Six vascular plants and five mosses were added to the list. Plant density estimates from ten populations of Astragalus beatleyae were collected, and eight known populations of Eriogonum concinnum were visited to assess plant and habitat status. Minimal field monitoring of western burrowing owl burrows occurred. A report relating to the ecology of the western burrowing owl on the Nevada Test Site was prepared which summarizes four years of data collected on this species' distribution, burrow use, reproduction, activity patterns, and food habits. Bat roost sites within seven buildings slated for demolition were identified, and a BN biologist was a contributing author of the Nevada Bat Conservation Plan published by the Nevada Bat Working Group. Thirty-three adult horses and five foals were counted this year. Six active raptor nests (two American kestrel, two Red-tailed hawk, and two Great-horned owl nests) were found and monitored this year. Selected wetlands and man-made water sources were monitored for physical parameters and wildlife use. No dead animals were observed this year in any plastic-lined sump. The chemical release test plan for one experiment at the HAZMAT Spill Center on Frenchman Lake playa was reviewed. Seasonal sampling of downwind and upwind transects near the spill center was conducted to document baseline conditions of biota.« less

Ecological Monitoring and Compliance Program Fiscal Year 2002 Report (Part Two of Two)

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

C. A. Wills

2002-12-01

The Ecological Monitoring and Compliance program, funded through the U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration Nevada Operations Office, monitors the ecosystem of the Nevada Test Site (NTS) and ensures compliance with laws and regulations pertaining to NTS biota. This report summarizes the program's activities conducted by Bechtel Nevada (BN) during fiscal year 2002. Program activities included: (1) biological surveys at proposed construction sites, (2) desert tortoise compliance, (3) ecosystem mapping and data management, (4) sensitive species and unique habitat monitoring, and (5) biological monitoring at the HAZMAT Spill Center. Biological surveys for the presence of sensitive species andmore » important biological resources were conducted for 26 NTS projects. These projects have the potential to disturb a total of 374 acres. Thirteen of the projects were in desert tortoise habitat, and 13.38 acres of desert tortoise habitat were disturbed. No tortoises were found in or displaced from project areas, and no tortoises were accidentally injured or killed at project areas or along paved roads. Compilation of historical wildlife data continued this year in efforts to develop faunal distribution maps for the NTS. Photographs associated with the NTS ecological landform units sampled to create the NTS vegetation maps were cataloged for future retrieval and analysis. The list of sensitive plant species for which long-term population monitoring is scheduled was revised. Six vascular plants and five mosses were added to the list. Plant density estimates from ten populations of Astragalus beatleyae were collected, and eight known populations of Eriogonum concinnum were visited to assess plant and habitat status. Minimal field monitoring of western burrowing owl burrows occurred. A report relating to the ecology of the western burrowing owl on the Nevada Test Site was prepared which summarizes four years of data collected on this species' distribution, burrow use, reproduction, activity patterns, and food habits. Bat roost sites within seven buildings slated for demolition were identified, and a BN biologist was a contributing author of the Nevada Bat Conservation Plan published by the Nevada Bat Working Group. Thirty-three adult horses and five foals were counted this year. Six active raptor nests (two American kestrel, two Red-tailed hawk, and two Great-horned owl nests) were found and monitored this year. Selected wetlands and man-made water sources were monitored for physical parameters and wildlife use. No dead animals were observed this year in any plastic-lined sump. The chemical release test plan for one experiment at the HAZMAT Spill Center on Frenchman Lake playa was reviewed. Seasonal sampling of downwind and upwind transects near the spill center was conducted to document baseline conditions of biota.« less

Relationship between forest clearing and biophysical factors in tropical environments: Implications for the design of a forest change monitoring approach. [Costa Rica

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Sader, S. A.; Joyce, A. T.

1984-01-01

The relationship between forest clearing, biophysical factors (e.g, ecological zones, slope gradient, soils), and transportation network in Costa Rica was analyzed. The location of forested areas at four reference datas (1940, 1950, 1961, and 1977) as derived from aerial photography and LANDSAT MSS data was digitilized and entered into a geographically-referenced data base. Ecological zones as protrayed by the Holdridge Life Zone Ecology System, and the location of roads and railways were also digitized from maps of the entire country as input to the data base. Information on slope gradient and soils was digitized from maps of a 21,000 square kilometer area. The total area of forest cleared over four decades are related to biophysical factors was analyzed within the data base and deforestation rates and trends were tabulated. The relatiohship between forest clearing and ecological zone and the influence of topography, sils, and transportation network are presented and discussed.

Comparative Performance Analysis of a Hyper-Temporal Ndvi Analysis Approach and a Landscape-Ecological Mapping Approach

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ali, A.; de Bie, C. A. J. M.; Scarrott, R. G.; Ha, N. T. T.; Skidmore, A. K.

2012-07-01

Both agricultural area expansion and intensification are necessary to cope with the growing demand for food, and the growing threat of food insecurity which is rapidly engulfing poor and under-privileged sections of the global population. Therefore, it is of paramount importance to have the ability to accurately estimate crop area and spatial distribution. Remote sensing has become a valuable tool for estimating and mapping cropland areas, useful in food security monitoring. This work contributes to addressing this broad issue, focusing on the comparative performance analysis of two mapping approaches (i) a hyper-temporal Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) analysis approach and (ii) a Landscape-ecological approach. The hyper-temporal NDVI analysis approach utilized SPOT 10-day NDVI imagery from April 1998-December 2008, whilst the Landscape-ecological approach used multitemporal Landsat-7 ETM+ imagery acquired intermittently between 1992 and 2002. Pixels in the time-series NDVI dataset were clustered using an ISODATA clustering algorithm adapted to determine the optimal number of pixel clusters to successfully generalize hyper-temporal datasets. Clusters were then characterized with crop cycle information, and flooding information to produce an NDVI unit map of rice classes with flood regime and NDVI profile information. A Landscape-ecological map was generated using a combination of digitized homogenous map units in the Landsat-7 ETM+ imagery, a Land use map 2005 of the Mekong delta, and supplementary datasets on the regions terrain, geo-morphology and flooding depths. The output maps were validated using reported crop statistics, and regression analyses were used to ascertain the relationship between land use area estimated from maps, and those reported in district crop statistics. The regression analysis showed that the hyper-temporal NDVI analysis approach explained 74% and 76% of the variability in reported crop statistics in two rice crop and three rice crop land use systems respectively. In contrast, 64% and 63% of the variability was explained respectively by the Landscape-ecological map. Overall, the results indicate the hyper-temporal NDVI analysis approach is more accurate and more useful in exploring when, why and how agricultural land use manifests itself in space and time. Furthermore, the NDVI analysis approach was found to be easier to implement, was more cost effective, and involved less subjective user intervention than the landscape-ecological approach.

Content analysis to document publicly valued ecosystem services of rivers and streams

EPA Science Inventory

While much ecosystem services research focuses on analysis such as mapping and/or valuation, fewer research efforts are directed toward in-depth understanding of the specific ecological quantities people value. Ecosystem service monitoring and analysis efforts and communications ...

A scheme for the uniform mapping and monitoring of earth resources and environmental complexes using ERTS-1 imagery

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Poulton, C. E. (Principal Investigator); Welch, R. I.

1973-01-01

There are no author-identified significant results in this report. Progress on plans for the development and testing of a practical procedure and system for the uniform mapping and monitoring of natural ecosystems and environmental complexes from space-acquired imagery is discussed. With primary emphasis on ERTS-1 imagery, but supported by appropriate aircraft photography as necessary, the objectives are to accomplish the following: (1) Develop and test in a few selected sites and areas of the western United States a standard format for an ecological and land use legend for making natural resource inventories on a simulated global basis. (2) Based on these same limited geographic areas, identify the potentialities and limitations of the legend concept for the recognition and annotation of ecological analogs and environmental complexes. An additional objective is to determine the optimum combination of space photography, aerial photography, ground data, human data analysis, and automatic data analysis for estimating crop yield in the rice growing areas of California and Louisiana.

Fire Island National Seashore

USGS Publications Warehouse

Brock, John C.; Wright, C. Wayne; Patterson, Matt; Nayagandhi, Amar; Patterson, Judd

2007-01-01

These lidar-derived topographic maps were produced as a collaborative effort between the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Coastal and Marine Geology Program, the National Park Service (NPS), Northeast Coastal and Barrier Network, Inventory and Monitoring Program, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Wallops Flight Facility. The aims of the partnership that created this product are to develop advanced survey techniques for mapping barrier island geomorphology and habitats, and to enable the monitoring of ecological and geological change within National Seashores. This product is based on data from an innovative airborne lidar instrument under development at the NASA Wallops Flight Facility, the NASA Experimental Advanced Airborne Research Lidar (EAARL).

EAARL topography: Fire Island National Seashore

USGS Publications Warehouse

Brock, John C.; Wright, C. Wayne; Patterson, Matt; Nayagandhi, Amar; Patterson, Judd

2007-01-01

This Web site contains 31 LIDAR-derived first return topography maps and GIS files for Fire Island National Seashore. These lidar-derived topographic maps were produced as a collaborative effort between the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Coastal and Marine Geology Program, the National Park Service (NPS), Northeast Coastal and Barrier Network, Inventory and Monitoring Program, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Wallops Flight Facility. The aims of the partnership that created this product are to develop advanced survey techniques for mapping barrier island geomorphology and habitats, and to enable the monitoring of ecological and geological change within National Seashores. This product is based on data from an innovative airborne lidar instrument under development at the NASA Wallops Flight Facility, the NASA Experimental Advanced Airborne Research Lidar (EAARL).

CHIKRisk: Global monitoring & mapping of chikungunya risk

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

The 2013 Chikungunya outbreak in the Americas demonstrated the importance of readiness in assessing potential risk of the emergence of vector-borne diseases. More thatn 1.7 million suspected cases occurred and the disease spread to 33 countries and territories in 8 months. Climate and ecological con...

Skylab/EREP application to ecological, geological, and oceanographic investigations of Delaware Bay

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Klemas, V. (Principal Investigator); Bartlett, D. S.; Philpot, W. D.; Rogers, R. H.; Reed, L. E.

1976-01-01

The author has identified the following significant results. Skylab/EREP S190A and S190B film products were optically enhanced and visually interpreted to extract data suitable for mapping coastal land use; inventorying wetlands vegetation; monitoring tidal conditions; observing suspended sediment patterns; charting surface currents; locating coastal fronts and water mass boundaries; monitoring industrial and municipal waste dumps in the ocean; and determining the size and flow direction of river, bay, and man-made discharge plumes. Film products were visually analyzed to identify and map ten land use and vegetation categories at a scale of 1:125,000. Thematic maps were compared with CARETS land use maps, resulting in classification accuracies of 50 to 98%. Digital tapes from S192 were used to prepare thematic land use maps. The resolutions of the S190A, S190B, and S192 systems were 20-40m, 10-20m, and 70-100m, respectively.

Health Risks to Ecological Workers on Contaminated Sites - the Department of Energy as a Case Study

PubMed Central

Burger, Joanna; Gochfeld, Michael

2016-01-01

Background At most contaminated sites the risk to workers focuses on those ‘hazardous waste workers’ directly exposed to chemicals or radionuclides, and to the elaborate approaches implemented to protecting their health and safety. Ecological workers generally are not considered. Objectives To explore the risks to the health and safety of ecological workers on sites with potential chemical and radiological exposures before, during or after remediation of contamination. To use the U.S. Department of Energy as a case study, and to develop concepts that apply generally to sites contaminated with hazardous or nuclear wastes, Methods Develop categories of ecological workers, describe their usual jobs, and provide information on the kinds of risks they face. Ecological activities include continued surveillance and monitoring work on any sites with residual contamination, subject to institutional controls and engineered barriers following closure as well as the restoration. Results The categories of ecological workers and their tasks include 1) Ecological characterization, mapping and monitoring, 2) biodiversity studies, 2) Contaminant fate and transport, 3) On-going industrial activities 4) Remediation activities (environmental management), 5) Environmental restoration, 6) Post-cleanup surveillance and monitoring, and 7) Post-closure future site activities. There are a set of functional activities that can occur with different frequencies and intensities, including visual inspection, collecting biological samples, collecting media physical samples, collecting biological debris, restoration planting, and maintaining ecosystems. Conclusions Ecological workers face different exposures and risks than other environmental cleanup workers. Many of their tasks mimic shift work with long hours leading to fatigue, and they are exposed to biological as well as chemical/radiological hazards. DOE and other entities need to examine the risks to ecological workers on site with an eye to risk reduction. PMID:27668128

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

BECHTEL NEVADA ECOLOGICAL SERVICES

The Ecological Monitoring and Compliance program (EMAC), funded through the U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration Nevada Site Office (NNSA/NSO), monitors the ecosystem of the Nevada Test Site (NTS) and ensures compliance with laws and regulations pertaining to NTS biota. This report summarizes the program’s activities conducted by Bechtel Nevada (BN) during the Calendar Year 2005. Program activities included: (1) biological surveys at proposed construction sites, (2) desert tortoise compliance, (3) ecosystem mapping and data management, (4) sensitive and protected/regulated species and unique habitat monitoring, (5) habitat restoration monitoring, and (6) biological monitoring at the Non-Proliferation Test andmore » Evaluation Complex (NPTEC).« less

Environmental monitoring of North Merritt Island

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Poonai, P.

1975-01-01

The environmental impact of the space shuttle operation on North Merritt Island was studied mainly by means of color infrared photos and field visits. An attempt was also made to generate character maps of the Island using LANDSAT data with a view to decreasing the cost of monitoring and making the process more flexible in terms of rapid estimation of the extent of selected ground features. It seems possible that the IMAGE-100 output can be improved by using it in conjunction with software systems which are used for generating character maps. All the methods for generating maps show six main plant associations on North Merritt Island. It was shown that the six associations are related by ecological succession, merge into their neighbors in terms of component species and can be observed for changes in terms of component species.

Using new video mapping technology in landscape ecology

USGS Publications Warehouse

Stohlgren, T.J.; Kaye, Margot W.; McCrumb, A.D.; Otsuki, Yuka; Pfister, B.; Villa, C.A.

2000-01-01

Biological and ecological monitoring continues to play an important role in the conservation of species, natural communities, and landscapes (Spellerberg 1991). Although resource-monitoring programs have advanced knowledge about natural ecosystems, weaknesses persist in our ability to rapidly transfer landscape-scale information to the public. Ecologists continue to search for new technologies to address this problem and to communicate natural resource information quickly and effectively. New video mapping technology may provide much-needed help.Ecologists realize that only a small portion of large nature reserves can be monitored because of cost and logistical constraints. However, plant and animal populations are usually patchily distributed in subpopulations scattered throughout heterogeneous landscapes, and they are often associated with rare habitats. These subpopulations and rare habitats may respond differently to climate change, land use, and management practices such as grazing, fire suppression, prescribed burning, or invasion of exotic species (Stohlgren et al. 1997b). In many national parks, monuments, and wildlife reserves, a few long-term monitoring plots are used to infer the status and trends of natural resources in much larger areas. To make defensible inferences about populations, habitats, and landscapes, it is necessary to extrapolate from a few monitoring plots (local scale) to the larger, unsampled landscape with known levels of accuracy and precision.Recent technological developments have given population biologists and landscape ecologists a unique tool for bridging the data gap between small, intensively sampled monitoring plots and the greater landscape and for transferring this information quickly to resource managers and the public. In this article, we briefly describe this tool, a hand-held video mapping system linked to a geographic information system (GIS). We provide examples of its use in quantifying patterns of native and exotic plant species and cryptobiotic crusts in the new Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument, Utah, and in surveying aspen clones and regeneration in Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado.

Socio-Ecological Changes and Human Mobility in Landslide Zones of Chamoli District of Uttarakhand

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Singh, Desh Deepak

2017-04-01

Disaster displacement represents one of the biggest humanitarian challenges of the 21st century. Between 2008 and 2014, 184.6 million people were forced from their homes due to different natural disasters, with 19.3 million newly displaced in 2014, according to the latest available data from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC). In Uttarakhand state in India, hill slopes are known for their instability as they are ecologically fragile, tectonically and seismically active, and geologically sensitive that makes it prone to landslide hazards. Coupled to this, the rapid expansion of human societies often forces people to occupy highly dynamic and unstable environments. Repeated instances of landslide in highly populated areas have now forced many people to out migrate from vulnerable and high risk areas of Uttarakhand. The present study overlays the maps of geology, vegetation, route network, and settlement of Chamoli district of Uttarakhand to find out through overlay analysis, the landslide risk zonation map of Chamoli. Further, through primary survey in the high risk zones, the migration pattern and migration intensity has been analysed and a model for determining long term trend of migration in ecologically changing location has been developed. Keywords: Landslides, Uttarakhand, Migration, Risk Zonation Mapping

Integrated Monitoring, Modeling and Mapping for Managing and Valuing Bundled Services in the US – Ecosystem Services Research and Development at the EPA

EPA Science Inventory

The Ecological Research Program (ERP) of the EPA Office of Research and Development has the vision of a comprehensive theory and practice for characterizing, quantifying, and valuing ecosystem services, and their relationship to human well-being for environmental decision making....

The threat of soil salinity: A European scale review.

PubMed

Daliakopoulos, I N; Tsanis, I K; Koutroulis, A; Kourgialas, N N; Varouchakis, A E; Karatzas, G P; Ritsema, C J

2016-12-15

Soil salinisation is one of the major soil degradation threats occurring in Europe. The effects of salinisation can be observed in numerous vital ecological and non-ecological soil functions. Drivers of salinisation can be detected both in the natural and man-made environment, with climate and the foreseen climate change also playing an important role. This review outlines the state of the art concerning drivers and pressures, key indicators as well as monitoring, modeling and mapping methods for soil salinity. Furthermore, an overview of the effect of salinisation on soil functions and the respective mechanism is presented. Finally, the state of salinisation in Europe is presented according to the most recent literature and a synthesis of consistent datasets. We conclude that future research in the field of soil salinisation should be focused on among others carbon dynamics of saline soil, further exploration of remote sensing of soil properties and the harmonization and enrichment of soil salinity maps across Europe within a general context of a soil threat monitoring system to support policies and strategies for the protection of European soils. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Detection and identification of benthic communities and shoreline features in Biscayne Bay

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Kolipinski, M. C.; Higer, A. L.

1970-01-01

Progress made in the development of a technique for identifying and delinating benthic and shoreline communities using multispectral imagery is described. Images were collected with a multispectral scanner system mounted in a C-47 aircraft. Concurrent with the overflight, ecological ground- and sea-truth information was collected at 19 sites in the bay and on the shore. Preliminary processing of the scanner imagery with a CDC 1604 digital computer provided the optimum channels for discernment among different underwater and coastal objects. Automatic mapping of the benthic plants by multiband imagery and the mapping of isotherms and hydrodynamic parameters by digital model can become an effective predictive ecological tool when coupled together. Using the two systems, it appears possible to predict conditions that could adversely affect the benthic communities. With the advent of the ERTS satellites and space platforms, imagery data could be obtained which, when used in conjunction with water-level and meteorological data, would provide for continuous ecological monitoring.

Ecological Monitoring and Health Research in Luambe National Park, Zambia: Generation of Baseline Data Layers.

PubMed

Anderson, Neil E; Bessell, Paul R; Mubanga, Joseph; Thomas, Robert; Eisler, Mark C; Fèvre, Eric M; Welburn, Susan C

2016-09-01

Classifying, describing and understanding the natural environment is an important element of studies of human, animal and ecosystem health, and baseline ecological data are commonly lacking in remote environments of the world. Human African trypanosomiasis is an important constraint on human well-being in sub-Saharan Africa, and spillover transmission occurs from the reservoir community of wild mammals. Here we use robust and repeatable methodology to generate baseline datasets on vegetation and mammal density to investigate the ecology of warthogs (Phacochoerus africanus) in the remote Luambe National Park in Zambia, in order to further our understanding of their interactions with tsetse (Glossina spp.) vectors of trypanosomiasis. Fuzzy set theory is used to produce an accurate landcover classification, and distance sampling techniques are applied to obtain species and habitat level density estimates for the most abundant wild mammals. The density of warthog burrows is also estimated and their spatial distribution mapped. The datasets generated provide an accurate baseline to further ecological and epidemiological understanding of disease systems such as trypanosomiasis. This study provides a reliable framework for ecological monitoring of wild mammal densities and vegetation composition in remote, relatively inaccessible environments.

Empirical Mining of Large Data Sets Already Helps to Solve Practical Ecological Problems; A Panoply of Working Examples (Invited)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hargrove, W. W.; Hoffman, F. M.; Kumar, J.; Spruce, J.; Norman, S. P.

2013-12-01

Here we present diverse examples where empirical mining and statistical analysis of large data sets have already been shown to be useful for a wide variety of practical decision-making problems within the realm of large-scale ecology. Because a full understanding and appreciation of particular ecological phenomena are possible only after hypothesis-directed research regarding the existence and nature of that process, some ecologists may feel that purely empirical data harvesting may represent a less-than-satisfactory approach. Restricting ourselves exclusively to process-driven approaches, however, may actually slow progress, particularly for more complex or subtle ecological processes. We may not be able to afford the delays caused by such directed approaches. Rather than attempting to formulate and ask every relevant question correctly, empirical methods allow trends, relationships and associations to emerge freely from the data themselves, unencumbered by a priori theories, ideas and prejudices that have been imposed upon them. Although they cannot directly demonstrate causality, empirical methods can be extremely efficient at uncovering strong correlations with intermediate "linking" variables. In practice, these correlative structures and linking variables, once identified, may provide sufficient predictive power to be useful themselves. Such correlation "shadows" of causation can be harnessed by, e.g., Bayesian Belief Nets, which bias ecological management decisions, made with incomplete information, toward favorable outcomes. Empirical data-harvesting also generates a myriad of testable hypotheses regarding processes, some of which may even be correct. Quantitative statistical regionalizations based on quantitative multivariate similarity have lended insights into carbon eddy-flux direction and magnitude, wildfire biophysical conditions, phenological ecoregions useful for vegetation type mapping and monitoring, forest disease risk maps (e.g., sudden oak death), global aquatic ecoregion risk maps for aquatic invasives, and forest vertical structure ecoregions (e.g., using extensive LiDAR data sets). Multivariate Spatio-Temporal Clustering, which quantitatively places alternative future conditions on a common footing with present conditions, allows prediction of present and future shifts in tree species ranges, given alternative climatic change forecasts. ForWarn, a forest disturbance detection and monitoring system mining 12 years of national 8-day MODIS phenology data, has been operating since 2010, producing national maps every 8 days showing many kinds of potential forest disturbances. Forest resource managers can view disturbance maps via a web-based viewer, and alerts are issued when particular forest disturbances are seen. Regression-based decadal trend analysis showing long-term forest thrive and decline areas, and individual-based, brute-force supercomputing to map potential movement corridors and migration routes across landscapes will also be discussed. As significant ecological changes occur with increasing rapidity, such empirical data-mining approaches may be the most efficient means to help land managers find the best, most-actionable policies and decision strategies.

Monitoring the North Atlantic using ocean colour data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Fuentes-Yaco, C.; Caverhill, C.; Maass, H.; Porter, C.; White, GN, III

2016-04-01

The Remote Sensing Unit (RSU) at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography (BIO) has been monitoring the North Atlantic using ocean colour products for decades. Optical sensors used include CZCS, POLDER, SeaWiFS, MODIS/Aqua and MERIS. The monitoring area is defined by the Atlantic Zone Monitoring Program (AZMP) but certain products extend into Arctic waters, and all-Canadian waters which include the Pacific coast. RSU provides Level 3 images for various products in several formats and a range of temporal and spatial resolutions. Basic statistics for pre-defined areas of interest are compiled for each product. Climatologies and anomaly maps are also routinely produced, and custom products are delivered by request. RSU is involved in the generation of Level 4 products, such as characterizing the phenology of spring and fall phytoplankton blooms, computing primary production, using ocean colour to aid in EBSA (Ecologically and Biologically Significant Area) definition and developing habitat suitability maps. Upcoming operational products include maps of diatom distribution, biogeochemical province boundaries, and products from sensors such as VIIRS (Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite), OLCI (Ocean Land Colour Instrument), and PACE (Pre-Aerosol, Clouds and ocean Ecosystem) hyperspectral microsatellite mission.

A remote sensing research agenda for mapping and monitoring biodiversity

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Stoms, D. M.; Estes, J. E.

1993-01-01

A remote sensing research agenda designed to expand the knowledge of the spatial distribution of species richness and its ecological determinants and to predict its response to global change is proposed. Emphasis is placed on current methods of mapping species richness of both plants and animals, hypotheses concerning the biophysical factors believed to determine patterns of species richness, and anthropogenic processes causing the accelerating rate of extinctions. It is concluded that biodiversity should be incorporated more prominently into the global change and earth system science paradigms.

A national framework for monitoring and reporting on environmental sustainability in Canada.

PubMed

Marshall, I B; Scott Smith, C A; Selby, C J

1996-01-01

In 1991, a collaborative project to revise the terrestrial component of a national ecological framework was undertaken with a wide range of stakeholders. This spatial framework consists of multiple, nested levels of ecological generalization with linkages to existing federal and provincial scientific databases. The broadest level of generalization is the ecozone. Macroclimate, major vegetation types and subcontinental scale physiographic formations constitute the definitive components of these major ecosystems. Ecozones are subdivided into approximately 200 ecoregions which are based on properties like regional physiography, surficial geology, climate, vegetation, soil, water and fauna. The ecozone and ecoregion levels of the framework have been depicted on a national map coverage at 1:7 500 000 scale. Ecoregions have been subdivided into ecodistricts based primarily on landform, parent material, topography, soils, waterbodies and vegetation at a scale (1:2 000 000) useful for environmental resource management, monitoring and modelling activities. Nested within the ecodistricts are the polygons that make up the Soil Landscapes of Canada series of 1:1 000 000 scale soil maps. The framework is supported by an ARC-INFO GIS at Agriculture Canada. The data model allows linkage to associated databases on climate, land use and socio-economic attributes.

Vegetation mapping from ERTS imagery of the Okavango Delta. [Botswana

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Willamson, D. T.

1974-01-01

The Okavango is Botswana's major water resource. The present study has been specifically directed at mapping vegetation types within the delta and generally concerned with finding what information of value to plant and animal ecologists could be extracted from the imagery. To date it has been found that. (1) It is possible to map broad vegetation types from the imagery. (2) Imagery of the delta records the state of the system in a manner which will facilitate long-term studies of plant succession. (3) Phenological events can be detected. (4) The imagery can be used to detect and map wild fires. This will be useful in determining the role of fire in the ecology of the region. Using the imagery it is thus possible to map existing vegetation and monitor both short and long-term changes.

Mapping invasive wetland plants in the Hudson River National Estuarine Research Reserve using quickbird satellite imagery

USGS Publications Warehouse

Laba, M.; Downs, R.; Smith, S.; Welsh, S.; Neider, C.; White, S.; Richmond, M.; Philpot, W.; Baveye, P.

2008-01-01

The National Estuarine Research Reserve (NERR) program is a nationally coordinated research and monitoring program that identifies and tracks changes in ecological resources of representative estuarine ecosystems and coastal watersheds. In recent years, attention has focused on using high spatial and spectral resolution satellite imagery to map and monitor wetland plant communities in the NERRs, particularly invasive plant species. The utility of this technology for that purpose has yet to be assessed in detail. To that end, a specific high spatial resolution satellite imagery, QuickBird, was used to map plant communities and monitor invasive plants within the Hudson River NERR (HRNERR). The HRNERR contains four diverse tidal wetlands (Stockport Flats, Tivoli Bays, Iona Island, and Piermont), each with unique water chemistry (i.e., brackish, oligotrophic and fresh) and, consequently, unique assemblages of plant communities, including three invasive plants (Trapa natans, Phragmites australis, and Lythrum salicaria). A maximum-likelihood classification was used to produce 20-class land cover maps for each of the four marshes within the HRNERR. Conventional contingency tables and a fuzzy set analysis served as a basis for an accuracy assessment of these maps. The overall accuracies, as assessed by the contingency tables, were 73.6%, 68.4%, 67.9%, and 64.9% for Tivoli Bays, Stockport Flats, Piermont, and Iona Island, respectively. Fuzzy assessment tables lead to higher estimates of map accuracies of 83%, 75%, 76%, and 76%, respectively. In general, the open water/tidal channel class was the most accurately mapped class and Scirpus sp. was the least accurately mapped. These encouraging accuracies suggest that high-resolution satellite imagery offers significant potential for the mapping of invasive plant species in estuarine environments. ?? 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

A low-cost drone based application for identifying and mapping of coastal fish nursery grounds

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ventura, Daniele; Bruno, Michele; Jona Lasinio, Giovanna; Belluscio, Andrea; Ardizzone, Giandomenico

2016-03-01

Acquiring seabed, landform or other topographic data in the field of marine ecology has a pivotal role in defining and mapping key marine habitats. However, accessibility for this kind of data with a high level of detail for very shallow and inaccessible marine habitats has been often challenging, time consuming. Spatial and temporal coverage often has to be compromised to make more cost effective the monitoring routine. Nowadays, emerging technologies, can overcome many of these constraints. Here we describe a recent development in remote sensing based on a small unmanned drone (UAVs) that produce very fine scale maps of fish nursery areas. This technology is simple to use, inexpensive, and timely in producing aerial photographs of marine areas. Both technical details regarding aerial photos acquisition (drone and camera settings) and post processing workflow (3D model generation with Structure From Motion algorithm and photo-stitching) are given. Finally by applying modern algorithm of semi-automatic image analysis and classification (Maximum Likelihood, ECHO and Object-based Image Analysis) we compared the results of three thematic maps of nursery area for juvenile sparid fishes, highlighting the potential of this method in mapping and monitoring coastal marine habitats.

Estuarine Salinity Mapping From Airborne Radiometry

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Walker, J. P.; Gao, Y.; Cook, P. L. M.; Ye, N.

2016-12-01

Estuaries are critical ecosystems providing both ecological habitat and human amenity including boating and recreational fishing. Salinity gradients, caused by the mixing of fresh and salt water, exert an overwhelming control on estuarine ecology and biogeochemistry as well as being a key tracer for model calibration. At present, salinity monitoring within estuaries typically uses point measurements or underway boat-based methods, which makes sensing of localised phenomena such as upwelling of saline bottom water difficult. This study has pioneered the use of airborne radiometry (passive microwave) sensing as a new method to remotely quantify estuarine salinity, allowing rapid production of high resolution surface salinity maps. The airborne radiometry mapping was conducted for the Gippsland Lakes, the largest estuary in Australia, in February, July, October and November of 2015, using the Polarimetric L-band Microwave Radiometer (PLMR). Salinity was retrieved from the brightness temperature collected by PLMR with results validated against boat sampling conducted concurrently with each flight. Results showed that the retrieval accuracy of the radiative transfer model was better than 5 ppt for most flights. The spatial, temporal and seasonal variations of salinity observed in this study are also analysed and discussed.

Real-Time Mapping Spectroscopy on the Ground, in the Air, and in Space

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Thompson, D. R.; Allwood, A.; Chien, S.; Green, R. O.; Wettergreen, D. S.

2016-12-01

Real-time data interpretation can benefit both remote in situ exploration and remote sensing. Basic analyses at the sensor can monitor instrument performance and reveal invisible science phenomena in real time. This promotes situational awareness for remote robotic explorers or campaign decision makers, enabling adaptive data collection, reduced downlink requirements, and coordinated multi-instrument observations. Fast analysis is ideal for mapping spectrometers providing unambiguous, quantitative geophysical measurements. This presentation surveys recent computational advances in real-time spectroscopic analysis for Earth science and planetary exploration. Spectral analysis at the sensor enables new operations concepts that significantly improve science yield. Applications include real-time detection of fugitive greenhouse emissions by airborne monitoring, real-time cloud screening and mineralogical mapping by orbital spectrometers, and adaptive measurement by the PIXL instrument on the Mars 2020 rover. Copyright 2016 California Institute of Technology. All Rights Reserved. We acknowledge support of the US Government, NASA, the Earth Science Division and Terrestrial Ecology program.

EAARL Topography-Padre Island National Seashore

USGS Publications Warehouse

Brock, John C.; Wright, C. Wayne; Nayegandhi, Amar; Patterson, Matt; Wilson, Iris; Travers, Laurinda J.

2007-01-01

This Web site contains 116 Lidar-derived bare earth topography maps and GIS files for Padre Island National Seashore-Texas. These Lidar-derived topography maps were produced as a collaborative effort between the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Florida Integrated Science Center (FISC) St. Petersburg, Florida, the National Park Service (NPS) Gulf Coast Network, Inventory and Monitoring Program, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Wallops Flight Facility. One objective of this research is to create techniques to survey coral reefs and barrier islands for the purposes of geomorphic change studies, habitat mapping, ecological monitoring, change detection, and event assessment. As part of this project, data from an innovative instrument under development at the NASA Wallops Flight Facility, the NASA Experimental Airborne Advanced Research Lidar (EAARL) are being used. This sensor has the potential to make significant contributions in this realm for measuring subaerial and submarine topography wthin cross-environment surveys. High spectral resolution, water-column correction, and low costs were found to be key factors in providing accurate and affordable imagery to costal resource managers.

A Project to Map and Monitor Baldcypress Forests in Coastal Louisiana, Using Landsat, MODIS, and ASTER Satellite Data

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Spruce, Joseph; Sader, Steven; Smoot, James

2012-01-01

Cypress swamp forests of Louisiana offer many important ecological and economic benefits: wildlife habitat, forest products, storm buffers, water quality, and recreation. Such forests are also threatened by multiple factors: subsidence, salt water intrusion, sea level rise, persistent flooding, hydrologic modification, hurricanes, insect and nutria damage, timber harvesting, and land use conversion. Unfortunately, there are many information gaps regarding the type, location, extent, and condition of these forests. Better more up to date swamp forest mapping products are needed to aid coastal forest conservation and restoration work (e.g., through the Coastal Forest Conservation Initiative or CFCI). In response, a collaborative project was initiated to develop, test and demonstrate cypress swamp forest mapping products, using NASA supported Landsat, ASTER, and MODIS satellite data. Research Objectives are: Develop, test, and demonstrate use of Landsat and ASTER data for computing new cypress forest classification products and Landsat, ASTER, and MODIS satellite data for detecting and monitoring swamp forest change

Applications of ERTS data to coastal wetland ecology with special reference to plant community mapping and typing and impact of man. [Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Anderson, R. R.; Carter, V. P.; Mcginness, J.

1974-01-01

Complete seasonal ERTS-1 coverage of Atlantic coastal wetlands from Delaware Bay to Georgia provides a basis for assessment of temporal data for wetland mapping, evaluation, and monitoring. Both MSS imagery and digital data have proved useful for gross wetland species delineation and determination of the upper wetland boundary. Tidal effects and (band to band or seasonal) spectral reflectance differences make it possible to type vegetatively coastal wetlands in salinity related categories. Management areas, spoil disposal sites, drainage ditches, lagoon-type developments and highway construction can be detected indicating a monitoring potential for the future. A northern test site (Maryland-Virginia) and a southern test site (Georgia-South Carolina), representing a range of coastal marshes from saline to fresh, were chosen for intensive study. Wetland maps were produced at various scales using both ERTS imagery (bands 5 and 7) and digital data (bands 4, 5 and 7).

Mean composite fire severity metrics computed with Google Earth engine offer improved accuracy and expanded mapping potential

Treesearch

Sean A. Parks; Lisa M. Holsinger; Morgan A. Voss; Rachel A. Loehman; Nathaniel P. Robinson

2018-01-01

Landsat-based fire severity datasets are an invaluable resource for monitoring and research purposes. These gridded fire severity datasets are generally produced with pre- and post-fire imagery to estimate the degree of fire-induced ecological change. Here, we introduce methods to produce three Landsat-based fire severity metrics using the Google Earth Engine (GEE)...

Indicators of burn severity at extended temporal scales: a decade of ecosystem response in mixed-conifer forests of western Montana

Treesearch

Sarah A. Lewis; Andrew T. Hudak; Peter R. Robichaud; Penelope Morgan; Kevin L. Satterberg; Eva K. Strand; Alistair M. S. Smith; Joseph A. Zamudio; Leigh B. Lentile

2017-01-01

We collected field and remotely sensed data spanning 10 years after three 2003 Montana wildfires to monitor ecological change across multiple temporal and spatial scales. Multiple endmember spectral mixture analysis was used to create post-fire maps of: char, soil, green (GV) and non-photosynthetic (NPV) vegetation from high-resolution 2003 hyperspectral (HS) and 2007...

ecological geological maps: GIS-based evaluation of the Geo-Ecological Quality Index (GEQUI) in Sicily (Central Mediterranean)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Nigro, Fabrizio; Arisco, Giuseppe; Perricone, Marcella; Renda, Pietro; Favara, Rocco

2010-05-01

The condition of landscapes and the ecological communities within them is strongly related to levels of human activity. As a consequence, determining status and trends in the pattern of human-dominated landscapes can be useful for understanding the overall conditions of geo-ecological resources. Ecological geological maps are recent tools providing useful informations about a-biotic and biotic features worldwide. These maps represents a new generation of geological maps and depict the lithospheric components conditions on surface, where ecological dynamics (functions and properties) and human activities develop. Thus, these maps are too a fundamental political tool to plan the human activities management in relationship to the territorial/environmental patterns of a date region. Different types of ecological geological maps can be develop regarding the: conditions (situations), zoning, prognosis and recommendations. The ecological geological conditions maps reflects the complex of parameters or individual characteristics of lithosphere, which characterized the opportunity of the influence of lithosphere components on the biota (man, fauna, flora, and ecosystem). The ecological geological zoning maps are foundamental basis for prognosis estimation and nature defenses measures. Estimation from the position of comfort and safety of human life and function of ecosystem is given on these maps. The ecological geological prognosis maps reflect the spatial-temporary prognoses of ecological geological conditions changing during the natural dynamic of natural surrounding and the main-during the economic mastering of territory and natural technical systems. Finally, the ecological geological recommendation maps are based on the ecological geological and social-economical informations, aiming the regulation of territory by the regulation of economic activities and the defense of bio- and socio-sphere extents. Each of these maps may also be computed or in analytic or in synthetic way. The first, characterized or estimated, prognosticated one or several indexes of geological ecological conditions. In the second type of maps, the whole complex is reflected, which defined the modern or prognosticable ecological geological situation. Regarding the ecological geological zoning maps, the contemporary state of ecological geological conditions may be evaluated by a range of parameters into classes of conditions and, on the basis of these informations, the estimation from the position of comfort and safety of human life and function of ecosystem is given. Otherwise, the concept of geoecological land evaluation has become established in the study of landscape/environmental plannings in recent years. It requires different thematic data-sets, deriving from the natural-, social- and amenity-environmental resources analysis, that may be translate in environmental (vulnerability/quality) indexes. There have been some attempts to develop integrated indices related to various aspects of the environment within the framework of sustainable development (e.g.: United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development, World Economic Forum, Advisory Board on Indicators of Sustainable Development of the International Institute for Sustainable Development, Living Planet Index established by the World Wide Fund for Nature, etc.). So, the ecological geological maps represent the basic tool for the geoecological land evaluation policies and may be computed in terms of index-maps. On these basis, a GIS application for assessing the ecological geological zoning is presented for Sicily (Central Mediterranean). The Geo-Ecological Quality Index (GEQUI) map was computed by considering a lot of variables. Ten variables (lithology, climate, landslide distribution, erosion rate, soil type, land cover, habitat, groundwater pollution, roads density and buildings density) generated from available data, were used in the model, in which weighting values to each informative layer were assigned. An overlay analysis was carried out, allowing to classify the region into five classes: bad, poor, moderate, good and high.

City plants as ecological indicator of environment quality in St. Petersburg

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sapunov, Valentin; Glazyrina, Tatyana

2017-04-01

Under increase of natural hazard activity and anthropogenic pressure the effective and cheep monitoring methods become necessary. Majority of modern methods of monitoring, such as space and air, needs significant foundation. The simplest monitoring method is biological indication, basing on essay of variability, sex ration and sexual dimorphism. Such a method does not need long time efforts and may be realized by short observation. Urban plants are natural indicators of ecological pressure. Check or their state may give us significant information on area pollution by use of principles of phenogenic indication. Genetic and phenotypic variability of different organism have general principles and constants. The per cent of abnormal organisms and coefficient of variability are stable for majority of species under favorable state and increase under unfavorable conditions. The basis for indication is both state of adult trees and morphological variability of pollen grains. The part of dried threes and threes infected by parasites-xylophagous is correlated with toxic pollution. Float asymmetry of lives is measure of mutagenic pollution. Abnormal form of three (dichotomy, curved) is criteria of teratogenic pollution. Importance of such an indication is increased by such incidents as Chernobyl, Fucusima and so on. Algorithm for analyze of such a data is considered. The map of ecological pressure of St. Petersburg is presented.

Using Ecological Asset Mapping to Investigate Pre-Service Teachers' Cultural Assets

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Borrero, Noah; Yeh, Christine

2016-01-01

We examined the impact of a pedagogical strategy, ecological asset mapping, on 19 pre-service teachers' self-exploration, development of respect for others, and critical examination of social injustice. Data were analyzed from participants' ecological asset maps and essays describing the experience of completing and sharing the maps. The analysis…

EcoEvo-MAPS: An Ecology and Evolution Assessment for Introductory through Advanced Undergraduates

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Summers, Mindi M.; Couch, Brian A.; Knight, Jennifer K.; Brownell, Sara E.; Crowe, Alison J.; Semsar, Katharine; Wright, Christian D.; Smith, Michelle K.

2018-01-01

A new assessment tool, Ecology and Evolution--Measuring Achievement and Progression in Science or EcoEvo-MAPS, measures student thinking in ecology and evolution during an undergraduate course of study. EcoEvo-MAPS targets foundational concepts in ecology and evolution and uses a novel approach that asks students to evaluate a series of…

Quantifying biological integrity of California sage scrub communities using plant life-form cover.

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Hamada, Y.; Stow, D. A.; Franklin, J.

2010-01-01

The California sage scrub (CSS) community type in California's Mediterranean-type ecosystems supports a large number of rare, threatened, and endangered species, and is critically degraded and endangered. Monitoring ecological variables that provide information about community integrity is vital to conserving these biologically diverse communities. Fractional cover of true shrub, subshrub, herbaceous vegetation, and bare ground should fill information gaps between generalized vegetation type maps and detailed field-based plot measurements of species composition and provide an effective means for quantifying CSS community integrity. Remote sensing is the only tool available for estimating spatially comprehensive fractional cover over large extent, and fractionalmore » cover of plant life-form types is one of the measures of vegetation state that is most amenable to remote sensing. The use of remote sensing does not eliminate the need for either field surveying or vegetation type mapping; rather it will likely require a combination of approaches to reliably estimate life-form cover and to provide comprehensive information for communities. According to our review and synthesis, life-form fractional cover has strong potential for providing ecologically meaningful intermediate-scale information, which is unattainable from vegetation type maps and species-level field measurements. Thus, we strongly recommend incorporating fractional cover of true shrub, subshrub, herb, and bare ground in CSS community monitoring methods. Estimating life-form cover at a 25 m x 25 m spatial scale using remote sensing would be an appropriate approach for initial implementation. Investigation of remote sensing techniques and an appropriate spatial scale; collaboration of resource managers, biologists, and remote sensing specialists, and refinement of protocols are essential for integrating life-form fractional cover mapping into strategies for sustainable long-term CSS community management.« less

Onion Park Research Natural Area: Botanical and ecological resources inventory, mapping and analysis with recommendations towards the development of a long-term monitoring and research program

Treesearch

Earle F. Layser

1992-01-01

Onion Park is a floristically rich naturally occurring mountain meadow and wetland complex which is surrounded by subalpine forest. The grass- and wetlands comprising the Park contribute biological diversity to an otherwise predominantly lodgepole pine-forested, subalpine setting. Onion Park is located at 7400' elevation in the Little Belt Mountains, five miles...

Evaluation of Ecological Environment Security in Contiguous Poverty Alleviation Area of Sichuan Province

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Xian, W.; Chen, Y.; Chen, J.; Luo, X.; Shao, H.

2018-04-01

According to the overall requirements of ecological construction and environmental protection, rely on the national key ecological engineering, strengthen ecological environmental restoration and protection, improve forest cover, control soil erosion, construct important ecological security barrier in poor areas, inhibit poverty alleviation through ecological security in this area from environmental damage to the vicious cycle of poverty. Obviously, the dynamic monitoring of ecological security in contiguous destitute areas of Sichuan province has a policy sense of urgency and practical significance. This paper adopts RS technology and GIS technology to select the Luhe region of Jinchuan county and Ganzi prefecture as the research area, combined with the characteristics of ecological environment in poor areas, the impact factors of ecological environment are determined as land use type, terrain slope, vegetation cover, surface water, soil moisture and other factors. Using the ecological environmental safety assessment model, the ecological environment safety index is calculated. According to the index, the ecological environment safety of the research area is divided into four levels. The ecological environment safety classification map of 1990 in 2009 is obtained. It can be seen that with the human modern life and improve their economic level, the surrounding environment will be destroyed, because the research area ecological environment is now in good, the ecological environment generally tends to be stable. We should keep its ecological security good and improve local economic income. The relationship between ecological environmental security and economic coordinated development in poor areas has very important strategic significance.

Spectral discrimination of macrophyte species during different seasons in a tropical wetland using in-situ hyperspectral remote sensing

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Saluja, Ridhi; Garg, J. K.

2017-10-01

Wetlands, one of the most productive ecosystems on Earth, perform myriad ecological functions and provide a host of ecological services. Despite their ecological and economic values, wetlands have experienced significant degradation during the last century and the trend continues. Hyperspectral sensors provide opportunities to map and monitor macrophyte species within wetlands for their management and conservation. In this study, an attempt has been made to evaluate the potential of narrowband spectroradiometer data in discriminating wetland macrophytes during different seasons. main objectives of the research were (1) to determine whether macrophyte species could be discriminated based on in-situ hyperspectral reflectance collected over different seasons and at each measured waveband (400-950nm), (2) to compare the effectiveness of spectral reflectance and spectral indices in discriminating macrophyte species, and (3) to identify spectral wavelengths that are most sensitive in discriminating macrophyte species. Spectral characteristics of dominant wetland macrophyte species were collected seasonally using SVC GER 1500 portable spectroradiometer over the 400 to 1050nm spectral range at 1.5nm interval, at the Bhindawas wetland in the state of Haryana, India. Hyperspectral observations were pre-processed and subjected to statistical analysis, which involved a two-step approach including feature selection (ANOVA and KW test) and feature extraction (LDA and PCA). Statistical analysis revealed that the most influential wavelengths for discrimination were distributed along the spectral profile from visible to the near-infrared regions. The results suggest that hyperspectral data can be used discriminate wetland macrophyte species working as an effective tool for advanced mapping and monitoring of wetlands.

[Application of Landsat ETM+ in monitoring of desertification in agro-pastoral ecotone of northern China].

PubMed

Mi, Jia; Wang, Kun; Wang, Hong-mei

2011-03-01

Agro-pastoral ecotone of northern China is a transitional and interlaced zone of agricultural cultivation region and grazing region The ecotone is a complex containing several ecosystems. Soil desertification has become a serious problem that endangered sustainable development in the ecotone. The area of desertification land has been increasing year after year in agro-pastoral ecotone of northern China. This problem concerns the ecological environment, economic development and living quality of people in northern and central eastern of China. For these reasons, ecotone has recently become a focus of research of restoration ecology and global climate change. Remote sensing monitoring of desertification land is a key technique to collect the status and development of sandy land, providing scientific bases for the national desertification control. Landsat ETM+ is an advanced multispectral remote sensing system for the research of regional scale and has been widely used in many fields, such as geologic surveys, mapping, vegetation monitoring, etc. In the present, the authors introduce that spectral characteristics, desertification information extraction, desertification classification and development analyses in detail, and summarizes the study progresses discusses the problems and trends.

A hierarchical framework of aquatic ecological units in North America (Nearctic Zone).

Treesearch

James R. Maxwell; Clayton J. Edwards; Mark E. Jensen; Steven J. Paustian; Harry Parrott; Donley M. Hill

1995-01-01

Proposes a framework for classifying and mapping aquatic systems at various scales using ecologically significant physical and biological criteria. Classification and mapping concepts follow tenets of hierarchical theory, pattern recognition, and driving variables. Criteria are provided for the hierarchical classification and mapping of aquatic ecological units of...

EAARL topography: Dry Tortugas National Park

USGS Publications Warehouse

Brock, John C.; Wright, C. Wayne; Patterson, Matt; Nayegandhi, Amar; Patterson, Judd

2008-01-01

This lidar-derived submarine topography map was produced as a collaborative effort between the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Coastal and Marine Geology Program, National Park Service (NPS) South Florida/Caribbean Network Inventory and Monitoring Program, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Wallops Flight Facility. One objective of this research is to create techniques to survey coral reefs for the purposes of habitat mapping, ecological monitoring, change detection, ad event assessment (for example: bleaching, hurricanes, disease outbreaks). As part of this project, data from an innovative instrument under development at the NASA Wallops Flight Facility, the NASA Experimental Airborne Advanced Research Lidar (EAARL) are being used. This sensor has the potential to make significant contributions in this realm for measuring water depth and conducting cross-environment surveys. High spectral resolution, water-column correction, and low costs were found to be key factors in providing accurate and affordable imagery to managers of coastal tropical habitats.

EAARL submarine topography: Biscayne National Park

USGS Publications Warehouse

Brock, John C.; Wright, C. Wayne; Patterson, Matt; Nayegandhi, Amar; Patterson, Judd; Harris, Melanie S.; Mosher, Lance

2006-01-01

This lidar-derived submarine topography map was produced as a collaborative effort between the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Coastal and Marine Geology Program, National Park Service (NPS) South Florida/Caribbean Network Inventory and Monitoring Program, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Wallops Flight Facility. One objective of this research is to create techniques to survey coral reefs for the purposes of habitat mapping, ecological monitoring, change detection, and event assessment (for example: bleaching, hurricanes, disease outbreaks). As part of this project, data from an innovative instrument under development at the NASA Wallops Flight Facility, the NASA Experimental Airborne Advanced Research Lidar (EAARL) are being used. This sensor has the potential to make significant contributions in this realm for measuring water depth and conducting cross-environment surveys. High spectral resolution, water-column correction, and low costs were found to be key factors in providing accurate and affordable imagery to managers of coastal tropical habitats.

Molluscan indicator species and their potential use in ecological status assessment using species distribution modeling.

PubMed

Moraitis, Manos L; Tsikopoulou, Irini; Geropoulos, Antonios; Dimitriou, Panagiotis D; Papageorgiou, Nafsika; Giannoulaki, Marianna; Valavanis, Vasilis D; Karakassis, Ioannis

2018-05-24

Marine habitat assessment using indicator species through Species Distribution Modeling (SDM) was investigated. The bivalves: Corbula gibba and Flexopecten hyalinus were the indicator species characterizing disturbed and undisturbed areas respectively in terms of chlorophyll a concentration in Greece. The habitat suitability maps of these species reflected the overall ecological status of the area. The C. gibba model successfully predicted the occurrence of this species in areas with increased physical disturbance driven by chlorophyll a concentration, whereas the habitat map for F. hyalinus showed an increased probability of occurrence in chlorophyll-poor areas, affected mainly by salinity. We advocate the use of C. gibba as a proxy for eutrophication and the incorporation of this species in monitoring studies through SDM methods. For the Mediterranean Sea we suggest the use of F. hyalinus in SDM as an indicator of environmental stability and a possible forecasting tool for salinity fluctuations. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

FLO1K, global maps of mean, maximum and minimum annual streamflow at 1 km resolution from 1960 through 2015

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Barbarossa, Valerio; Huijbregts, Mark A. J.; Beusen, Arthur H. W.; Beck, Hylke E.; King, Henry; Schipper, Aafke M.

2018-03-01

Streamflow data is highly relevant for a variety of socio-economic as well as ecological analyses or applications, but a high-resolution global streamflow dataset is yet lacking. We created FLO1K, a consistent streamflow dataset at a resolution of 30 arc seconds (~1 km) and global coverage. FLO1K comprises mean, maximum and minimum annual flow for each year in the period 1960-2015, provided as spatially continuous gridded layers. We mapped streamflow by means of artificial neural networks (ANNs) regression. An ensemble of ANNs were fitted on monthly streamflow observations from 6600 monitoring stations worldwide, i.e., minimum and maximum annual flows represent the lowest and highest mean monthly flows for a given year. As covariates we used the upstream-catchment physiography (area, surface slope, elevation) and year-specific climatic variables (precipitation, temperature, potential evapotranspiration, aridity index and seasonality indices). Confronting the maps with independent data indicated good agreement (R2 values up to 91%). FLO1K delivers essential data for freshwater ecology and water resources analyses at a global scale and yet high spatial resolution.

An Attempt to Develop AN Environmental Information System of Ecological Infrastructure for Evaluating Functions of Ecosystem-Based Solutions for Disaster Risk Reduction Eco-Drr

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Doko, T.; Chen, W.; Sasaki, K.; Furutani, T.

2016-06-01

"Ecological Infrastructure (EI)" are defined as naturally functioning ecosystems that deliver valuable services to people, such as healthy mountain catchments, rivers, wetlands, coastal dunes, and nodes and corridors of natural habitat, which together form a network of interconnected structural elements in the landscape. On the other hand, natural disaster occur at the locations where habitat was reduced due to the changes of land use, in which the land was converted to the settlements and agricultural cropland. Hence, habitat loss and natural disaster are linked closely. Ecological infrastructure is the nature-based equivalent of built or hard infrastructure, and is as important for providing services and underpinning socio-economic development. Hence, ecological infrastructure is expected to contribute to functioning as ecological disaster reduction, which is termed Ecosystem-based Solutions for Disaster Risk Reduction (Eco-DRR). Although ecological infrastructure already exists in the landscape, it might be degraded, needs to be maintained and managed, and in some cases restored. Maintenance and restoration of ecological infrastructure is important for security of human lives. Therefore, analytical tool and effective visualization tool in spatially explicit way for the past natural disaster and future prediction of natural disaster in relation to ecological infrastructure is considered helpful. Hence, Web-GIS based Ecological Infrastructure Environmental Information System (EI-EIS) has been developed. This paper aims to describe the procedure of development and future application of EI-EIS. The purpose of the EI-EIS is to evaluate functions of Eco-DRR. In order to analyse disaster data, collection of past disaster information, and disaster-prone area is effective. First, a number of digital maps and analogue maps in Japan and Europe were collected. In total, 18,572 maps over 100 years were collected. The Japanese data includes Future-Pop Data Series (1,736 maps), JMC dataset 50m grid (elevation) (13,071 maps), Old Edition Maps: Topographic Map (325 maps), Digital Base Map at a scale of 2500 for reconstruction planning (808 maps), Detailed Digital Land Use Information for Metropolitan Area (10 m land use) (2,436 maps), and Digital Information by GSI (national large scale map) (71 maps). Old Edition Maps: Topographic Map were analogue maps, and were scanned and georeferenced. These geographical area covered 1) Tohoku area, 2) Five Lakes of Mikata area (Fukui), 3) Ooshima Island (Tokyo), 4) Hiroshima area (Hiroshima), 5) Okushiri Island (Hokkaido), and 6) Toyooka City area (Hyogo). The European data includes topographic map in Germany (8 maps), old topographic map in Germany (31 maps), ancient map in Germany (23 maps), topographic map in Austria (9 maps), old topographic map in Austria (17 maps), and ancient map in Austria (37 maps). Second, focusing on Five Lakes of Mikata area as an example, these maps were integrated into the ArcGIS Online® (ESRI). These data can be overlaid, and time-series data can be visualized by a time slider function of ArcGIS Online.

NASA Earth Resources Survey Symposium. Volume 1-A: Agriculture, environment

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1975-01-01

A number of papers dealing with the practical application of imagery obtained from remote sensors on LANDSAT satellites, the Skylab Earth resources experiment package, and aircraft to problems in agriculture and the environment were presented. Some of the more important topics that were covered included: range management and resources, environmental monitoring and management, crop growth and inventory, land management, multispectral band scanners, forest management, mapping, marshlands, strip mining, water quality and pollution, ecology.

Mitigating Agricultural Diffuse Pollution: Learning from The River Eden Demonstration Test Catchment Experiments

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Reaney, S. M.; Barker, P. A.; Haygarth, P.; Quinn, P. F.; Aftab, A.; Barber, N.; Burke, S.; Cleasby, W.; Jonczyk, J. C.; Owen, G. J.; Perks, M. T.; Snell, M. A.; Surridge, B.

2016-12-01

Freshwater systems continue to fail to achieve their ecological potential and provide associated ecological services due to poor water quality. A key driver of the failure to achieve good status under the EU Water Framework Directive derives from non-point (diffuse) pollution of sediment, phosphorus and nitrogen from agricultural landscapes. While many mitigation options exist, a framework is lacking which provides a holistic understanding of the impact of mitigation scheme design on catchment function and agronomics. The River Eden Demonstration Test Catchment project (2009-2017) in NW England uses an interdisciplinary approach including catchment hydrology, sediment-nutrient fluxes and farmer attitudes, to understand ecological function and diffuse pollution mitigation feature performance. Water flow (both surface and groundwater) and quality monitoring focused on three ca. 10km2 catchments with N and P measurements every 30 minutes. Ecological status was determined by monthly diatom community analysis and supplemented by macrophyte, macroinvertebrate and fish surveys. Changes in erosion potential and hydrological connectivity were monitored using extensive Landsat images and detailed UAV monitoring. Simulation modelling work utilised hydrological simulation models (CRAFT, CRUM3 and HBV-Light) and SCIMAP based risk mapping. Farmer behaviour and attitudes have been assessed with surveys, interviews and diaries. A suite of mitigation features have been installed including changes to land management - e.g. aeriation, storage features within a `treatment train', riparian fencing and woodland creation. A detailed dataset of the integrated catchment hydrological, water quality and ecological behaviour over multiple years, including a drought period and an extreme rainfall event, highlights the interaction between ecology, hydrological and nutrient dynamics that are driven by sediment and nutrients exported within a small number of high magnitude storm events. Hence these high-resolution processes must be studied in conjunction, rather than in isolation, to understand system dynamics and critically to evaluate effective mitigation schemes.

EAARL Topography-Sagamore Hill National Historic Site

USGS Publications Warehouse

Brock, John C.; Wright, C. Wayne; Nayegandhi, Amar; Patterson, Matt; Travers, Laurinda J.

2007-01-01

This Web site contains lidar-derived bare earth (BE) and first return (FR) topography maps and GIS files for the Sagamore Hill National Historic Site. These lidar-derived topography maps were produced as a collaborative effort between the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Coastal and Marine Geology Program, FISC St. Petersburg, Florida, the National Park Service (NPS), Northeast Coastal and Barrier Network, Inventory and Monitoring Program, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Wallops Flight Facility. One objective of this research is to create techniques to survey coral reefs and barrier islands for the purposes of geomorphic change studies, habitat mapping, ecological monitoring, change detection, and event assessment. As part of this project, data from an innovative instrument under development at the NASA Wallops Flight Facility, the NASA Experimental Airborne Advanced Research Lidar (EAARL) are being used. This sensor has the potential to make significant contributions in this realm for measuring subaerial and submarine topography wthin cross-environment surveys. High spectral resolution, water-column correction, and low costs were found to be key factors in providing accurate and affordable imagery to costal resource managers.

EAARL topography: Cape Cod National Seashore

USGS Publications Warehouse

Brock, John C.; Wright, C. Wayne; Patterson, Matt; Nayegandhi, Amar; Travers, Laurinda J.

2007-01-01

This Web site contains 90 Lidar-derived bare earth topography maps and GIS files for the Cape Cod National Seashore. These Lidar-derived topography maps were produced as a collaborative effort between the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Florida Integrated Science Center (FISC) St. Petersburg, Florida, the National Park Service (NPS), Northeast Coastal and Barrier Network, Inventory and Monitoring Program, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Wallops Flight Facility. One objective of this research is to create techniques to survey coral reefs and barrier islands for the purposes of geomorphic change studies, habitat mapping, ecological monitoring, change detection, and event assessment. As part of this project, data from an innovative instrument under development at the NASA Wallops Flight Facility, the NASA Experimental Airborne Advanced Research Lidar (EAARL) are being used. This sensor has the potential to make significant contributions in this realm for measuring subaerial and submarine topography wthin cross-environment surveys. High spectral resolution, water-column correction, and low costs were found to be key factors in providing accurate and affordable imagery to coastal resource managers.

EAARL topography: Thomas Stone National Historic Site

USGS Publications Warehouse

Brock, John C.; Wright, C. Wayne; Patterson, Matt; Nayegandhi, Amar; Patterson, Judd

2007-01-01

This Web site contains Lidar-derived topography (first return and bare earth) maps and GIS files for Thomas Stone National Historic Site in Maryland. These Lidar-derived topography maps were produced as a collaborative effort between the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Coastal and Marine Geology Program, FISC St. Petersburg, the National Park Service (NPS) South Florida/Caribbean Network Inventory and Monitoring Program, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Wallops Flight Facility. One objective of this research is to create techniques to survey coral reefs and barrier islands for the purposes of geomorphic change studies, habitat mapping, ecological monitoring, change detection, and event assessment. As part of this project, data from an innovative instrument under development at the NASA Wallops Flight Facility, the NASA Experimental Airborne Advanced Research Lidar (EAARL) are being used. This sensor has the potential to make significant contributions in this realm for measuring subaerial and submarine topography wthin cross-environment surveys. High spectral resolution, water-column correction, and low costs were found to be key factors in providing accurate and affordable imagery to costal resource managers.

EAARL topography: Gulf Islands National Seashore: Florida

USGS Publications Warehouse

Brock, John C.; Wright, C. Wayne; Nayegandhi, Amar; Patterson, Matt; Wilson, Iris; Travers, Laurinda J.

2007-01-01

This Web site contains 33 lidar-derived bare earth topography maps and GIS files for the Gulf Islands National Seashore-Florida. These lidar-derived topography maps were produced as a collaborative effort between the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Coastal and Marine Geology Program, FISC St. Petersburg, Florida, the National Park Service (NPS), Gulf Coast Network, Network Inventory and Monitoring Program, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Wallops Flight Facility. One objective of this research is to create techniques to survey coral reefs and barrier islands for the purposes of geomorphic change studies, habitat mapping, ecological monitoring, change detection, and event assessment. As part of this project, data from an innovative instrument under development at the NASA Wallops Flight Facility, the NASA Experimental Airborne Advanced Research Lidar (EAARL) are being used. This sensor has the potential to make significant contributions in this realm for measuring subaerial and submarine topography wthin cross-environment surveys. High spectral resolution, water-column correction, and low costs were found to be key factors in providing accurate and affordable imagery to costal resource managers.

EAARL topography: Gulf Islands National Seashore: Mississippi

USGS Publications Warehouse

Brock, John C.; Wright, C. Wayne; Nayegandhi, Amar; Patterson, Matt; Wilson, Iris; Travers, Laurinda J.

2007-01-01

This Web site contains 30 lidar-derived bare earth topography maps and GIS files for the Gulf Islands National Seashore-Mississippi. These lidar-derived topography maps were produced as a collaborative effort between the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Coastal and Marine Geology Program, FISC St. Petersburg, Florida, the National Park Service (NPS) Gulf Coast Network, Inventory and Monitoring Program, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Wallops Flight Facility. One objective of this research is to create techniques to survey coral reefs and barrier islands for the purposes of geomorphic change studies, habitat mapping, ecological monitoring, change detection, and event assessment. As part of this project, data from an innovative instrument under development at the NASA Wallops Flight Facility, the NASA Experimental Airborne Advanced Research Lidar (EAARL) are being used. This sensor has the potential to make significant contributions in this realm for measuring subaerial and submarine topography wthin cross-environment surveys. High spectral resolution, water-column correction, and low costs were found to be key factors in providing accurate and affordable imagery to costal resource managers.

EAARL submarine topography: Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary

USGS Publications Warehouse

Brock, John C.; Wright, C. Wayne; Nayegandhi, Amar; Woolard, Jason; Patterson, Matt; Wilson, Iris; Travers, Laurinda J.

2007-01-01

This Web site contains 46 Lidar-derived submarine topography maps and GIS files for the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. These Lidar-derived submarine topographic maps were produced as a collaborative effort between the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Coastal and Marine Geology Program, FISC St. Petersburg, Florida, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Remote Sensing Division, the National Park Service (NPS) South Florida/Caribbean Network Inventory and Monitoring Program, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Wallops Flight Facility. One objective of this research is to create techniques to survey coral reefs and barrier islands for the purposes of geomorphic change studies, habitat mapping, ecological monitoring, change detection, and event assessment. As part of this project, data from an innovative instrument under development at the NASA Wallops Flight Facility, the NASA Experimental Airborne Advanced Research Lidar (EAARL) are being used. This sensor has the potential to make significant contributions in this realm for measuring subaerial and submarine topography within cross-environment surveys. High spectral resolution, water-column correction, and low costs were found to be key factors in providing accurate and affordable imagery to coastal resource managers.

EAARL Submarine Topography - Northern Florida Keys Reef Tract

USGS Publications Warehouse

Brock, John C.; Wright, C. Wayne; Nayegandhi, Amar; Patterson, Matt; Travers, Laurinda J.; Wilson, Iris

2007-01-01

This Web site contains 32 Lidar-derived bare earth topography maps and GIS files for the Northern Florida Keys Reef Tract. These lidar-derived submarine topographic maps were produced as a collaborative effort between the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Coastal and Marine Geology Program, FISC St. Petersburg, Florida, the National Park Service (NPS) South Florida/Caribbean Network Inventory and Monitoring Program, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Wallops Flight Facility. One objective of this research is to create techniques to survey coral reefs and barrier islands for the purposes of geomorphic change studies, habitat mapping, ecological monitoring, change detection, and event assessment. As part of this project, data from an innovative instrument under development at the NASA Wallops Flight Facility, the NASA Experimental Airborne Advanced Research Lidar (EAARL) are being used. This sensor has the potential to make significant contributions in this realm for measuring subaerial and submarine topography wthin cross-environment surveys. High spectral resolution, water-column correction, and low costs were found to be key factors in providing accurate and affordable imagery to costal resource managers.

EAARL topography: Gateway National Recreation Area

USGS Publications Warehouse

Brock, John C.; Wright, C. Wayne; Patterson, Matt; Nayegandhi, Amar; Patterson, Judd

2007-01-01

This Web site contains Lidar-derived topography (bare earth) maps and GIS files for the Sandy Hook Unit within Gateway National Recreation Area in New Jersey. These Lidar-derived topography maps were produced as a collaborative effort between the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Coastal and Marine Geology Program, FISC St. Petersburg, the National Park Service (NPS) South Florida/Caribbean Network Inventory and Monitoring Program, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Wallops Flight Facility. One objective of this research is to create techniques to survey coral reefs and barrier islands for the purposes of geomorphic change studies, habitat mapping, ecological monitoring, change detection, and event assessment. As part of this project, data from an innovative instrument under development at the NASA Wallops Flight Facility, the NASA Experimental Airborne Advanced Research Lidar (EAARL) are being used. This sensor has the potential to make significant contributions in this realm for measuring subaerial and submarine topography wthin cross-environment surveys. High spectral resolution, water-column correction, and low costs were found to be key factors in providing accurate and affordable imagery to costal resource managers.

EAARL topography: Assateague Island National Seashore

USGS Publications Warehouse

Brock, John C.; Wright, C. Wayne; Patterson, Matt; Nayegandhi, Amar; Travers, Laurinda J.

2007-01-01

This Web site contains 58 lidar-derived bare earth topography maps and GIS files for the Assateague Island National Seashore. These lidar-derived topography maps were produced as a collaborative effort between the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Coastal and Marine Geology Program, FISC St. Petersburg, Florida, the National Park Service (NPS) South Florida/Caribbean Network Inventory and Monitoring Program, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Wallops Flight Facility. One objective of this research is to create techniques to survey coral reefs and barrier islands for the purposes of geomorphic change studies, habitat mapping, ecological monitoring, change detection, and event assessment. As part of this project, data from an innovative instrument under development at the NASA Wallops Flight Facility, the NASA Experimental Airborne Advanced Research Lidar (EAARL) are being used. This sensor has the potential to make significant contributions in this realm for measuring subaerial and submarine topography wthin cross-environment surveys. High spectral resolution, water-column correction, and low costs were found to be key factors in providing accurate and affordable imagery to costal resource managers.

EAARL topography: George Washington Birthplace National Monument

USGS Publications Warehouse

Brock, John C.; Wright, C. Wayne; Patterson, Matt; Nayegandhi, Amar; Patterson, Judd

2007-01-01

This Web site contains Lidar-derived topography (first return and bare earth) maps and GIS files for George Washington Birthplace National Monument in Virginia. These lidar-derived topography maps were produced as a collaborative effort between the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Coastal and Marine Geology Program, FISC St. Petersburg, the National Park Service (NPS), Northeast Coastal and Barrier Network, Inventory and Monitoring Program, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Wallops Flight Facility. One objective of this research is to create techniques to survey coral reefs and barrier islands for the purposes of geomorphic change studies, habitat mapping, ecological monitoring, change detection, and event assessment. As part of this project, data from an innovative instrument under development at the NASA Wallops Flight Facility, the NASA Experimental Airborne Advanced Research Lidar (EAARL) are being used. This sensor has the potential to make significant contributions in this realm for measuring subaerial and submarine topography wthin cross-environment surveys. High spectral resolution, water-column correction, and low costs were found to be key factors in providing accurate and affordable imagery to coastal resource managers.

Implementation of Fractal Dimension and Self-Organizing Map to Detect Toxic Effects of Toluene on Movement Tracks of Daphnia magna.

PubMed

Liu, Yuedan; Xia, Chunlei; Fan, Zhongya; Wu, Renren; Chen, Xianglin; Liu, Zuoyi

2018-01-01

Movement behaviors of an indicator species, Daphnia magna , in response to contaminants have been implemented to monitor environmental disturbances. Complexity in movement tracks of Daphnia magna was characterized by use of fractal dimension and self-organizing map. The individual movement tracks of D. magna were continuously recorded for 24 hours before and after treatments with toluene at the concentration of 10 mg/L, respectively. The general complexity in movement tracks (10 minutes) was characterized by fractal dimension. Results showed that average fractal dimension of movement tracks was decreased from 1.62 to 1.22 after treatments. The instantaneous movement parameters of movement segments in 5 s were input into the self-organizing map to investigate the swimming pattern changes under stresses of toluene. Abnormal behaviors of D. magna are more frequently observed after treatments than before treatments. Computational methods in ecological informatics could be utilized to obtain the useful information in behavioral data of D. magna and would be further applied as an in situ monitoring tool in water environment.

Image Fusion Applied to Satellite Imagery for the Improved Mapping and Monitoring of Coral Reefs: a Proposal

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gholoum, M.; Bruce, D.; Hazeam, S. Al

2012-07-01

A coral reef ecosystem, one of the most complex marine environmental systems on the planet, is defined as biologically diverse and immense. It plays an important role in maintaining a vast biological diversity for future generations and functions as an essential spawning, nursery, breeding and feeding ground for many kinds of marine species. In addition, coral reef ecosystems provide valuable benefits such as fisheries, ecological goods and services and recreational activities to many communities. However, this valuable resource is highly threatened by a number of environmental changes and anthropogenic impacts that can lead to reduced coral growth and production, mass coral mortality and loss of coral diversity. With the growth of these threats on coral reef ecosystems, there is a strong management need for mapping and monitoring of coral reef ecosystems. Remote sensing technology can be a valuable tool for mapping and monitoring of these ecosystems. However, the diversity and complexity of coral reef ecosystems, the resolution capabilities of satellite sensors and the low reflectivity of shallow water increases the difficulties to identify and classify its features. This paper reviews the methods used in mapping and monitoring coral reef ecosystems. In addition, this paper proposes improved methods for mapping and monitoring coral reef ecosystems based on image fusion techniques. This image fusion techniques will be applied to satellite images exhibiting high spatial and low to medium spectral resolution with images exhibiting low spatial and high spectral resolution. Furthermore, a new method will be developed to fuse hyperspectral imagery with multispectral imagery. The fused image will have a large number of spectral bands and it will have all pairs of corresponding spatial objects. This will potentially help to accurately classify the image data. Accuracy assessment use ground truth will be performed for the selected methods to determine the quality of the information derived from image classification. The research will be applied to the Kuwait's southern coral reefs: Kubbar and Um Al-Maradim.

The future of imaging spectroscopy - Prospective technologies and applications

USGS Publications Warehouse

Schaepman, M.E.; Green, R.O.; Ungar, S.G.; Curtiss, B.; Boardman, J.; Plaza, A.J.; Gao, B.-C.; Ustin, S.; Kokaly, R.; Miller, J.R.; Jacquemoud, S.; Ben-Dor, E.; Clark, R.; Davis, C.; Dozier, J.; Goodenough, D.G.; Roberts, D.; Swayze, G.; Milton, E.J.; Goetz, A.F.H.

2006-01-01

Spectroscopy has existed for more than three centuries now. Nonetheless, significant scientific advances have been achieved. We discuss the history of spectroscopy in relation to emerging technologies and applications. Advanced focal plane arrays, optical design, and intelligent on-board logic are prime prospective technologies. Scalable approaches in pre-processing of imaging spectrometer data will receive additional focus. Finally, we focus on new applications monitoring transitional ecological zones, where human impact and disturbance have highest impact as well as in monitoring changes in our natural resources and environment We conclude that imaging spectroscopy enables mapping of biophysical and biochemical variables of the Earth's surface and atmospheric composition with unprecedented accuracy.

Urban Spatial Ecological Performance Based on the Data of Remote Sensing of Guyuan

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ren, X.-J.; Chen, X.-J.; Ma, Q.

2018-04-01

The evolution analysis of urban landuse and spatial ecological performance are necessary and useful to recognizing the stage of urban development and revealing the regularity and connotation of urban spatial expansion. Moreover, it lies in the core that should be exmined in the urban sustainable development. In this paper, detailed information has been acquired from the high-resolution satellite imageries of Guyuan, China case study. With the support of GIS, the land-use mapping information and the land cover changes are analyzed, and the process of urban spatial ecological performance evolution by the hierarchical methodology is explored. Results demonstrate that in the past 11 years, the urban spatial ecological performance show an improved process with the dramatic landcover change in Guyuan. Firstly, the landuse structure of Guyuan changes significantly and shows an obvious stage characteristic. Secondly, the urban ecological performance of Guyuan continues to be optimized over the 11 years. Thirdly, the findings suggest that a dynamic monitoring mechanism of urban land use based on high-resolution remote sensing data should be established in urban development, and the rational development of urban land use should be guided by the spatial ecological performance as the basic value orientation.

Everglades Ecological Forecasting II: Utilizing NASA Earth Observations to Enhance the Capabilities of Everglades National Park to Monitor & Predict Mangrove Extent to Aid Current Restoration Efforts

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Kirk, Donnie; Wolfe, Amy; Ba, Adama; Nyquist, Mckenzie; Rhodes, Tyler; Toner, Caitlin; Cabosky, Rachel; Gotschalk, Emily; Gregory, Brad; Kendall, Candace

2016-01-01

Mangroves act as a transition zone between fresh and salt water habitats by filtering and indicating salinity levels along the coast of the Florida Everglades. However, dredging and canals built in the early 1900s depleted the Everglades of much of its freshwater resources. In an attempt to assist in maintaining the health of threatened habitats, efforts have been made within Everglades National Park to rebalance the ecosystem and adhere to sustainably managing mangrove forests. The Everglades Ecological Forecasting II team utilized Google Earth Engine API and satellite imagery from Landsat 5, 7, and 8 to continuously create land-change maps over a 25 year period, and to allow park officials to continue producing maps in the future. In order to make the process replicable for project partners at Everglades National Park, the team was able to conduct a supervised classification approach to display mangrove regions in 1995, 2000, 2005, 2010 and 2015. As freshwater was depleted, mangroves encroached further inland and freshwater marshes declined. The current extent map, along with transition maps helped create forecasting models that show mangrove encroachment further inland in the year 2030 as well. This project highlights the changes to the Everglade habitats in relation to a changing climate and hydrological changes throughout the park.

Monitoring the Invasion of Spartina alterniflora from 1993 to 2014 with Landsat TM and SPOT 6 Satellite Data in Yueqing Bay, China

PubMed Central

Wang, Anqi; Chen, Jiadai; Jing, Changwei; Ye, Guanqiong; Wu, Jiaping; Huang, Zhixing; Zhou, Chaosheng

2015-01-01

The exotic plant Spartina alterniflora was introduced to Yueqing Bay more than 20 years ago for tidal land reclamation and as a defense against typhoons, but it has rapidly expanded and caused enormous ecological consequences. Mapping the spread and distribution of S. alterniflora is the first step toward understanding the factors that determine the population expansion patterns. Remote sensing is a promising tool to monitor the expansion of S. alterniflora. Twelve Landsat TM images and Support Vector Machine (SVM) were used to delineate the invasion of S. alterniflora from 1993 to 2009, and SPOT 6 images and Object-Based Image Analysis (OBIA) were used to map the distribution of S. alterniflora in 2014. In situ data and Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) images were used as supplementary data. S. alterniflora spread rapidly in Yueqing Bay over the past 21 years. Between 1993 and 2009, the area of S. alterniflora increased by 608 times (from 4 to 2432 ha). The rapid expansion of S. alterniflora covered almost all of the bare mudflats around the mangrove forests and the cultivated mudflats. However, from 2009 to 2014, the rate of expansion of S. alterniflora began to slow down in Yueqing Bay, and the total area of S. alterniflora in Yantian decreased by 275 ha. These phenomena can be explained by the landscape changes and ecological niches. Through the expansion of S. alterniflora, it was found that the ecological significance and environmental impact of S. alterniflora was different in different regions in Yueqing Bay. The conservation plans for Yueqing Bay should consider both the positive and negative effects of S. alterniflora, and the governmental policy should be based on the different circumstances of the regions. PMID:26263172

Monitoring the Invasion of Spartina alterniflora from 1993 to 2014 with Landsat TM and SPOT 6 Satellite Data in Yueqing Bay, China.

PubMed

Wang, Anqi; Chen, Jiadai; Jing, Changwei; Ye, Guanqiong; Wu, Jiaping; Huang, Zhixing; Zhou, Chaosheng

2015-01-01

The exotic plant Spartina alterniflora was introduced to Yueqing Bay more than 20 years ago for tidal land reclamation and as a defense against typhoons, but it has rapidly expanded and caused enormous ecological consequences. Mapping the spread and distribution of S. alterniflora is the first step toward understanding the factors that determine the population expansion patterns. Remote sensing is a promising tool to monitor the expansion of S. alterniflora. Twelve Landsat TM images and Support Vector Machine (SVM) were used to delineate the invasion of S. alterniflora from 1993 to 2009, and SPOT 6 images and Object-Based Image Analysis (OBIA) were used to map the distribution of S. alterniflora in 2014. In situ data and Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) images were used as supplementary data. S. alterniflora spread rapidly in Yueqing Bay over the past 21 years. Between 1993 and 2009, the area of S. alterniflora increased by 608 times (from 4 to 2432 ha). The rapid expansion of S. alterniflora covered almost all of the bare mudflats around the mangrove forests and the cultivated mudflats. However, from 2009 to 2014, the rate of expansion of S. alterniflora began to slow down in Yueqing Bay, and the total area of S. alterniflora in Yantian decreased by 275 ha. These phenomena can be explained by the landscape changes and ecological niches. Through the expansion of S. alterniflora, it was found that the ecological significance and environmental impact of S. alterniflora was different in different regions in Yueqing Bay. The conservation plans for Yueqing Bay should consider both the positive and negative effects of S. alterniflora, and the governmental policy should be based on the different circumstances of the regions.

Satellite Remote Sensing of Coral Reefs: By Learning about Coral Reefs, Students Gain an Understanding of Ecosystems and How Cutting-Edge Technology Can Be Used to Study Ecological Change

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Palandro, David; Thoms, Kristin; Kusek, Kristen; Muller-Karger, Frank; Greely, Teresa

2005-01-01

Coral reefs are one of the most important ecosystems on the planet, providing sustenance to both marine organisms and humans. Yet they are also one of the most endangered ecosystems as coral reef coverage has declined dramatically in the past three decades. Researchers continually seek better ways to map coral reef coverage and monitor changes…

Animal ecology meets GPS-based radiotelemetry: a perfect storm of opportunities and challenges

PubMed Central

Cagnacci, Francesca; Boitani, Luigi; Powell, Roger A.; Boyce, Mark S.

2010-01-01

Global positioning system (GPS) telemetry technology allows us to monitor and to map the details of animal movement, securing vast quantities of such data even for highly cryptic organisms. We envision an exciting synergy between animal ecology and GPS-based radiotelemetry, as for other examples of new technologies stimulating rapid conceptual advances, where research opportunities have been paralleled by technical and analytical challenges. Animal positions provide the elemental unit of movement paths and show where individuals interact with the ecosystems around them. We discuss how knowing where animals go can help scientists in their search for a mechanistic understanding of key concepts of animal ecology, including resource use, home range and dispersal, and population dynamics. It is probable that in the not-so-distant future, intense sampling of movements coupled with detailed information on habitat features at a variety of scales will allow us to represent an animal's cognitive map of its environment, and the intimate relationship between behaviour and fitness. An extended use of these data over long periods of time and over large spatial scales can provide robust inferences for complex, multi-factorial phenomena, such as meta-analyses of the effects of climate change on animal behaviour and distribution. PMID:20566493

Ecological Monitoring and Compliance Program Fiscal Year 2001

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

C. A. Wills

The Ecological Monitoring and Compliance program, funded through the U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration Nevada Operations Office, monitors the ecosystem of the Nevada Test Site (NTS) and ensures compliance with laws and regulations pertaining to NTS biota. This report summarizes the program's activities conducted by Bechtel Nevada during fiscal year 2001. Program activities included: (1) biological surveys at proposed construction sites, (2) desert tortoise compliance, (3) ecosystem mapping and data management, (4) sensitive species and unique habitat monitoring, and (5) biological monitoring at the HAZMAT Spill Center. Biological surveys for the presence of sensitive species were conductedmore » for 23 NTS projects. Eleven sites were in desert tortoise habitat. These projects have the potential to disturb a total of 588 acres, where 568 acres of disturbance would be off-road driving. No tortoises were found in or displaced from project areas, and no tortoise s were accidentally injured or killed at project areas. One tortoise was crushed by a vehicle on a paved road. A topical report describing the classification of habitat types on the NTS was completed and distributed. The report is the culmination of three years of field vegetation mapping and the analysis of vegetation data from over 1,500 ecological landform units. Compilation of historical wildlife data was initiated. A long-term monitoring plan for important plant species that occur on the NTS was completed. Site-wide monitoring was conducted for the western burrowing owl, bat species of concern, wild horses, and raptor nests. Sixty-nine of 77 known owl burrows were monitored. As in previous years, some owls were present year round on the NTS. An overall decrease in active owl burrows was observed within all three ecoregions (Mojave Desert, Transition, Great Basin Desert) from October through January. An increase in active owl burrows was observed from mid March to early April. A total of 55 juvenile owls was detected from 11 breeding pairs. Pellet analysis of burrowing owls was completed which identified key prey species. A total of 272 bats, representing 10 bat species were captured in mist-nets at water sources in the Great Basin Desert ecoregion. Bats were detected with the Anabat II call-recording system at water sources and selected tunnel and mine entrances. Thirty-seven adult horses and 11 foals were counted this year. Two of the eleven foals observed last year survived to yearlings. Seven active raptor nests were found and monitored this year. These included two Great-horned Owl nests, three Barn Owl nests, and two Red-tailed Hawk nests. Selected wetlands and man-made water sources were monitored for physical parameters and wildlife use. No dead animals were observed this year in any plastic-lined sump. The chemical spill test plans for four experiments at the HAZMAT Spill Center were reviewed for their potential to impact biota downwind of spills on Frenchman Lake playa.« less

Application of Spaceborne Scatterometer for Mapping Freeze-Thaw State in Northern Landscapes as a Measure of Ecological and Hydrological Processes

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

McDonald, Kyle; Kimball, John; Zimmermann, Reiner; Way, JoBea; Frolking, Steve; Running, Steve

1994-01-01

Landscape freeze/thaw transitions coincide with marked shifts in albedo, surface energy and mass exchange, and associated snow dynamics. monitoring landscape freeze/thaw dynamics would improve our ability to quantify the interannual variability of boreal hydrology and river runoff/flood dynamics, The annual duration of frost-free period also bounds the period of photosynthetic activity in borel and arctic regions thus affecting the carbon budget and the interannual variability fo regional carbon fluxes.

CARETS: A prototype regional environmental information system. Volume 9: Shore zone land use and land cover; Central Atlantic Regional Ecological Test Site

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Alexander, R. H. (Principal Investigator); Dolan, R.; Hayden, B. P.; Vincent, C. L.

1975-01-01

The author has identified the following significant results. Analysis of the land use and land cover maps provides a stratification of the CARETS shore area into regions which have a similar environmental organization. Different elements of the landscape are altered less frequently moving inland. Near the beach, higher frequency of monitoring is needed than is needed in the inland areas, including the marsh and estuarine areas.

Considerations for applying digital soil mapping to ecological sites

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

Recent advancements in the spatial prediction of soil properties are not currently being fully utilized for ecological studies. Linking digital soil mapping (DSM) with ecological sites (ES) has the potential to better land management decisions by improving spatial resolution and precision as well as...

Elevated rates of gold mining in the Amazon revealed through high-resolution monitoring.

PubMed

Asner, Gregory P; Llactayo, William; Tupayachi, Raul; Luna, Ernesto Ráez

2013-11-12

Gold mining has rapidly increased in western Amazonia, but the rates and ecological impacts of mining remain poorly known and potentially underestimated. We combined field surveys, airborne mapping, and high-resolution satellite imaging to assess road- and river-based gold mining in the Madre de Dios region of the Peruvian Amazon from 1999 to 2012. In this period, the geographic extent of gold mining increased 400%. The average annual rate of forest loss as a result of gold mining tripled in 2008 following the global economic recession, closely associated with increased gold prices. Small clandestine operations now comprise more than half of all gold mining activities throughout the region. These rates of gold mining are far higher than previous estimates that were based on traditional satellite mapping techniques. Our results prove that gold mining is growing more rapidly than previously thought, and that high-resolution monitoring approaches are required to accurately quantify human impacts on tropical forests.

Elevated rates of gold mining in the Amazon revealed through high-resolution monitoring

PubMed Central

Asner, Gregory P.; Llactayo, William; Tupayachi, Raul; Luna, Ernesto Ráez

2013-01-01

Gold mining has rapidly increased in western Amazonia, but the rates and ecological impacts of mining remain poorly known and potentially underestimated. We combined field surveys, airborne mapping, and high-resolution satellite imaging to assess road- and river-based gold mining in the Madre de Dios region of the Peruvian Amazon from 1999 to 2012. In this period, the geographic extent of gold mining increased 400%. The average annual rate of forest loss as a result of gold mining tripled in 2008 following the global economic recession, closely associated with increased gold prices. Small clandestine operations now comprise more than half of all gold mining activities throughout the region. These rates of gold mining are far higher than previous estimates that were based on traditional satellite mapping techniques. Our results prove that gold mining is growing more rapidly than previously thought, and that high-resolution monitoring approaches are required to accurately quantify human impacts on tropical forests. PMID:24167281

EAARL Topography-Colonial National Historical Park

USGS Publications Warehouse

Brock, John C.; Wright, C. Wayne; Nayegandhi, Amar; Stevens, Sara; Travers, Laurinda J.

2008-01-01

These Lidar-derived topography maps were produced as a collaborative effort between the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Coastal and Marine Geology Program, Florida Integrated Science Center (FISC) St. Petersburg, the National Park Service (NPS) Inventory and Monitoring Program, Northeast Coastal and Barrier Network, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Wallops Flight Facility. One objective of this research is to create techniques to survey coral reefs, barrier islands, and various nearshore coastal environments for the purposes of geomorphic change studies, habitat mapping, ecological monitoring, change detection, and event assessment. As part of this project, data from an innovative instrument under development at the NASA Wallops Flight Facility, the NASA Experimental Airborne Advanced Research Lidar (EAARL) are being used. This sensor has the potential to make significant contributions in this realm for measuring subaerial and submarine topography wthin cross-environment surveys. High spectral resolution, water-column correction, and low costs were found to be key factors in providing accurate and affordable imagery to coastal resource managers.

FORUM: A Suggestion for an Improved Vegetation Scheme for Local and Global Mapping and Monitoring.

PubMed

ADAMS

1999-01-01

/ Understanding of global ecological problems is at least partly dependent on clear assessments of vegetation change, and such assessment is always dependent on the use of a vegetation classification scheme. Use of satellite remotely sensed data is the only practical means of carrying out any global-scale vegetation mapping exercise, but if the resulting maps are to be useful to most ecologists and conservationists, they must be closely tied to clearly defined features of vegetation on the ground. Furthermore, much of the mapping that does take place involves more local-scale description of field sites; for purposes of cost and practicality, such studies usually do not involve remote sensing using satellites. There is a need for a single scheme that integrates the smallest to the largest scale in a way that is meaningful to most environmental scientists. Existing schemes are unsatisfactory for this task; they are ambiguous, unnecessarily complex, and their categories do not correspond to common-sense definitions. In response to these problems, a simple structural-physiognomically based scheme with 23 fundamental categories is proposed here for mapping and monitoring on any scale, from local to global. The fundamental categories each subdivide into more specific structural categories for more detailed mapping, but all the categories can be used throughout the world and at any scale, allowing intercomparison between regions. The next stage in the process will be to obtain the views of as many people working in as many different fields as possible, to see whether the proposed scheme suits their needs and how it should be modified. With a few modifications, such a scheme could easily be appended to an existing land cover classification scheme, such as the FAO system, greatly increasing the usefulness and accessability of the results of the landcover classification. KEY WORDS: Vegetation scheme; Mapping; Monitoring; Land cover

An operational methodology for riparian land cover fine scale regional mapping for the study of landscape influence on river ecological status

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tormos, T.; Kosuth, P.; Souchon, Y.; Villeneuve, B.; Durrieu, S.; Chandesris, A.

2010-12-01

Preservation and restoration of river ecosystems require an improved understanding of the mechanisms through which they are influenced by landscape at multiple spatial scales and particularly at river corridor scale considering the role of riparian vegetation for regulating and protecting river ecological status and the relevance of this specific area for implementing efficient and realistic strategies. Assessing correctly this influence over large river networks involves accurate broad scale (i.e. at least regional) information on Land Cover within Riparian Areas (LCRA). As the structure of land cover along rivers is generally not accessible using moderate-scale satellite imagery, finer spatial resolution imagery and specific mapping techniques are needed. For this purpose we developed a generic multi-scale Object Based Image Analysis (OBIA) scheme able to produce LCRA maps in different geographic context by exploiting information available from very high spatial resolution imagery (satellite or airborne) and/or metric to decametric spatial thematic data on a given study zone thanks to fuzzy expert knowledge classification rules. A first experimentation was carried out on the Herault river watershed (southern of France), a 2650 square kilometers basin that presents a contrasted landscape (different ecoregions) and a total stream length of 1150 Km, using high and very high multispectral remotely-sensed images (10m Spot5 multispectral images and 0.5m aerial photography) and existing spatial thematic data. Application of the OBIA scheme produced a detailed (22 classes) LCRA map with an overall accuracy of 89% and a Kappa index of 83% according to a land cover pressures typology (six categories). A second experimentation (using the same data sources) was carried out on a larger test zone, a part of the Normandy river network (25 000 square kilometers basin; 6000 km long river network; 155 ecological stations). This second work aimed at elaborating a robust statistical eco-regional model to study links between land cover spatial indicators calculated at local and watershed scales, and river ecological status assessed with macroinvertebrate indicators. Application of the OBIA scheme produced a detailed (62 classes) LCRA map which allowed the model to highlight influence of specific land use patterns: (i) the significant beneficial effect of 20-m riparian tree vegetation strip near a station and 20-m riparian grassland strip along the upstream network of a station and (ii) the negative impact on river ecological status of urban areas and roads on the upstream flood plain of a station. Results of these two experimentations highlight that (i) the application of an OBIA scheme using multi-source spatial data provides an efficient approach for mapping and monitoring LCRA that can be implemented operationally at regional or national scale and (ii) and the interest of using LCRA-maps derived from very high spatial resolution imagery (satellite or airborne) and/or metric spatial thematic data to study landscape influence on river ecological status and support managers in the definition of optimized riparian preservation and restoration strategies.

Validation of Spaceborne Radar Surface Water Mapping with Optical sUAS Images

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Li-Chee-Ming, J.; Murnaghan, K.; Sherman, D.; Poncos, V.; Brisco, B.; Armenakis, C.

2015-08-01

The Canada Centre for Remote Sensing (CCRS) has over 40 years of experience with airborne and spaceborne sensors and is now starting to use small Unmanned Aerial Systems (sUAS) to validate products from large coverage area sensors and create new methodologies for very high resolution products. Wetlands have several functions including water storage and retention which can reduce flooding and provide continuous flow for hydroelectric generation and irrigation for agriculture. Synthetic Aperture Radar is well suited as a tool for monitoring surface water by supplying acquisitions irrespective of cloud cover or time of day. Wetlands can be subdivided into three classes: open water, flooded vegetation and upland which can vary seasonally with time and water level changes. RADARSAT-2 data from the Wide-Ultra Fine, Spotlight and Fine Quad-Pol modes has been used to map the open water in the Peace-Athabasca Delta, Alberta using intensity thresholding. We also use spotlight modes for higher resolution and the fully polarimetric mode (FQ) for polarimetric decomposition. Validation of these products will be done using a low altitude flying sUAS to generate optical georeferenced images. This project provides methodologies which could be used for flood mapping as well as ecological monitoring.

A Citizen Science Approach: A Detailed Ecological Assessment of Subtropical Reefs at Point Lookout, Australia

PubMed Central

Thurstan, Ruth; Beger, Maria; Dudgeon, Christine; Loder, Jennifer; Kovacs, Eva; Gallo, Michele; Flower, Jason; Gomez Cabrera, K-le; Ortiz, Juan; Lea, Alexandra; Kleine, Diana

2016-01-01

Subtropical reefs provide an important habitat for flora and fauna, and proper monitoring is required for conservation. Monitoring these exposed and submerged reefs is challenging and available resources are limited. Citizen science is increasing in momentum, as an applied research tool and in the variety of monitoring approaches adopted. This paper aims to demonstrate an ecological assessment and mapping approach that incorporates both top-down (volunteer marine scientists) and bottom-up (divers/community) engagement aspects of citizen science, applied at a subtropical reef at Point Lookout, Southeast Queensland, Australia. Marine scientists trained fifty citizen scientists in survey techniques that included mapping of habitat features, recording of substrate, fish and invertebrate composition, and quantifying impacts (e.g., occurrence of substrate damage, presence of litter). In 2014 these volunteers conducted four seasonal surveys along semi-permanent transects, at five sites, across three reefs. The project presented is a model on how citizen science can be conducted in a marine environment through collaboration of volunteer researchers, non-researchers and local marine authorities. Significant differences in coral and algal cover were observed among the three sites, while fluctuations in algal cover were also observed seasonally. Differences in fish assemblages were apparent among sites and seasons, with subtropical fish groups observed more commonly in colder seasons. The least physical damage occurred in the most exposed sites (Flat Rock) within the highly protected marine park zones. The broad range of data collected through this top-down/bottom-up approach to citizen science exemplifies the projects’ value and application for identifying ecosystem trends or patterns. The results of the project support natural resource and marine park management, providing a valuable contribution to existing scientific knowledge and the conservation of local reefs. PMID:27706182

A Citizen Science Approach: A Detailed Ecological Assessment of Subtropical Reefs at Point Lookout, Australia.

PubMed

Roelfsema, Chris; Thurstan, Ruth; Beger, Maria; Dudgeon, Christine; Loder, Jennifer; Kovacs, Eva; Gallo, Michele; Flower, Jason; Gomez Cabrera, K-le; Ortiz, Juan; Lea, Alexandra; Kleine, Diana

2016-01-01

Subtropical reefs provide an important habitat for flora and fauna, and proper monitoring is required for conservation. Monitoring these exposed and submerged reefs is challenging and available resources are limited. Citizen science is increasing in momentum, as an applied research tool and in the variety of monitoring approaches adopted. This paper aims to demonstrate an ecological assessment and mapping approach that incorporates both top-down (volunteer marine scientists) and bottom-up (divers/community) engagement aspects of citizen science, applied at a subtropical reef at Point Lookout, Southeast Queensland, Australia. Marine scientists trained fifty citizen scientists in survey techniques that included mapping of habitat features, recording of substrate, fish and invertebrate composition, and quantifying impacts (e.g., occurrence of substrate damage, presence of litter). In 2014 these volunteers conducted four seasonal surveys along semi-permanent transects, at five sites, across three reefs. The project presented is a model on how citizen science can be conducted in a marine environment through collaboration of volunteer researchers, non-researchers and local marine authorities. Significant differences in coral and algal cover were observed among the three sites, while fluctuations in algal cover were also observed seasonally. Differences in fish assemblages were apparent among sites and seasons, with subtropical fish groups observed more commonly in colder seasons. The least physical damage occurred in the most exposed sites (Flat Rock) within the highly protected marine park zones. The broad range of data collected through this top-down/bottom-up approach to citizen science exemplifies the projects' value and application for identifying ecosystem trends or patterns. The results of the project support natural resource and marine park management, providing a valuable contribution to existing scientific knowledge and the conservation of local reefs.

Mapping epistemic cultures and learning potential of participants in citizen science projects.

PubMed

Vallabh, Priya; Lotz-Sisitka, Heila; O'Donoghue, Rob; Schudel, Ingrid

2016-06-01

The ever-widening scope and range of global change and interconnected systemic risks arising from people-environment relationships (social-ecological risks) appears to be increasing concern among, and involvement of, citizens in an increasingly diversified number of citizen science projects responding to these risks. We examined the relationship between epistemic cultures in citizen science projects and learning potential related to matters of concern. We then developed a typology of purposes and a citizen science epistemic-cultures heuristic and mapped 56 projects in southern Africa using this framework. The purpose typology represents the range of knowledge-production purposes, ranging from laboratory science to social learning, whereas the epistemic-cultures typology is a relational representation of scientist and citizen participation and their approach to knowledge production. Results showed an iterative relationship between matters of fact and matters of concern across the projects; the nexus of citizens' engagement in knowledge-production activities varied. The knowledge-production purposes informed and shaped the epistemic cultures of all the sampled citizen science projects, which in turn influenced the potential for learning within each project. Through a historical review of 3 phases in a long-term river health-monitoring project, we found that it is possible to evolve the learning curve of citizen science projects. This evolution involved the development of scientific water monitoring tools, the parallel development of pedagogic practices supporting monitoring activities, and situated engagement around matters of concern within social activism leading to learning-led change. We conclude that such evolutionary processes serve to increase potential for learning and are necessary if citizen science is to contribute to wider restructuring of the epistemic culture of science under conditions of expanding social-ecological risk. © 2016 Society for Conservation Biology.

An overview of ecological monitoring based on geographic information system (GIS) and remote sensing (RS) technology in China

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhang, Jing; Zhang, Jia; Du, Xiangyang; Kang, Hou; Qiao, Minjuan

2017-11-01

Due to the rapid development of human economy and society, the resulting ecological problems are becoming more and more prominent, and the dynamic monitoring of the various elements in the ecosystem has become the focus of the current research. For the complex structure and function of the ecological environment monitoring, advanced technical means should be adopted. With the development of spatial information technology, the ecological monitoring technology based on GIS and RS is becoming more and more perfect, and spatial analysis will play an important role in the field of environmental protection. Based on the GIS and RS technology, this paper analyzes the general centralized ecological monitoring model, and makes an objective analysis of the current ecological monitoring trend of China. These are important for the protection and management of ecological environment in China.

Using pan-tropical biomass maps to improve IPCC Tier 1 default level emission factors - a case study for the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Langner, Andreas; Achard, Frédéric; Grassi, Giacomo

2014-05-01

The IPCC proposes three Tier levels for greenhouse gas emission monitoring with a hierarchical order in terms of accuracy as well as data requirements/complexity. While Tier 1 provides default above-ground biomass (AGB) values per ecological zone and continent, Tier 2 and 3 are either based on country-specific remote sensing or permanent sample-plot data. Due to missing capacities most developing countries have to rely on Tier 1 default values, which show highest uncertainties. Furthermore, IPCC Tier 1 values lack transparency as they are based on a variety of studies that have been repeatedly updated and combined with expert opinions, thus blurring the original data sources. A possible way to increase credibility is a conservative monitoring approach, following the principle of conservativeness, thus reducing the likelihood of unjustified payments for emission reductions not reflecting reality. For the implementation of that principle knowledge about the distribution of the biomass within each ecological zone is essential. However, such information is not available for the IPCC Tier 1 values, which only provide mean values and/or AGB ranges that are not based on a common statistical analysis. Using the pan-tropical datasets of Saatchi et al (Proc Natl Acad Sci USA, 108, 9899-9904, 2011; 1km spatial resolution) and Baccini et al (Nat Climate Change, 2:182-185, 2012; 500m spatial resolution) we calculated the mean AGB values as well as their 50% confidence intervals for each ecological zone within the DRC using Globcover2009 as forest/non-forest mask and the FAO ecological zones dataset. Such analysis is more transparent while at the same time leading to "statistically improved" Tier 1 values, potentially allowing a conservative monitoring approach by selecting the lower bound of the confidence interval for emission estimation during the reference period and the higher bound for the assessment period. Within the DRC Baccini generally delivers higher AGB estimates than Saatchi but even Baccini shows between 81t/ha and 143t/ha lower estimates for Tropical Rain Forests and Moist Deciduous Forests respectively than IPCC. While the AGB values for Tropical Dry Forest of both maps are similar to the IPCC, Tropical Mountain Systems cannot easily be compared as their IPCC data lack a mean value. A recent study by Mitchard et al (Carbon Balance and Management, 8, 10, 2013) compared both pan-tropical datasets, pointing out notable differences in the Congo basin. However, their analysis revealed that none of both maps is generally superior. Therefore, we suggest using the average of both maps as a reasonable approximation to the real but unknown AGB values, thus resulting in 213±69t/ha for Tropical Rain Forests, 94±19t/ha for Moist Deciduous Forests, 119±31t/ha for Tropical Dry Forests and 182±61t/ha for Tropical Mountain Systems of the DRC while the corresponding IPCC values are 310t/ha, 260t/ha, 120t/ha and 40-190t/ha.

Empirically-based modeling and mapping to consider the co-occurrence of ecological receptors and stressors

EPA Science Inventory

Part of the ecological risk assessment process involves examining the potential for environmental stressors and ecological receptors to co-occur across a landscape. In this study, we introduce a Bayesian joint modeling framework for use in evaluating and mapping the co-occurrence...

Science-Based Strategies for Sustaining Coral Ecosystems

USGS Publications Warehouse

,

2009-01-01

Coral ecosystems and their natural capital are at risk. Greenhouse gas emissions, overfishing, and harmful land-use practices are damaging our coral reefs. Overwhelming scientific evidence indicates that the threats are serious, and if they are left unchecked, the ecological and social consequences will be significant and widespread. Although the primary stressors to coral ecosystems are known, science-based strategies are needed to more accurately explain natural processes and forecast human-induced change. Collaborations among managers and scientists and enhanced mapping, monitoring, research, and modeling can lead to effective mitigation plans. U.S. Geological Survey scientists and their partners assess coral ecosystem history, ecology, vulnerability, and resiliency and provide study results to decisionmakers who may devise policies to sustain coral resources and the essential goods and services they provide.

The Method of Multiple Spatial Planning Basic Map

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhang, C.; Fang, C.

2018-04-01

The "Provincial Space Plan Pilot Program" issued in December 2016 pointed out that the existing space management and control information management platforms of various departments were integrated, and a spatial planning information management platform was established to integrate basic data, target indicators, space coordinates, and technical specifications. The planning and preparation will provide supportive decision support, digital monitoring and evaluation of the implementation of the plan, implementation of various types of investment projects and space management and control departments involved in military construction projects in parallel to approve and approve, and improve the efficiency of administrative approval. The space planning system should be set up to delimit the control limits for the development of production, life and ecological space, and the control of use is implemented. On the one hand, it is necessary to clarify the functional orientation between various kinds of planning space. On the other hand, it is necessary to achieve "multi-compliance" of various space planning. Multiple spatial planning intergration need unified and standard basic map(geographic database and technical specificaton) to division of urban, agricultural, ecological three types of space and provide technical support for the refinement of the space control zoning for the relevant planning. The article analysis the main space datum, the land use classification standards, base map planning, planning basic platform main technical problems. Based on the geographic conditions, the results of the census preparation of spatial planning map, and Heilongjiang, Hainan many rules combined with a pilot application.

Ecoregions of Arizona (poster)

USGS Publications Warehouse

Griffith, Glenn E.; Omernik, James M.; Johnson, Colleen Burch; Turner, Dale S.

2014-01-01

Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources; they are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. By recognizing the spatial differences in the capacities and potentials of ecosystems, ecoregions stratify the environment by its probable response to disturbance. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The Arizona ecoregion map was compiled at a scale of 1:250,000. It revises and subdivides an earlier national ecoregion map that was originally compiled at a smaller scale. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of the spatial patterns and the composition of biotic and abiotic phenomena that affect or reflect differences in ecosystem quality and integrity. These phenomena include geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another regardless of the hierarchical level. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels of ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions. At level III, the continental United States contains 105 ecoregions and the conterminous United States has 85 ecoregions. Level IV is a further subdivision of level III ecoregions. Arizona contains arid deserts and canyonlands, semiarid shrub- and grass-covered plains, woodland- and shrubland-covered hills, lava fields and volcanic plateaus, forested mountains, glaciated peaks, and river alluvial floodplains. Ecological diversity is remarkably high. There are 7 level III ecoregions and 52 level IV ecoregions in Arizona and many continue into ecologically similar parts of adjacent states. This poster is part of a collaborative project primarily between the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), USEPA National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory (Corvallis, Oregon), USEPA Region IX, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)–Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), The Nature Conservancy, and several Arizona state agencies. The project is associated with an interagency effort to develop a common national framework of ecological regions. Reaching that objective requires recognition of the differences in the conceptual approaches and mapping methodologies applied to develop the most common ecoregion-type frameworks, including those developed by the USDA–Forest Service, the USEPA, and the NRCS. As each of these frameworks is further refined, their differences are becoming less discernible. Collaborative ecoregion projects, such as this one in Arizona, are a step toward attaining consensus and consistency in ecoregion frameworks for the entire nation.

Information analysis of a spatial database for ecological land classification

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Davis, Frank W.; Dozier, Jeff

1990-01-01

An ecological land classification was developed for a complex region in southern California using geographic information system techniques of map overlay and contingency table analysis. Land classes were identified by mutual information analysis of vegetation pattern in relation to other mapped environmental variables. The analysis was weakened by map errors, especially errors in the digital elevation data. Nevertheless, the resulting land classification was ecologically reasonable and performed well when tested with higher quality data from the region.

An integrated remote sensing approach for identifying ecological range sites. [parker mountain

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Jaynes, R. A.

1983-01-01

A model approach for identifying ecological range sites was applied to high elevation sagebrush-dominated rangelands on Parker Mountain, in south-central Utah. The approach utilizes map information derived from both high altitude color infrared photography and LANDSAT digital data, integrated with soils, geological, and precipitation maps. Identification of the ecological range site for a given area requires an evaluation of all relevant environmental factors which combine to give that site the potential to produce characteristic types and amounts of vegetation. A table is presented which allows the user to determine ecological range site based upon an integrated use of the maps which were prepared. The advantages of identifying ecological range sites through an integrated photo interpretation/LANDSAT analysis are discussed.

Mapping human environment connections on the Olympic Peninsula: an atlas of landscape values

Treesearch

R. McLain; L. Cerveny; Paul M. Montesano; André Beaudoin; Guoqing Sun; Hans-Erik Andersen; Michael A. Wulder; S. Rohdy

2015-01-01

The advent of computerized mapping has greatly expanded the ability of land managers to map many aspects of ecological systems, such as tree species, soil types, wildlife habitat, air quality, and water conditions. Mapping the social and cultural aspects of ecological systems, however, has proved much more challenging. This atlas uses the Olympic Peninsula in western...

Mapping ecological risks with a portfolio-based technique: incorporating uncertainty and decision-making preferences

Treesearch

Denys Yemshanov; Frank H. Koch; Mark Ducey; Klaus Koehler

2013-01-01

Geographic mapping of risks is a useful analytical step in ecological risk assessments and in particular, in analyses aimed to estimate risks associated with introductions of invasive organisms. In this paper, we approach invasive species risk mapping as a portfolio allocation problem and apply techniques from decision theory to build an invasion risk map that combines...

Discriminating Natural Variation from Legacies of Disturbance in Semi-Arid Forests, Southwestern USA

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Swetnam, T. L.; Lynch, A. M.; Falk, D. A.; Yool, S. R.; Guertin, D. P.

2014-12-01

Characterizing differences in existing vegetation driven by natural variation versus disturbance legacies could become a critical component of applied forest management practice with important implications for monitoring ecologic succession and eco-hydrological interactions within the critical zone. Here we characterize variations in aerial LiDAR derived forest structure at individual tree scale in Arizona and New Mexico. Differences in structure result from both topographic and climatological variations and from natural and human related disturbances. We chose a priori undisturbed and disturbed sites that included preservation, development, logging and wildfire as exemplars. We compare two topographic indices, the topographic position index (TPI) and topographic wetness index (TWI), to two local indicators of spatial association (LISA): the Getis-Ord Gi and Anselin's Moran I. We found TPI and TWI correlate well to positive z-scores (tall trees in tall neighborhoods) in undisturbed areas and that disturbed areas are clearly defined by negative z-scores, in some cases better than what is visible from traditional orthophotography and existing GIS maps. These LISA methods also serve as a robust technique for creating like-clustered stands, i.e. common stands used in forest inventory monitoring. This research provides a significant advancement in the ability to (1) quantity variation in forest structure across topographically complex landscapes, (2) identify and map previously unrecorded disturbance locations, and (3) quantify the different impacts of disturbance within the perimeter of a stand or event at ecologically relevant scale.

Comparison of simulation modeling and satellite techniques for monitoring ecological processes

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Box, Elgene O.

1988-01-01

In 1985 improvements were made in the world climatic data base for modeling and predictive mapping; in individual process models and the overall carbon-balance models; and in the interface software for mapping the simulation results. Statistical analysis of the data base was begun. In 1986 mapping was shifted to NASA-Goddard. The initial approach involving pattern comparisons was modified to a more statistical approach. A major accomplishment was the expansion and improvement of a global data base of measurements of biomass and primary production, to complement the simulation data. The main accomplishments during 1987 included: production of a master tape with all environmental and satellite data and model results for the 1600 sites; development of a complete mapping system used for the initial color maps comparing annual and monthly patterns of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), actual evapotranspiration, net primary productivity, gross primary productivity, and net ecosystem production; collection of more biosphere measurements for eventual improvement of the biological models; and development of some initial monthly models for primary productivity, based on satellite data.

Mapping ecological states in a complex environment

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Steele, C. M.; Bestelmeyer, B.; Burkett, L. M.; Ayers, E.; Romig, K.; Slaughter, A.

2013-12-01

The vegetation of northern Chihuahuan Desert rangelands is sparse, heterogeneous and for most of the year, consists of a large proportion of non-photosynthetic material. The soils in this area are spectrally bright and variable in their reflectance properties. Both factors provide challenges to the application of remote sensing for estimating canopy variables (e.g., leaf area index, biomass, percentage canopy cover, primary production). Additionally, with reference to current paradigms of rangeland health assessment, remotely-sensed estimates of canopy variables have limited practical use to the rangeland manager if they are not placed in the context of ecological site and ecological state. To address these challenges, we created a multifactor classification system based on the USDA-NRCS ecological site schema and associated state-and-transition models to map ecological states on desert rangelands in southern New Mexico. Applying this system using per-pixel image processing techniques and multispectral, remotely sensed imagery raised other challenges. Per-pixel image classification relies upon the spectral information in each pixel alone, there is no reference to the spatial context of the pixel and its relationship with its neighbors. Ecological state classes may have direct relevance to managers but the non-unique spectral properties of different ecological state classes in our study area means that per-pixel classification of multispectral data performs poorly in discriminating between different ecological states. We found that image interpreters who are familiar with the landscape and its associated ecological site descriptions perform better than per-pixel classification techniques in assigning ecological states. However, two important issues affect manual classification methods: subjectivity of interpretation and reproducibility of results. An alternative to per-pixel classification and manual interpretation is object-based image analysis. Object-based image analysis provides a platform for classification that more closely resembles human recognition of objects within a remotely sensed image. The analysis presented here compares multiple thematic maps created for test locations on the USDA-ARS Jornada Experimental Range ranch. Three study sites in different pastures, each 300 ha in size, were selected for comparison on the basis of their ecological site type (';Clayey', ';Sandy' and a combination of both) and the degree of complexity of vegetation cover. Thematic maps were produced for each study site using (i) manual interpretation of digital aerial photography (by five independent interpreters); (ii) object-oriented, decision-tree classification of fine and moderate spatial resolution imagery (Quickbird; Landsat Thematic Mapper) and (iii) ground survey. To identify areas of uncertainty, we compared agreement in location, areal extent and class assignation between 5 independently produced, manually-digitized ecological state maps and with the map created from ground survey. Location, areal extent and class assignation of the map produced by object-oriented classification was also assessed with reference to the ground survey map.

Description of ecological subregions: sections of the conterminous United States

Treesearch

W.H. McNab; D.T. Cleland; J.A. Freeouf; J.E. Keys; G.J. Nowacki; C.A. Carpenter

2007-01-01

Preliminary descriptions are presented for the 190 section ecological units delineated on the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service 2007 map “Ecological Subregions: Sections and Subsections of the Conterminous United States.” Brief descriptions of the section map units provide an abstract primarily of the climate, physiography, and geologic substrate that...

Advances and Limitations of Disease Biogeography Using Ecological Niche Modeling

PubMed Central

Escobar, Luis E.; Craft, Meggan E.

2016-01-01

Mapping disease transmission risk is crucial in public and animal health for evidence based decision-making. Ecology and epidemiology are highly related disciplines that may contribute to improvements in mapping disease, which can be used to answer health related questions. Ecological niche modeling is increasingly used for understanding the biogeography of diseases in plants, animals, and humans. However, epidemiological applications of niche modeling approaches for disease mapping can fail to generate robust study designs, producing incomplete or incorrect inferences. This manuscript is an overview of the history and conceptual bases behind ecological niche modeling, specifically as applied to epidemiology and public health; it does not pretend to be an exhaustive and detailed description of ecological niche modeling literature and methods. Instead, this review includes selected state-of-the-science approaches and tools, providing a short guide to designing studies incorporating information on the type and quality of the input data (i.e., occurrences and environmental variables), identification and justification of the extent of the study area, and encourages users to explore and test diverse algorithms for more informed conclusions. We provide a friendly introduction to the field of disease biogeography presenting an updated guide for researchers looking to use ecological niche modeling for disease mapping. We anticipate that ecological niche modeling will soon be a critical tool for epidemiologists aiming to map disease transmission risk, forecast disease distribution under climate change scenarios, and identify landscape factors triggering outbreaks. PMID:27547199

Advances and Limitations of Disease Biogeography Using Ecological Niche Modeling.

PubMed

Escobar, Luis E; Craft, Meggan E

2016-01-01

Mapping disease transmission risk is crucial in public and animal health for evidence based decision-making. Ecology and epidemiology are highly related disciplines that may contribute to improvements in mapping disease, which can be used to answer health related questions. Ecological niche modeling is increasingly used for understanding the biogeography of diseases in plants, animals, and humans. However, epidemiological applications of niche modeling approaches for disease mapping can fail to generate robust study designs, producing incomplete or incorrect inferences. This manuscript is an overview of the history and conceptual bases behind ecological niche modeling, specifically as applied to epidemiology and public health; it does not pretend to be an exhaustive and detailed description of ecological niche modeling literature and methods. Instead, this review includes selected state-of-the-science approaches and tools, providing a short guide to designing studies incorporating information on the type and quality of the input data (i.e., occurrences and environmental variables), identification and justification of the extent of the study area, and encourages users to explore and test diverse algorithms for more informed conclusions. We provide a friendly introduction to the field of disease biogeography presenting an updated guide for researchers looking to use ecological niche modeling for disease mapping. We anticipate that ecological niche modeling will soon be a critical tool for epidemiologists aiming to map disease transmission risk, forecast disease distribution under climate change scenarios, and identify landscape factors triggering outbreaks.

Nationwide cross-sectional survey of schistosomiasis and soil-transmitted helminthiasis in Sudan: study protocol.

PubMed

Cha, Seungman; Hong, Sung-Tae; Lee, Young-Ha; Lee, Keon Hoon; Cho, Dae Seong; Lee, Jinmoo; Chai, Jong-Yil; Elhag, Mousab Siddig; Khaled, Soheir Gabralla Ahmad; Elnimeiri, Mustafa Khidir Mustafa; Siddig, Nahid Abdelgadeir Ali; Abdelrazig, Hana; Awadelkareem, Sarah; Elshafie, Azza Tag Eldin; Ismail, Hassan Ahmed Hassan Ahmed; Amin, Mutamad

2017-09-12

Schistosomiasis and soil-transmitted helminthiasis (STHs) are target neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) of preventive chemotherapy, but the control and elimination of these diseases have been impeded due to resource constraints. Few reports have described study protocol to draw on when conducting a nationwide survey. We present a detailed methodological description of the integrated mapping of schistosomiasis and STHs on the basis of our experiences, hoping that this protocol can be applied to future surveys in similar settings. In addition to determining the ecological zones requiring mass drug administration interventions, we aim to provide precise estimates of the prevalence of these diseases. A school-based cross-sectional design will be applied for the nationwide survey across Sudan. The survey is designed to cover all districts in every state. We have divided each district into 3 different ecological zones depending on proximity to bodies of water. We will employ a probability-proportional-to-size sampling method for schools and systematic sampling for student selection to provide adequate data regarding the prevalence for schistosomiasis and STHs in Sudan at the state level. A total of 108,660 students will be selected from 1811 schools across Sudan. After the survey is completed, 391 ecological zones will be mapped out. To carry out the survey, 655 staff members were recruited. The feces and urine samples are microscopically examined by the Kato-Katz method and the sediment smears for helminth eggs respectively. For quality control, a minimum of 10% of the slides will be rechecked by the federal supervisors in each state and also 5% of the smears are validated again within one day by independent supervisors. This nationwide mapping is expected to generate important epidemiological information and indicators about schistosomiasis and STHs that will be useful for monitoring and evaluating the control program. The mapping data will also be used for overviewing the status and policy formulation and updates to the control strategies. This paper, which describes a feasible and practical study protocol, is to be shared with the global health community, especially those who are planning to perform nationwide mapping of NTDs by feces or urine sampling.

A hyper-temporal remote sensing protocol for high-resolution mapping of ecological sites

PubMed Central

Karl, Jason W.

2017-01-01

Ecological site classification has emerged as a highly effective land management framework, but its utility at a regional scale has been limited due to the spatial ambiguity of ecological site locations in the U.S. or the absence of ecological site maps in other regions of the world. In response to these shortcomings, this study evaluated the use of hyper-temporal remote sensing (i.e., hundreds of images) for high spatial resolution mapping of ecological sites. We posit that hyper-temporal remote sensing can provide novel insights into the spatial variability of ecological sites by quantifying the temporal response of land surface spectral properties. This temporal response provides a spectral ‘fingerprint’ of the soil-vegetation-climate relationship which is central to the concept of ecological sites. Consequently, the main objective of this study was to predict the spatial distribution of ecological sites in a semi-arid rangeland using a 28-year time series of normalized difference vegetation index from Landsat TM 5 data and modeled using support vector machine classification. Results from this study show that support vector machine classification using hyper-temporal remote sensing imagery was effective in modeling ecological site classes, with a 62% correct classification. These results were compared to Gridded Soil Survey Geographic database and expert delineated maps of ecological sites which had a 51 and 89% correct classification, respectively. An analysis of the effects of ecological state on ecological site misclassifications revealed that sites in degraded states (e.g., shrub-dominated/shrubland and bare/annuals) had a higher rate of misclassification due to their close spectral similarity with other ecological sites. This study identified three important factors that need to be addressed to improve future model predictions: 1) sampling designs need to fully represent the range of both within class (i.e., states) and between class (i.e., ecological sites) spectral variability through time, 2) field sampling protocols that accurately characterize key soil properties (e.g., texture, depth) need to be adopted, and 3) additional environmental covariates (e.g. terrain attributes) need to be evaluated that may help further differentiate sites with similar spectral signals. Finally, the proposed hyper-temporal remote sensing framework may provide a standardized approach to evaluate and test our ecological site concepts through examining differences in vegetation dynamics in response to climatic variability and other drivers of land-use change. Results from this study demonstrate the efficacy of the hyper-temporal remote sensing approach for high resolution mapping of ecological sites, and highlights its utility in terms of reduced cost and time investment relative to traditional manual mapping approaches. PMID:28414731

A hyper-temporal remote sensing protocol for high-resolution mapping of ecological sites.

PubMed

Maynard, Jonathan J; Karl, Jason W

2017-01-01

Ecological site classification has emerged as a highly effective land management framework, but its utility at a regional scale has been limited due to the spatial ambiguity of ecological site locations in the U.S. or the absence of ecological site maps in other regions of the world. In response to these shortcomings, this study evaluated the use of hyper-temporal remote sensing (i.e., hundreds of images) for high spatial resolution mapping of ecological sites. We posit that hyper-temporal remote sensing can provide novel insights into the spatial variability of ecological sites by quantifying the temporal response of land surface spectral properties. This temporal response provides a spectral 'fingerprint' of the soil-vegetation-climate relationship which is central to the concept of ecological sites. Consequently, the main objective of this study was to predict the spatial distribution of ecological sites in a semi-arid rangeland using a 28-year time series of normalized difference vegetation index from Landsat TM 5 data and modeled using support vector machine classification. Results from this study show that support vector machine classification using hyper-temporal remote sensing imagery was effective in modeling ecological site classes, with a 62% correct classification. These results were compared to Gridded Soil Survey Geographic database and expert delineated maps of ecological sites which had a 51 and 89% correct classification, respectively. An analysis of the effects of ecological state on ecological site misclassifications revealed that sites in degraded states (e.g., shrub-dominated/shrubland and bare/annuals) had a higher rate of misclassification due to their close spectral similarity with other ecological sites. This study identified three important factors that need to be addressed to improve future model predictions: 1) sampling designs need to fully represent the range of both within class (i.e., states) and between class (i.e., ecological sites) spectral variability through time, 2) field sampling protocols that accurately characterize key soil properties (e.g., texture, depth) need to be adopted, and 3) additional environmental covariates (e.g. terrain attributes) need to be evaluated that may help further differentiate sites with similar spectral signals. Finally, the proposed hyper-temporal remote sensing framework may provide a standardized approach to evaluate and test our ecological site concepts through examining differences in vegetation dynamics in response to climatic variability and other drivers of land-use change. Results from this study demonstrate the efficacy of the hyper-temporal remote sensing approach for high resolution mapping of ecological sites, and highlights its utility in terms of reduced cost and time investment relative to traditional manual mapping approaches.

Combining aesthetic with ecological values for landscape sustainability.

PubMed

Yang, Dewei; Luo, Tao; Lin, Tao; Qiu, Quanyi; Luo, Yunjian

2014-01-01

Humans receive multiple benefits from various landscapes that foster ecological services and aesthetic attractiveness. In this study, a hybrid framework was proposed to evaluate ecological and aesthetic values of five landscape types in Houguanhu Region of central China. Data from the public aesthetic survey and professional ecological assessment were converted into a two-dimensional coordinate system and distribution maps of landscape values. Results showed that natural landscapes (i.e. water body and forest) contributed positively more to both aesthetic and ecological values than semi-natural and human-dominated landscapes (i.e. farmland and non-ecological land). The distribution maps of landscape values indicated that the aesthetic, ecological and integrated landscape values were significantly associated with landscape attributes and human activity intensity. To combine aesthetic preferences with ecological services, the methods (i.e. field survey, landscape value coefficients, normalized method, a two-dimensional coordinate system, and landscape value distribution maps) were employed in landscape assessment. Our results could facilitate to identify the underlying structure-function-value chain, and also improve the understanding of multiple functions in landscape planning. The situation context could also be emphasized to bring ecological and aesthetic goals into better alignment.

Combining Aesthetic with Ecological Values for Landscape Sustainability

PubMed Central

Yang, Dewei; Luo, Tao; Lin, Tao; Qiu, Quanyi; Luo, Yunjian

2014-01-01

Humans receive multiple benefits from various landscapes that foster ecological services and aesthetic attractiveness. In this study, a hybrid framework was proposed to evaluate ecological and aesthetic values of five landscape types in Houguanhu Region of central China. Data from the public aesthetic survey and professional ecological assessment were converted into a two-dimensional coordinate system and distribution maps of landscape values. Results showed that natural landscapes (i.e. water body and forest) contributed positively more to both aesthetic and ecological values than semi-natural and human-dominated landscapes (i.e. farmland and non-ecological land). The distribution maps of landscape values indicated that the aesthetic, ecological and integrated landscape values were significantly associated with landscape attributes and human activity intensity. To combine aesthetic preferences with ecological services, the methods (i.e. field survey, landscape value coefficients, normalized method, a two-dimensional coordinate system, and landscape value distribution maps) were employed in landscape assessment. Our results could facilitate to identify the underlying structure-function-value chain, and also improve the understanding of multiple functions in landscape planning. The situation context could also be emphasized to bring ecological and aesthetic goals into better alignment. PMID:25050886

A dominance-based approach to map risks of ecological invasions in the presence of severe uncertainty

Treesearch

Denys Yemshanov; Frank H. Koch; D. Barry Lyons; Mark Ducey; Klaus Koehler

2012-01-01

Aim Uncertainty has been widely recognized as one of the most critical issues in predicting the expansion of ecological invasions. The uncertainty associated with the introduction and spread of invasive organisms influences how pest management decision makers respond to expanding incursions. We present a model-based approach to map risk of ecological invasions that...

Assessing ecological departure from reference conditions with the Fire Regime Condition Class (FRCC) Mapping Tool

Treesearch

Stephen W. Barrett; Thomas DeMeo; Jeffrey L. Jones; J.D. Zeiler; Lee C. Hutter

2006-01-01

Knowledge of ecological departure from a range of reference conditions provides a critical context for managing sustainable ecosystems. Fire Regime Condition Class (FRCC) is a qualitative measure characterizing possible departure from historical fire regimes. The FRCC Mapping Tool was developed as an ArcMap extension utilizing the protocol identified by the Interagency...

[Cultural regionalization for Coptis chinensis based on 3S technology platform Ⅰ. Study on growth suitability for Coptis chinensis based on ecological factors analysis by Maxent and ArcGIS model].

PubMed

Liu, Xin; Yang, Yan-Fang; Song, Hong-Ping; Zhang, Xiao-Bo; Huang, Lu-Qi; Wu, He-Zhen

2016-09-01

At the urgent request of Coptis chinensis planting,growth suitability as assessment indicators for C. chinensis cultivation was proposed and analyzed in this paper , based on chemical quality determination and ecological fators analysis by Maxent and ArcGIS model. Its potential distribution areas at differernt suitability grade and regionalization map were formulated based on statistical theory and growth suitability theory. The results showed that the most suitable habitats is some parts of Chongqing and Hubei province, such as Shizhu, Lichuan, Wulong, Wuxi, Enshi. There are seven ecological factor is the main ecological factors affect the growth of Coptidis Rhizoma, including altitude, precipitation in February and September and the rise of precipitation and altitude is conducive to the accumulation of total alkaloid content in C. chinensis. Therefore, The results of the study not only illustrates the most suitable for the surroundings of Coptidis Rhizoma, also helpful to further research and practice of cultivation regionalization, wild resource monitoring and large-scale cultivation of traditional Chinese medicine plants. Copyright© by the Chinese Pharmaceutical Association.

Level III Ecoregions of Kentucky

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level IV Ecoregions of Michigan

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level IV Ecoregions of Idaho

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level IV Ecoregions of Arkansas

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level IV Ecoregions of Mississippi

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level III Ecoregions of Ohio

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level III Ecoregions of Connecticut

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level III Ecoregions of Georgia

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level IV Ecoregions of Colorado

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level IV Ecoregions of Wisconsin

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level III Ecoregions of Oregon

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level III Ecoregions of Texas

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level III Ecoregions of Arkansas

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level IV Ecoregions of Florida

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level III Ecoregions of Idaho

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level III Ecoregions of Nevada

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level IV Ecoregions of Texas

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level IV Ecoregions of Virginia

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level III Ecoregions of Illinois

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level III Ecoregions of Virginia

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level III Ecoregions of Delaware

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level IV Ecoregions of Wyoming

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level IV Ecoregions of Alabama

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level IV Ecoregions of Maine

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level III Ecoregions of Alabama

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level III Ecoregions of Nebraska

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level IV Ecoregions of Delaware

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level III Ecoregions of Maine

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level III Ecoregions of Kansas

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level III Ecoregions of Louisiana

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level III Ecoregions of Michigan

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level IV Ecoregions of Arizona

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level IV Ecoregions of Georgia

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level IV Ecoregions of Utah

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level III Ecoregions of Montana

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level IV Ecoregions of Iowa

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level IV Ecoregions of Nebraska

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level III Ecoregions of Vermont

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level III Ecoregions of Wisconsin

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level IV Ecoregions of Kansas

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level III Ecoregions of Tennessee

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level IV Ecoregions of Nevada

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level III Ecoregions of Colorado

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level III Ecoregions of Oklahoma

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level III Ecoregions of Maryland

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level III Ecoregions of Wyoming

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level IV Ecoregions of Connecticut

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level IV Ecoregions of Missouri

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level III Ecoregions of Utah

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level III Ecoregions of Washington

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level III Ecoregions of Minnesota

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level III Ecoregions of Iowa

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level III Ecoregions of Massachusetts

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level IV Ecoregions of Tennessee

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level IV Ecoregions of Washington

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level IV Ecoregions of Maryland

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level III Ecoregions of Mississippi

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level IV Ecoregions of Vermont

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level IV Ecoregions of Kentucky

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level IV Ecoregions of Ohio

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level IV Ecoregions of Illinois

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level IV Ecoregions of Indiana

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level IV Ecoregions of Louisiana

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level IV Ecoregions of Oklahoma

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level IV Ecoregions of Massachusetts

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level IV Ecoregions of Montana

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level III Ecoregions of California

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level IV Ecoregions of Pennsylvania

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level III Ecoregions of Florida

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level IV Ecoregions of California

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level IV Ecoregions of Minnesota

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level III Ecoregions of Arizona

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level III Ecoregions of Pennsylvania

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level IV Ecoregions of Oregon

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level III Ecoregions of Indiana

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level III Ecoregions of Missouri

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Shape selection in Landsat time series: a tool for monitoring forest dynamics.

PubMed

Moisen, Gretchen G; Meyer, Mary C; Schroeder, Todd A; Liao, Xiyue; Schleeweis, Karen G; Freeman, Elizabeth A; Toney, Chris

2016-10-01

We present a new methodology for fitting nonparametric shape-restricted regression splines to time series of Landsat imagery for the purpose of modeling, mapping, and monitoring annual forest disturbance dynamics over nearly three decades. For each pixel and spectral band or index of choice in temporal Landsat data, our method delivers a smoothed rendition of the trajectory constrained to behave in an ecologically sensible manner, reflecting one of seven possible 'shapes'. It also provides parameters summarizing the patterns of each change including year of onset, duration, magnitude, and pre- and postchange rates of growth or recovery. Through a case study featuring fire, harvest, and bark beetle outbreak, we illustrate how resultant fitted values and parameters can be fed into empirical models to map disturbance causal agent and tree canopy cover changes coincident with disturbance events through time. We provide our code in the r package ShapeSelectForest on the Comprehensive R Archival Network and describe our computational approaches for running the method over large geographic areas. We also discuss how this methodology is currently being used for forest disturbance and attribute mapping across the conterminous United States. Published 2016. This article is a U.S. Government work and is in the public domain in the USA.

The European Drought Observatory (EDO): Current State and Future Directions

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Vogt, Jürgen; Sepulcre, Guadalupe; Magni, Diego; Valentini, Luana; Singleton, Andrew; Micale, Fabio; Barbosa, Paulo

2013-04-01

Europe has repeatedly been affected by droughts, resulting in considerable ecological and economic damage and climate change studies indicate a trend towards increasing climate variability most likely resulting in more frequent drought occurrences also in Europe. Against this background, the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) is developing methods and tools for assessing, monitoring and forecasting droughts in Europe and develops a European Drought Observatory (EDO) to complement and integrate national activities with a European view. At the core of the European Drought Observatory (EDO) is a portal, including a map server, a metadata catalogue, a media-monitor and analysis tools. The map server presents Europe-wide up-to-date information on the occurrence and severity of droughts, which is complemented by more detailed information provided by regional, national and local observatories through OGC compliant web mapping and web coverage services. In addition, time series of historical maps as well as graphs of the temporal evolution of drought indices for individual grid cells and administrative regions in Europe can be retrieved and analysed. Current work is focusing on validating the available products, developing combined indicators, improving the functionalities, extending the linkage to additional national and regional drought information systems and testing options for medium-range probabilistic drought forecasting across Europe. Longer-term goals include the development of long-range drought forecasting products, the analysis of drought hazard and risk, the monitoring of drought impact and the integration of EDO in a global drought information system. The talk will provide an overview on the development and state of EDO, the different products, and the ways to include a wide range of stakeholders (i.e. European, national river basin, and local authorities) in the development of the system as well as an outlook on the future developments.

Prospective HyspIRI global observations of tidal wetlands

USGS Publications Warehouse

Kevin Turpie,; Victor Klemas,; Byrd, Kristin B.; Maggi Kelly,; Young-Heon Jo,

2015-01-01

Tidal wetlands are highly productive and act as critical habitat for a wide variety of plants, fish, shellfish, and other wildlife. These ecotones between aquatic and terrestrial environments also provide protection from storm damage, run-off filtering, and recharge of aquifers. Many wetlands along coasts have been exposed to stress-inducing alterations globally, including dredge and fill operations, hydrologic modifications, pollutants, impoundments, fragmentation by roads/ditches, and sea level rise. For wetland protection and sensible coastal development, there is a need to monitor these ecosystems at global and regional scales. Recent advances in satellite sensor design and data analysis are providing practical methods for monitoring natural and man-made changes in wetlands. However, available satellite remote sensors have been limited to mapping primarily wetland location and extent. This paper describes how the HyspIRI hyperspectral and thermal infrared sensors can be used to study and map key ecological properties, such as species composition, biomass, hydrology, and evapotranspiration of tidal salt and brackish marshes and mangroves, and perhaps other major wetland types, including freshwater marshes and wooded/shrub wetlands.

Why evolutionary biologists should get seriously involved in ecological monitoring and applied biodiversity assessment programs

PubMed Central

Brodersen, Jakob; Seehausen, Ole

2014-01-01

While ecological monitoring and biodiversity assessment programs are widely implemented and relatively well developed to survey and monitor the structure and dynamics of populations and communities in many ecosystems, quantitative assessment and monitoring of genetic and phenotypic diversity that is important to understand evolutionary dynamics is only rarely integrated. As a consequence, monitoring programs often fail to detect changes in these key components of biodiversity until after major loss of diversity has occurred. The extensive efforts in ecological monitoring have generated large data sets of unique value to macro-scale and long-term ecological research, but the insights gained from such data sets could be multiplied by the inclusion of evolutionary biological approaches. We argue that the lack of process-based evolutionary thinking in ecological monitoring means a significant loss of opportunity for research and conservation. Assessment of genetic and phenotypic variation within and between species needs to be fully integrated to safeguard biodiversity and the ecological and evolutionary dynamics in natural ecosystems. We illustrate our case with examples from fishes and conclude with examples of ongoing monitoring programs and provide suggestions on how to improve future quantitative diversity surveys. PMID:25553061

Application of Spaceborne Scatterometer for Mapping Freeze-Thaw State in Northern Landscapes as a Measure of Ecological and Hydrological Processes

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

McDonald, Kyle; Kimball, John; Zimmermann, Reiner; Way, JoBea; Frolking, Steve; Running, Steve

1999-01-01

Landscape freeze/thaw transitions coincide with marked shifts in albedo, surface energy and mass exchange, and associated snow dynamics. Monitoring landscape freeze/thaw dynamics would improve our ability to quantify the interannual variability of boreal hydrology and river runoff/flood dynamics. The annual duration of frost-free period also bounds the period of photosynthetic activity in boreal and arctic regions thus affecting the annual carbon budget and the interannual variability of regional carbon fluxes. In this study, we use the NASA scatterometer (NSCAT) to monitor the temporal change in the radar backscatter signature across selected ecoregions of the boreal zone. We have measured vegetation tissue temperatures, soil temperature profiles, and micrometeorological parameters in situ at selected sites along a north-south transect extending across Alaska from Prudhoe Bay to the Kenai Peninsula and in Siberia near the Yenisey River. Data from these stations have been used to quantify the scatterometer's sensitivity to freeze/thaw state under a variety of terrain and landcover conditions. Analysis of the NSCAT temporal response over the 1997 spring thaw cycle shows a 3 to 5 dB change in measured backscatter that is well correlated with the landscape springtime thaw process. Having verified the instrument's capability to monitor freeze/thaw transitions, regional scale mosaicked data are applied to derive temporal series of freeze/thaw transition maps for selected circumpolar high latitude regions. These maps are applied to derive areal extent of frozen and thawed landscape and demonstrate the utility of spaceborne radar for operational monitoring of seasonal freeze-thaw dynamics and associated biophysical processes for the circumpolar high latitudes.

Research on ecological function zoning information system based on WebGIS

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhang, Jianxiong; Zhang, Gang

2007-06-01

With the development of information technology, application of WebGIS will make it possible to realize digitization and intellectualization in issuing and managing information of ecological function zoning. Firstly, this paper introduces the fundamental principles, basic methods and current situation of development and various support techniques about WebGIS. Secondly, the paper not only compares and analyzes the above methods but also discusses their applied prospect and feasibility in Web management. Finally, exemplified by Jiaozuo City, the paper puts forward an idea of design and a project of realization about the information system. In this research, the digital map and establishment of map database have been finished by MapInfo. Combining with some technical data of ecological environment of Jiaozuo City, the information of ecological environment resources is collected, stored, analyzed, calculated and displayed in the form of pictures and graphs on the WebGIS platform, which makes use of secondary development flat-MapXtreme for Java and some tools such as Java, JSP and JavaScript. Serve mode is adopted in the system which has realized the operating, inquiring of basic map and working out thematic map. By the finished system, it brings some references.

An Effort to Map and Monitor Baldcypress Forest Areas in Coastal Louisiana, Using Landsat, MODIS, and ASTER Satellite Data

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Spruce, Joseph P.; Sader, Steve; Smoot, James

2012-01-01

This presentation discusses a collaborative project to develop, test, and demonstrate baldcypress forest mapping and monitoring products for aiding forest conservation and restoration in coastal Louisiana. Low lying coastal forests in the region are being negatively impacted by multiple factors, including subsidence, salt water intrusion, sea level rise, persistent flooding, hydrologic modification, annual insect-induced forest defoliation, timber harvesting, and conversion to urban land uses. Coastal baldcypress forests provide invaluable ecological services in terms of wildlife habitat, forest products, storm buffers, and water quality benefits. Before this project, current maps of baldcypress forest concentrations and change did not exist or were out of date. In response, this project was initiated to produce: 1) current maps showing the extent and location of baldcypress dominated forests; and 2) wetland forest change maps showing temporary and persistent disturbance and loss since the early 1970s. Project products are being developed collaboratively with multiple state and federal agencies. Products are being validated using available reference data from aerial, satellite, and field survey data. Results include Landsat TM- based classifications of baldcypress in terms of cover type and percent canopy cover. Landsat MSS data was employed to compute a circa 1972 classification of swamp and bottomland hardwood forest types. Landsat data for 1972-2010 was used to compute wetland forest change products. MODIS-based change products were applied to view and assess insect-induced swamp forest defoliation. MODIS, Landsat, and ASTER satellite data products were used to help assess hurricane and flood impacts to coastal wetland forests in the region.

Multi-Scale Mapping of Vegetation Biomass

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hudak, A. T.; Fekety, P.; Falkowski, M. J.; Kennedy, R. E.; Crookston, N.; Smith, A. M.; Mahoney, P.; Glenn, N. F.; Dong, J.; Kane, V. R.; Woodall, C. W.

2016-12-01

Vegetation biomass mapping at multiple scales is important for carbon inventory and monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV). Project-level lidar collections allow biomass estimation with high confidence where associated with field plot measurements. Predictive models developed from such datasets are customarily used to generate landscape-scale biomass maps. We tested the feasibility of predicting biomass in landscapes surveyed with lidar but without field plots, by withholding plot datasets from a reduced model applied to the landscapes, and found support for a generalized model in the northern Idaho ecoregion. We are also upscaling a generalized model to all forested lands in Idaho. Our regional modeling approach is to sample the 30-m biomass predictions from the landscape-scale maps and use them to train a regional biomass model, using Landsat time series, topographic derivatives, and climate variables as predictors. Our regional map validation approach is to aggregate the regional, annual biomass predictions to the county level and compare them to annual county-level biomass summarized independently from systematic, field-based, annual inventories conducted by the US Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) Program nationally. A national-scale forest cover map generated independently from 2010 PALSAR data at 25-m resolution is being used to mask non-forest pixels from the aggregations. Effects of climate change on future regional biomass stores are also being explored, using biomass estimates projected from stand-level inventory data collected in the National Forests and comparing them to FIA plot data collected independently on public and private lands, projected under the same climate change scenarios, with disturbance trends extracted from the Landsat time series. Our ultimate goal is to demonstrate, focusing on the ecologically diverse Northwest region of the USA, a carbon monitoring system (CMS) that is accurate, objective, repeatable, and transparent.

Temporally inter-comparable maps of terrestrial wilderness and the Last of the Wild

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Allan, James R.; Venter, Oscar; Watson, James E. M.

2017-12-01

Wilderness areas, defined as areas free of industrial scale activities and other human pressures which result in significant biophysical disturbance, are important for biodiversity conservation and sustaining the key ecological processes underpinning planetary life-support systems. Despite their importance, wilderness areas are being rapidly eroded in extent and fragmented. Here we present the most up-to-date temporally inter-comparable maps of global terrestrial wilderness areas, which are essential for monitoring changes in their extent, and for proactively planning conservation interventions to ensure their preservation. Using maps of human pressure on the natural environment for 1993 and 2009, we identified wilderness as all 'pressure free' lands with a contiguous area >10,000 km2. These places are likely operating in a natural state and represent the most intact habitats globally. We then created a regionally representative map of wilderness following the well-established 'Last of the Wild' methodology; which identifies the 10% area with the lowest human pressure within each of Earth's 60 biogeographic realms, and identifies the ten largest contiguous areas, along with all contiguous areas >10,000 km2.

Long-Term Ecological Monitoring Field Sampling Plan for 2007

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

T. Haney

2007-07-31

This field sampling plan describes the field investigations planned for the Long-Term Ecological Monitoring Project at the Idaho National Laboratory Site in 2007. This plan and the Quality Assurance Project Plan for Waste Area Groups 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, and Removal Actions constitute the sampling and analysis plan supporting long-term ecological monitoring sampling in 2007. The data collected under this plan will become part of the long-term ecological monitoring data set that is being collected annually. The data will be used t determine the requirements for the subsequent long-term ecological monitoring. This plan guides the 2007more » investigations, including sampling, quality assurance, quality control, analytical procedures, and data management. As such, this plan will help to ensure that the resulting monitoring data will be scientifically valid, defensible, and of known and acceptable quality.« less

Mapping Social Ecological Systems Archetypes

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Rocha, J. C.; Malmborg, K.; Gordon, L.

2016-12-01

Achieving sustainable development goals requires targeting and monitoring sustainable solutions tailored to different social and ecological contexts. Elinor Ostrom stressed that there is no panaceas or universal solutions to environmental problems, and developed a social-ecological systems' (SES) framework -a nested multi tier set of variables- to help diagnose problems, identify complex interactions, and solutions tailored to each SES arena. However, to our knowledge, the SES framework has only been applied to over a hundred cases, and typically reflect the analysis of local case studies with relatively small coverage in space and time. While case studies are context rich and necessary, their conclusions might not reach policy making instances. Here we develop a data driven method for upscaling Ostrom's SES framework and applied to a context where we expect data is scarce, incomplete, but also where sustainable solutions are badly needed. The purpose of upscaling the framework is to create a tool that facilitates decision making on data scarce environments such as developing countries. We mapped SES by applying the SES framework to poverty alleviation and food security issues in the Volta River basin in Ghana and Burkina Faso. We found archetypical configurations of SES in space given data availability, we study their change over time, and discuss where agricultural innovations such as water reservoirs might have a stronger impact at increasing food security and therefore alleviating poverty and hunger. We conclude outlining how the method can be used in other SES comparative studies.

Accommodating the ecological fallacy in disease mapping in the absence of individual exposures.

PubMed

Wang, Feifei; Wang, Jian; Gelfand, Alan; Li, Fan

2017-12-30

In health exposure modeling, in particular, disease mapping, the ecological fallacy arises because the relationship between aggregated disease incidence on areal units and average exposure on those units differs from the relationship between the event of individual incidence and the associated individual exposure. This article presents a novel modeling approach to address the ecological fallacy in the least informative data setting. We assume the known population at risk with an observed incidence for a collection of areal units and, separately, environmental exposure recorded during the period of incidence at a collection of monitoring stations. We do not assume any partial individual level information or random allocation of individuals to observed exposures. We specify a conceptual incidence surface over the study region as a function of an exposure surface resulting in a stochastic integral of the block average disease incidence. The true block level incidence is an unavailable Monte Carlo integration for this stochastic integral. We propose an alternative manageable Monte Carlo integration for the integral. Modeling in this setting is immediately hierarchical, and we fit our model within a Bayesian framework. To alleviate the resulting computational burden, we offer 2 strategies for efficient model fitting: one is through modularization, the other is through sparse or dimension-reduced Gaussian processes. We illustrate the performance of our model with simulations based on a heat-related mortality dataset in Ohio and then analyze associated real data. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Role of remote sensing in the evaluation of anthropogenic activity and its effect on environment and human econonomic development: an Indian example

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Perni, Venkateswarlu

In the scenario of a exponential growth of world population, changes in land use and evaluating the domestication and rearing of aquatic animals and plants; Remote Sensing has the role of an emerging discipline and provides essential tools of trade to the environmental scientist. Ecologically sustainable development of the aqua resources requires that management and use as compatible with the attributes of exploited resources. Aquaculture plays a crucial role in the development of fishing industry and contributes in rural development, increased foreign reserves besides replenishment of important aquatic species. The synoptivity, repititivity and multi spectral vision are the significant edges of Remote Sensing over conventional practices in the application domain. The present study aimed at mapping and monitoring of damages to the ecologically sensitive land farms like mangroves, sand deserts, wetlands, marshy areas etc., due to the development of aquaculture ponds and to analyze and understand the impact of pond aquaculture on water course, ground water quality, drinking water source etc. Indian Remote Sensing satellite:1D - Liss-III + PAN sensors merged data of two seasons is used to carry out change detection studies of mangroves, lakes/lagoons and coastal wetlands. To generate microscopic information of Machilipatnam and to monitor the water circulation in creeks the very high resolution IKONOS Panchromatic data is used. Geometrically rectified digital base map covering the study area is prepared on 1:63,630 scale. Satellite data of Land Sat TM, IRS Liss - II, Liss - III and PAN were used. Satellite data geometrically rectified with reference to base map using standard image-to-image tie up procedure besides necessary enhancement techniques for better interpretation. The economic impact of aquaculture is critically analyzed considering certain statistics and the resultant affects are presented. Tropical brackish water and saltwater aquaculture have contributed to the destruction of Mangrove Forests, Wetlands and Salt Marshes, because they have been cleared for use as ponds. It is observed that around 60

Central Atlantic regional ecological test site: A prototype regional environmental information system

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Alexander, R. H. (Principal Investigator)

1972-01-01

The author has identified the following significant results. Preliminary analysis of the capabilities of ERTS-1 data in land use mapping and change detection has revealed that Level 1 land use mapping can be performed and that in some cases land use changes can be identified. Land use interpretation was accomplished with the aid of a film projection viewer and the I2S additive color viewer. By varying the filters and illumination of each spectral band it was possible to better distinguish urban areas and transportation routes. Also it enabled the toning down of signatures such as cropland and forests which on many color infrared composite photographs were washed out with strong red tints. It appears that ERTS-1 imagery is useful not only for Level 1 mapping at scales of 1:250,000 or smaller, but also for monitoring agricultural changes and locating areas of construction, when such land uses approach an area of approximately two hectares.

FFI: A software tool for ecological monitoring

Treesearch

Duncan C. Lutes; Nathan C. Benson; MaryBeth Keifer; John F. Caratti; S. Austin Streetman

2009-01-01

A new monitoring tool called FFI (FEAT/FIREMON Integrated) has been developed to assist managers with collection, storage and analysis of ecological information. The tool was developed through the complementary integration of two fire effects monitoring systems commonly used in the United States: FIREMON and the Fire Ecology Assessment Tool. FFI provides software...

SACRIFICING THE ECOLOGICAL RESOLUTION OF VEGETATION MAPS AT THE ALTAR OF THEMATIC ACCURACY: ASSESSED MAP ACCURACIES FOR HIERARCHICAL VEGETATION CLASSIFICATIONS IN THE EASTERN GREAT BASIN OF THE SOUTHWEST REGIONAL GAP ANALYSIS PROJECT (SW REGAP)

EPA Science Inventory

The Southwest Regional Gap Analysis Project (SW ReGAP) improves upon previous GAP projects conducted in Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah to provide a
consistent, seamless vegetation map for this large and ecologically diverse geographic region. Nevada's compone...

Remote Sensing Contributions to Prediction and Risk Assessment of Natural Disasters Caused by Large Scale Rift Valley Fever Outbreaks

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Anyamba, Assaf; Linthicum, Kenneth J.; Small, Jennifer; Britch, S. C.; Tucker, C. J.

2012-01-01

Remotely sensed vegetation measurements for the last 30 years combined with other climate data sets such as rainfall and sea surface temperatures have come to play an important role in the study of the ecology of arthropod-borne diseases. We show that epidemics and epizootics of previously unpredictable Rift Valley fever are directly influenced by large scale flooding associated with the El Ni o/Southern Oscillation. This flooding affects the ecology of disease transmitting arthropod vectors through vegetation development and other bioclimatic factors. This information is now utilized to monitor, model, and map areas of potential Rift Valley fever outbreaks and is used as an early warning system for risk reduction of outbreaks to human and animal health, trade, and associated economic impacts. The continuation of such satellite measurements is critical to anticipating, preventing, and managing disease epidemics and epizootics and other climate-related disasters.

WAG 2 remedial investigation and site investigation site-specific work plan/health and safety checklist for the ecological assessment task, Kingfisher Study

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Holt, V.L.; Baron, L.A.

1994-05-01

This report provides specific details and requirements for the WAG 2 remedial investigation and site investigation Ecological Assessment Task, Kingfisher Study, including information that will contribute to safe completion of the project. The report includes historical background; a site map; project organization; task descriptions and hazard evaluations; controls; and monitoring, personal protective equipment, decontamination, and medical surveillance program requirements. The report also includes descriptions of site personnel and their certifications as well as suspected WAG 2 contaminants and their characteristics. The primary objective of the WAG 2 Kingfisher Study is to assess the feasibility of using kingfishers as biological monitorsmore » of contaminants on the Oak Ridge Reservation (ORR). Kingfisher sample collection will be used to determine the levels of contaminants and degree of bioaccumulation within a common piscivorous bird feeding on contaminated fish from streams on the ORR.« less

EcoEvo-MAPS: An Ecology and Evolution Assessment for Introductory through Advanced Undergraduates.

PubMed

Summers, Mindi M; Couch, Brian A; Knight, Jennifer K; Brownell, Sara E; Crowe, Alison J; Semsar, Katharine; Wright, Christian D; Smith, Michelle K

2018-06-01

A new assessment tool, Ecology and Evolution-Measuring Achievement and Progression in Science or EcoEvo-MAPS, measures student thinking in ecology and evolution during an undergraduate course of study. EcoEvo-MAPS targets foundational concepts in ecology and evolution and uses a novel approach that asks students to evaluate a series of predictions, conclusions, or interpretations as likely or unlikely to be true given a specific scenario. We collected evidence of validity and reliability for EcoEvo-MAPS through an iterative process of faculty review, student interviews, and analyses of assessment data from more than 3000 students at 34 associate's-, bachelor's-, master's-, and doctoral-granting institutions. The 63 likely/unlikely statements range in difficulty and target student understanding of key concepts aligned with the Vision and Change report. This assessment provides departments with a tool to measure student thinking at different time points in the curriculum and provides data that can be used to inform curricular and instructional modifications.

Evaluation of eelgrass beds mapping using a high-resolution airborne multispectral scanner

USGS Publications Warehouse

Su, H.; Karna, D.; Fraim, E.; Fitzgerald, M.; Dominguez, R.; Myers, J.S.; Coffland, B.; Handley, L.R.; Mace, T.

2006-01-01

Eelgrass (Zostera marina) can provide vital ecological functions in stabilizing sediments, influencing current dynamics, and contributing significant amounts of biomass to numerous food webs in coastal ecosystems. Mapping eelgrass beds is important for coastal water and nearshore estuarine monitoring, management, and planning. This study demonstrated the possible use of high spatial (approximately 5 m) and temporal (maximum low tide) resolution airborne multispectral scanner on mapping eelgrass beds in Northern Puget Sound, Washington. A combination of supervised and unsupervised classification approaches were performed on the multispectral scanner imagery. A normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) derived from the red and near-infrared bands and ancillary spatial information, were used to extract and mask eelgrass beds and other submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) in the study area. We evaluated the resulting thematic map (geocoded, classified image) against a conventional aerial photograph interpretation using 260 point locations randomly stratified over five defined classes from the thematic map. We achieved an overall accuracy of 92 percent with 0.92 Kappa Coefficient in the study area. This study demonstrates that the airborne multispectral scanner can be useful for mapping eelgrass beds in a local or regional scale, especially in regions for which optical remote sensing from space is constrained by climatic and tidal conditions. ?? 2006 American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing.

36 CFR 219.11 - Monitoring and evaluation for adaptive management.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-07-01

... sustainability in the plan area (§§ 219.19 through 219.21). The strategy must require monitoring of appropriate plan decisions and characteristics of sustainability. (1) Monitoring and evaluation of ecological sustainability. The plan monitoring strategy for the monitoring and evaluation of ecological sustainability must...

Predicting the continuum between corridors and barriers to animal movements using Step Selection Functions and Randomized Shortest Paths.

PubMed

Panzacchi, Manuela; Van Moorter, Bram; Strand, Olav; Saerens, Marco; Kivimäki, Ilkka; St Clair, Colleen C; Herfindal, Ivar; Boitani, Luigi

2016-01-01

The loss, fragmentation and degradation of habitat everywhere on Earth prompts increasing attention to identifying landscape features that support animal movement (corridors) or impedes it (barriers). Most algorithms used to predict corridors assume that animals move through preferred habitat either optimally (e.g. least cost path) or as random walkers (e.g. current models), but neither extreme is realistic. We propose that corridors and barriers are two sides of the same coin and that animals experience landscapes as spatiotemporally dynamic corridor-barrier continua connecting (separating) functional areas where individuals fulfil specific ecological processes. Based on this conceptual framework, we propose a novel methodological approach that uses high-resolution individual-based movement data to predict corridor-barrier continua with increased realism. Our approach consists of two innovations. First, we use step selection functions (SSF) to predict friction maps quantifying corridor-barrier continua for tactical steps between consecutive locations. Secondly, we introduce to movement ecology the randomized shortest path algorithm (RSP) which operates on friction maps to predict the corridor-barrier continuum for strategic movements between functional areas. By modulating the parameter Ѳ, which controls the trade-off between exploration and optimal exploitation of the environment, RSP bridges the gap between algorithms assuming optimal movements (when Ѳ approaches infinity, RSP is equivalent to LCP) or random walk (when Ѳ → 0, RSP → current models). Using this approach, we identify migration corridors for GPS-monitored wild reindeer (Rangifer t. tarandus) in Norway. We demonstrate that reindeer movement is best predicted by an intermediate value of Ѳ, indicative of a movement trade-off between optimization and exploration. Model calibration allows identification of a corridor-barrier continuum that closely fits empirical data and demonstrates that RSP outperforms models that assume either optimality or random walk. The proposed approach models the multiscale cognitive maps by which animals likely navigate real landscapes and generalizes the most common algorithms for identifying corridors. Because suboptimal, but non-random, movement strategies are likely widespread, our approach has the potential to predict more realistic corridor-barrier continua for a wide range of species. © 2015 The Authors. Journal of Animal Ecology © 2015 British Ecological Society.

Estimating the Effect of Gypsy Moth Defloiation Using MODIS

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

deBeurs, K. M.; Townsend, P. A.

2008-01-01

The area of North American forests affected by gypsy moth defoliation continues to expand despite efforts to slow the spread. With the increased area of infestation, ecological, environmental and economic concerns about gypsy moth disturbance remain significant, necessitating coordinated, repeatable and comprehensive monitoring of the areas affected. In this study, our primary objective was to estimate the magnitude of defoliation using Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) imagery for a gypsy moth outbreak that occurred in the US central Appalachian Mountains in 2000 and 2001. We focused on determining the appropriate spectral MODIS indices and temporal compositing method to best monitor the effects of gypsy moth defoliation. We tested MODIS-based Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI), Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI), and two versions of the Normalized Difference Infrared index (NDIIb6 and NDIIb7, using the channels centered on 1640 nm and 2130 nm respectively) for their capacity to map defoliation as estimated by ground observations. In addition, we evaluated three temporal resolutions: daily, 8-day and 16-day data. We validated the results through quantitative comparison to Landsat based defoliation estimates and traditional sketch maps. Our MODIS based defoliation estimates based on NDIIb6 and NDIIb7 closely matched Landsat defoliation estimates derived from field data as well as sketch maps. We conclude that daily MODIS data can be used with confidence to monitor insect defoliation on an annual time scale, at least for larger patches (greater than 0.63 km2). Eight-day and 16-day MODIS composites may be of lesser use due to the ephemeral character of disturbance by the gypsy moth.

Use hyperspectral remote sensing technique to monitoring pine wood nomatode disease preliminary

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Qin, Lin; Wang, Xianghong; Jiang, Jing; Yang, Xianchang; Ke, Daiyan; Li, Hongqun; Wang, Dingyi

2016-10-01

The pine wilt disease is a devastating disease of pine trees. In China, the first discoveries of the pine wilt disease on 1982 at Dr. Sun Yat-sen's Mausoleum in Nanjing. It occurred an area of 77000 hm2 in 2005, More than 1540000 pine trees deaths in the year. Many districts of Chongqing in Three Gorges Reservoir have different degrees of pine wilt disease occurrence. It is a serious threat to the ecological environment of the reservoir area. Use unmanned airship to carry high spectrum remote sensing monitoring technology to develop the study on pine wood nematode disease early diagnosis and early warning and forecasting in this study. The hyper spectral data and the digital orthophoto map data of Fuling District Yongsheng Forestry had been achieved In September 2015. Using digital image processing technology to deal with the digital orthophoto map, the number of disease tree and its distribution is automatic identified. Hyper spectral remote sensing data is processed by the spectrum comparison algorithm, and the number and distribution of disease pine trees are also obtained. Two results are compared, the distribution area of disease pine trees are basically the same, indicating that using low air remote sensing technology to monitor the pine wood nematode distribution is successful. From the results we can see that the hyper spectral data analysis results more accurate and less affected by environmental factors than digital orthophoto map analysis results, and more environment variable can be extracted, so the hyper spectral data study is future development direction.

Research on Land Ecological Condition Investigation and Monitoring Technology

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lv, Chunyan; Guo, Xudong; Chen, Yuqi

2017-04-01

The ecological status of land reflects the relationship between land use and environmental factors. At present, land ecological situation in China is worrying. According to the second national land survey data, there are about 149 million acres of arable land located in forests and grasslands area in Northeast and Northwest of China, Within the limits of the highest flood level, at steep slope above 25 degrees; about 50 million acres of arable land has been in heavy pollution; grassland degradation is still serious. Protected natural forests accounted for only 6% of the land area, and forest quality is low. Overall, the ecological problem has been eased, but the local ecological destruction intensified, natural ecosystem in degradation. It is urgent to find out the situation of land ecology in the whole country and key regions as soon as possible. The government attaches great importance to ecological environment investigation and monitoring. Various industries and departments from different angles carry out related work, most of it about a single ecological problem, the lack of a comprehensive surveying and assessment of land ecological status of the region. This paper established the monitoring index system of land ecological condition, including Land use type area and distribution, quality of cultivated land, vegetation status and ecological service, arable land potential and risk, a total of 21 indicators. Based on the second national land use survey data, annual land use change data and high resolution remote sensing data, using the methods of sample monitoring, field investigation and statistical analysis to obtain the information of each index, this paper established the land ecological condition investigation and monitoring technology and method system. It has been improved, through the application to Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Urban Agglomeration, the northern agro-pastoral ecological fragile zone, and 6 counties (cities).

System dynamic modelling to assess economic viability and risk trade-offs for ecological restoration in South Africa.

PubMed

Crookes, D J; Blignaut, J N; de Wit, M P; Esler, K J; Le Maitre, D C; Milton, S J; Mitchell, S A; Cloete, J; de Abreu, P; Fourie nee Vlok, H; Gull, K; Marx, D; Mugido, W; Ndhlovu, T; Nowell, M; Pauw, M; Rebelo, A

2013-05-15

Can markets assist by providing support for ecological restoration, and if so, under what conditions? The first step in addressing this question is to develop a consistent methodology for economic evaluation of ecological restoration projects. A risk analysis process was followed in which a system dynamics model was constructed for eight diverse case study sites where ecological restoration is currently being pursued. Restoration costs vary across each of these sites, as do the benefits associated with restored ecosystem functioning. The system dynamics model simulates the ecological, hydrological and economic benefits of ecological restoration and informs a portfolio mapping exercise where payoffs are matched against the likelihood of success of a project, as well as a number of other factors (such as project costs and risk measures). This is the first known application that couples ecological restoration with system dynamics and portfolio mapping. The results suggest an approach that is able to move beyond traditional indicators of project success, since the effect of discounting is virtually eliminated. We conclude that systems dynamic modelling with portfolio mapping can guide decisions on when markets for restoration activities may be feasible. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Examining fire-induced forest changes using novel remote sensing technique: a case study in a mixed pine-oak forest

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Meng, R.; Wu, J.; Zhao, F. R.; Cook, B.; Hanavan, R. P.; Serbin, S.

2017-12-01

Fire-induced forest changes has long been a central focus for forest ecology and global carbon cycling studies, and is becoming a pressing issue for global change biologists particularly with the projected increases in the frequency and intensity of fire with a warmer and drier climate. Compared with time-consuming and labor intensive field-based approaches, remote sensing offers a promising way to efficiently assess fire effects and monitor post-fire forest responses across a range of spatial and temporal scales. However, traditional remote sensing studies relying on simple optical spectral indices or coarse resolution imagery still face a number of technical challenges, including confusion or contamination of the signal by understory dynamics and mixed pixels with moderate to coarse resolution data (>= 30 m). As such, traditional remote sensing may not meet the increasing demand for more ecologically-meaningful monitoring and quantitation of fire-induced forest changes. Here we examined the use of novel remote sensing technique (i.e. airborne imaging spectroscopy and LiDAR measurement, very high spatial resolution (VHR) space-borne multi-spectral measurement, and high temporal-spatial resolution UAS-based (Unmanned Aerial System) imagery), in combination with field and phenocam measurements to map forest burn severity across spatial scales, quantify crown-scale post-fire forest recovery rate, and track fire-induced phenology changes in the burned areas. We focused on a mixed pine-oak forest undergoing multiple fire disturbances for the past several years in Long Island, NY as a case study. We demonstrate that (1) forest burn severity mapping from VHR remote sensing measurement can capture crown-scale heterogeneous fire patterns over large-scale; (2) the combination of VHR optical and structural measurements provides an efficient means to remotely sense species-level post-fire forest responses; (3) the UAS-based remote sensing enables monitoring of fire-induced forest phenology changes at unprecedented temporal and spatial resolutions. This work provides the methodological approach monitor fire-induced forest changes in a spatially explicit manner across scales, with important implications for fire-related forest management and for constraining/benchmarking process models.

Revisions to the 1995 map of ecological subregions that affect users of the southern variant of the Forest Vegetation Simulator

Treesearch

W. Henry McNab; Chad E. Keyser

2011-01-01

The Southern Variant of the Forest Vegetation Simulator utilizes ecological units mapped in 1995 by the Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, to refine tree growth models for the Southern United States. The 2007 revision of the 1995 map resulted in changes of identification and boundary delineation for some ecoregion units. In this report, we summarize the...

Using bedrock geology for making ecological base maps

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Heldal, Tom; Solli, Arne; Torgersen, Espen

2017-04-01

For preparing for a sustainable future land use planning, a more holistic approach to nature management is important. This will imply more multidisciplinary research and cooperation across professional borders. In particular, the integration of knowledge about the geosphere and biosphere is needed. As the biosphere produces ecosystem services to us, the geosphere provides "geo-system" services or "Underground" services. In Norway, we have tried to investigate the connection between ecosystems and bedrock geology. The aim was to create various ecological base maps that can be used for improving mapping and investigations of biodiversity. By using geochemical analyses and linking the results to bedrock maps, we managed to get a rather realistic picture of the mineral content of soils formed by the chemical weathering of rocks. This made it possible to make the first national map of Ca-content in the bedrock. In addition, we can construct maps of anomal soil composition (such as high P, Mg and K). The presentation will outline the methodology for such ecological base maps, and discuss problems, challenges and further research.

Exploring the Realized Niche: Simulated Ecological Mapping with a Microcomputer.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kent, J. W.

1983-01-01

Describes a computer program based upon field observations of littoral zonation modified by a small stream. The program employs user-defined color graphic characters to display simulated ecological maps representing the patterning of organisms in response to local values of niche limiting factors. (Author/JN)

Compilation of 1989 Annual Reports of the Navy ELF Communications System Ecological Monitoring Program. Volume 2. Tabs C-F

DTIC Science & Technology

1990-08-01

in ecological communities such as those in the vicinity of the ELF antenna because they are pollinators of flowering plants , and are therefore...I I IITRI E06620-4 Page v I I ELF COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEM ECOLOGICAL MONITORING PROGRAM I INDEX OF 1989 ANNUAL REPORTS I A. Herbaceous Plant Cover and...Communications System Ecological Monitoring Program; BIOLOGICAL STUDIES ON POLLINATING INSECTS: MEGACHILID BEES Reporting year: 11/1/88 - 10/31/89 5 Prepared by

Building Ecological and Community Resilience and Measuring Success of the Department of Interior Hurricane Sandy Resilience Projects

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Taylor, S. M.; Worman, S. L.; Bennett, R.; Bassow, A.

2017-12-01

The Department of the Interior (DOI) partnered with the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) to administer an external funding competition to support coastal resilience projects in the region affected by Hurricane Sandy. The projects complement the DOI Bureau-led projects, but are led by state and local governments, universities, non-profits, community groups, tribes, and other non-Federal entities. In total, the Hurricane Sandy Resilience Program invested over $750 million in approximately 180 projects to repair damage and improve the resilience of habitats, communities and infrastructure to future storms and sea level rise. Project activities include waterway connection and opening, living shoreline, marsh restoration, community resilience planning, data/mapping/modeling, and beach and dune restoration. DOI and NFWF initiated a resilience assessment in 2015 to evaluate the impact of this investment. The assessment began by clarifying the program's resilience goals and the development of ecological and socio-economic metrics across the project activities. Using these metrics, the evaluation is assessing the ecological and community outcomes, cost effectiveness of activities, improved scientific understanding, and temporal and spatial scaling of benefits across resilience activities. Recognizing the unique opportunity afforded by the scale and distribution of projects, NFWF and DOI have invested in monitoring through 2024 to better understand how these projects perform over time. This presentation will describe the evaluation questions, approach, long-term monitoring, online metrics portal, and findings to date.

Error, Power, and Blind Sentinels: The Statistics of Seagrass Monitoring

PubMed Central

Schultz, Stewart T.; Kruschel, Claudia; Bakran-Petricioli, Tatjana; Petricioli, Donat

2015-01-01

We derive statistical properties of standard methods for monitoring of habitat cover worldwide, and criticize them in the context of mandated seagrass monitoring programs, as exemplified by Posidonia oceanica in the Mediterranean Sea. We report the novel result that cartographic methods with non-trivial classification errors are generally incapable of reliably detecting habitat cover losses less than about 30 to 50%, and the field labor required to increase their precision can be orders of magnitude higher than that required to estimate habitat loss directly in a field campaign. We derive a universal utility threshold of classification error in habitat maps that represents the minimum habitat map accuracy above which direct methods are superior. Widespread government reliance on blind-sentinel methods for monitoring seafloor can obscure the gradual and currently ongoing losses of benthic resources until the time has long passed for meaningful management intervention. We find two classes of methods with very high statistical power for detecting small habitat cover losses: 1) fixed-plot direct methods, which are over 100 times as efficient as direct random-plot methods in a variable habitat mosaic; and 2) remote methods with very low classification error such as geospatial underwater videography, which is an emerging, low-cost, non-destructive method for documenting small changes at millimeter visual resolution. General adoption of these methods and their further development will require a fundamental cultural change in conservation and management bodies towards the recognition and promotion of requirements of minimal statistical power and precision in the development of international goals for monitoring these valuable resources and the ecological services they provide. PMID:26367863

Exploring the Use of the Revised New Ecological Paradigm Scale (NEP) to Monitor the Development of Students' Ecological Worldviews

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Harraway, John; Broughton-Ansin, Freya; Deaker, Lynley; Jowett, Tim; Shephard, Kerry

2012-01-01

Higher education institutions are interested in the impact that they and concurrent life experiences may have on students' sustainability attitudes, but they lack formal processes to monitor changes. We used the NEP to monitor changes in students' ecological-worldviews. We were interested in what variation there would be in a multidisciplinary…

USING LANDSCAPE ECOLOGY AND PARTIAL LEAST SQUARES PREDICTIONS TO MAP WATERSHEDS THAT ARE VULNERABLE TO NON-POINT SOURCE POLLUTION

EPA Science Inventory

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Research and Development have mapped and interpreted landscape-scale (i.e., broad scale) ecological metrics among watersheds in the upper White River watershed, producing the first geospatial models of water quality vulnerabili...

Vegetation mapping of the Mond Protected Area of Bushehr Province (south-west Iran).

PubMed

Mehrabian, Ahmadreza; Naqinezhad, Alireza; Mahiny, Abdolrassoul Salman; Mostafavi, Hossein; Liaghati, Homan; Kouchekzadeh, Mohsen

2009-03-01

Arid regions of the world occupy up to 35% of the earth's surface, the basis of various definitions of climatic conditions, vegetation types or potential for food production. Due to their high ecological value, monitoring of arid regions is necessary and modern vegetation studies can help in the conservation and management of these areas. The use of remote sensing for mapping of desert vegetation is difficult due to mixing of the spectral reflectance of bright desert soils with the weak spectral response of sparse vegetation. We studied the vegetation types in the semiarid to arid region of Mond Protected Area, south-west Iran, based on unsupervised classification of the Spot XS bands and then produced updated maps. Sixteen map units covering 12 vegetation types were recognized in the area based on both field works and satellite mapping. Halocnemum strobilaceum and Suaeda fruticosa vegetation types were the dominant types and Ephedra foliata, Salicornia europaea-Suaeda heterophylla vegetation types were the smallest. Vegetation coverage decreased sharply with the increase in salinity towards the coastal areas of the Persian Gulf. The highest vegetation coverage belonged to the riparian vegetation along the Mond River, which represents the northern boundary of the protected area. The location of vegetation types was studied on the separate soil and habitat diversity maps of the study area, which helped in final refinements of the vegetation map produced.

Mapping lake level changes using ICESat/GLAS satellite laser altimetry data: a case study in arid regions of central Asia

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Li, JunLi; Fang, Hui; Yang, Liao

2011-12-01

Lakes in arid regions of Central Asia act as essential components of regional water cycles, providing sparse but valuable water resource for the fragile ecological environments and human lives. Lakes in Central Asia are sensitive to climate change and human activities, and great changes have been found since 1960s. Mapping and monitoring these inland lakes would improve our understanding of mechanism of lake dynamics and climatic impacts. ICESat/GLAS satellite laser altimetry provides an efficient tool of continuously measuring lake levels in these poorly surveyed remote areas. An automated mapping scheme of lake level changes is developed based on GLAS altimetry products, and the spatial and temporal characteristics of 9 typical lakes in Central Asia are analyzed to validate the level accuracies. The results show that ICESat/GLAS has a good performance of lake level monitoring, whose patterns of level changes are the same as those of field observation, and the max differences between GLAS and field data is 3cm. Based on the results, it is obvious that alpine lakes are increasing greatly in lake levels during 2003-2009 due to climate change, while open lakes with dams and plain endorheic lakes decrease dramatically in water levels due to human activities, which reveals the overexploitation of water resource in Central Asia.

Level III Ecoregions of EPA Region 7

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by EPA region were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 52 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 104 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 84 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2005). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level I

Level IV Ecoregions of EPA Region 7

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by EPA region were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 52 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 104 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 84 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2005). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level I

Level IV Ecoregions of New Jersey

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level IV Ecoregions of EPA Region 1

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by EPA region were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 52 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 104 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 84 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2005). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level I

Level IV Ecoregions of New Mexico

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level IV Ecoregions of EPA Region 10

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by EPA region were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 52 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 104 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 84 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2005). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level I

Level IV Ecoregions of the Conterminous United States

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2005). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III ecoregions. Methods used to define the ecoregions are explained in Omernik (

Level IV Ecoregions of EPA Region 3

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by EPA region were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 52 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 104 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 84 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2005). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level I

Level III Ecoregions of EPA Region 10

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by EPA region were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 52 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 104 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 84 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2005). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level I

Level IV Ecoregions of EPA Region 2

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by EPA region were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 52 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 104 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 84 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2005). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level I

Level III Ecoregions of EPA Region 2

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by EPA region were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 52 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 104 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 84 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2005). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level I

Level IV Ecoregions of North Carolina

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level III Ecoregions of EPA Region 5

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by EPA region were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 52 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 104 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 84 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2005). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level I

Level IV Ecoregions of EPA Region 5

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by EPA region were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 52 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 104 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 84 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2005). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level I

Level III Ecoregions of EPA Region 1

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by EPA region were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 52 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 104 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 84 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2005). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level I

Level IV Ecoregions of EPA Region 6

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by EPA region were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 52 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 104 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 84 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2005). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level I

Level III Ecoregions of South Carolina

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level III Ecoregions of EPA Region 3

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by EPA region were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 52 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 104 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 84 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2005). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level I

Level III Ecoregions of EPA Region 6

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by EPA region were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 52 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 104 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 84 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2005). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level I

Level III Ecoregions of New Hampshire

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 105 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 85 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level III eco

Level IV Ecoregions of EPA Region 4

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by EPA region were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 52 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 104 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 84 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2005). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level I

Level III Ecoregions of EPA Region 4

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Ecoregions by EPA region were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across federal agencies, state agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources within the same geographical areas. The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena, including geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels for ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 52 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997). At Level III, the continental United States contains 104 regions whereas the conterminous United States has 84 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2005). Level IV ecoregions are further subdivisions of Level I

Lindenmayer DB and Likens GE (eds): Effective ecological monitoring [book review

Treesearch

Charles T. Scott

2011-01-01

Long-term ecological monitoring is becoming increasingly important but more challenging to fund. Lindenmayer and Likens describe the common characteristics of successful monitoring programs and of those that fail. They draw upon their monitoring experiences together, independently, and from a variety of other long-term monitoring programs around the world. They then...

Everglades Depth Estimation Network (EDEN)—A decade of serving hydrologic information to scientists and resource managers

USGS Publications Warehouse

Patino, Eduardo; Conrads, Paul; Swain, Eric; Beerens, James M.

2017-10-30

IntroductionThe Everglades Depth Estimation Network (EDEN) provides scientists and resource managers with regional maps of daily water levels and depths in the freshwater part of the Greater Everglades landscape. The EDEN domain includes all or parts of five Water Conservation Areas, Big Cypress National Preserve, Pennsuco Wetlands, and Everglades National Park. Daily water-level maps are interpolated from water-level data at monitoring gages, and depth is estimated by using a digital elevation model of the land surface. Online datasets provide time series of daily water levels at gages and rainfall and evapotranspiration data (https://sofia.usgs.gov/eden/). These datasets are used by scientists and resource managers to guide large-scale field operations, describe hydrologic changes, and support biological and ecological assessments that measure ecosystem response to the implementation of the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan. EDEN water-level data have been used in a variety of biological and ecological studies including (1) the health of American alligators as a function of water depth, (2) the variability of post-fire landscape dynamics in relation to water depth, (3) the habitat quality for wading birds with dynamic habitat selection, and (4) an evaluation of the habitat of the Cape Sable seaside sparrow.

Identifying tropical dry forests extent and succession via the use of machine learning techniques

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Li, Wei; Cao, Sen; Campos-Vargas, Carlos; Sanchez-Azofeifa, Arturo

2017-12-01

Information on ecosystem services as a function of the successional stage for secondary tropical dry forests (TDFs) is scarce and limited. Secondary TDFs succession is defined as regrowth following a complete forest clearance for cattle growth or agriculture activities. In the context of large conservation initiatives, the identification of the extent, structure and composition of secondary TDFs can serve as key elements to estimate the effectiveness of such activities. As such, in this study we evaluate the use of a Hyperspectral MAPper (HyMap) dataset and a waveform LIDAR dataset for characterization of different levels of intra-secondary forests stages at the Santa Rosa National Park (SRNP) Environmental Monitoring Super Site located in Costa Rica. Specifically, a multi-task learning based machine learning classifier (MLC-MTL) is employed on the first shortwave infrared (SWIR1) of HyMap in order to identify the variability of aboveground biomass of secondary TDFs along a successional gradient. Our paper recognizes that the process of ecological succession is not deterministic but a combination of transitional forests types along a stochastic path that depends on ecological, edaphic, land use, and micro-meteorological conditions, and our results provide a new way to obtain the spatial distribution of three main types of TDFs successional stages.

Biomonitoring using invasive species in a large Lake: Dreissena distribution maps hypoxic zones

USGS Publications Warehouse

Karatayev, Alexander Y.; Burlakova, Lyubov E.; Mehler, Knut; Bocaniov, Serghei A.; Collingsworth, Paris D.; Warren, Glenn; Kraus, Richard T.; Hinchey, Elizabeth K.

2017-01-01

Due to cultural eutrophication and global climate change, an exponential increase in the number and extent of hypoxic zones in marine and freshwater ecosystems has been observed in the last few decades. Hypoxia, or low dissolved oxygen (DO) concentrations, can produce strong negative ecological impacts and, therefore, is a management concern. We measured biomass and densities of Dreissena in Lake Erie, as well as bottom DO in 2014 using 19 high frequency data loggers distributed throughout the central basin to validate a three-dimensional hydrodynamic-ecological lake model. We found that a deep, offshore hypoxic zone was formed by early August, restricting the Dreissena population to shallow areas of the central basin. Deeper than 20 m, where bottom hypoxia routinely develops, only young of the year mussels were found in small numbers, indicating restricted recruitment and survival of young Dreissena. We suggest that monitoring Dreissenadistribution can be an effective tool for mapping the extent and frequency of hypoxia in freshwater. In addition, our results suggest that an anticipated decrease in the spatial extent of hypoxia resulting from nutrient management has the potential to increase the spatial extent of profundal habitat in the central basin available for Dreissena expansion.

GIS-mapping of environmental assessment of the territories in the region of intense activity for the oil and gas complex for achievement the goals of the Sustainable Development (on the example of Russia)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yermolaev, Oleg

2014-05-01

The uniform system of complex scientific-reference ecological-geographical should act as a base for the maintenance of the Sustainable Development (SD) concept in the territories of the Russian Federation subjects or certain regions. In this case, the assessment of the ecological situation in the regions can be solved by the conjugation of the two interrelated system - the mapping and the geoinformational. The report discusses the methodological aspects of the Atlas-mapping for the purposes of SD in the regions of Russia. The Republic of Tatarstan viewed as a model territory where a large-scale oil-gas complex "Tatneft" PLC works. The company functions for more than 60 years. Oil fields occupy an area of more than 38 000 km2; placed in its territory about 40 000 oil wells, more than 55 000 km of pipelines; more than 3 billion tons of oil was extracted. Methods for to the structure and requirements for the Atlas's content were outlined. The approaches to mapping of "an ecological dominant" of SD conceptually substantiated following the pattern of a large region of Russia. Several trends of thematically mapping were suggested to be distinguished in the Atlas's structure: • The background history of oil-fields mine working; • The nature preservation technologies while oil extracting; • The assessment of natural conditions of a humans vital activity; • Unfavorable and dangerous natural processes and phenomena; • The anthropogenic effect and environmental surroundings change; • The social-economical processes and phenomena. • The medical-ecological and geochemical processes and phenomena; Within these groups the other numerous groups can distinguished. The maps of unfavorable and dangerous processes and phenomena subdivided in accordance with the types of processes - of endogenous and exogenous origin. Among the maps of the anthropogenic effects on the natural surroundings one can differentiate the maps of the influence on different nature's spheres - atmosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere, biosphere, etc. In this way, all thematic groups brought together into four main sections: • The introduction (the maps of a general condition and social-economical state, a region's rating in Republic; • The components of natural, social-economics systems that form the conditions for the ecological situations; • The integrated maps of exertion and change of the environment; • The strategy to reach an ecological equilibrium. The following data confirm that: more than 200 electronic analytical, complex and synthetic maps; more than 1000 small rivers basins, 6000 landscapes areas, 500 anthropogenic pollutions source, etc. The extensive information, richness and diversity of the maps content, objective indices used in the maps, open the door to wide opportunities to apply different methods of cartography analysis comprising both usual visional one and the geographical constructions, cartometry statistical data treatment, respectively. The methods of mathematical-mapping and computer modeling presume to compute spatial correlations and mutual conformity of phenomena and to estimate the homogeneity of the ecological conditions, to reveal the leading factors of distribution and phenomena and processes development using the means of multidimensional statistical analysis.

Ecological Monitoring and Compliance Program Fiscal Year 2000 Report

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Wills, C.A.

2000-12-01

The Ecological Monitoring and Compliance program, funded through the U.S. Department of Energy, Nevada Operations Office, monitors the ecosystem of he Nevada Test Site (NTS) and ensures compliance with laws and regulations pertaining to NTS biota. This report summarizes the program's activities conducted by Bechtel Nevada during fiscal year 2000. Program activities included: (1) biological surveys at proposed construction sites, (2) desert tortoise compliance,(3) ecosystem mapping, (4) sensitive species and unique habitat monitoring, and (5) biological monitoring at the HAZMAT Spill Center. Biological surveys for the presence of sensitive species were conducted for 24 NTS projects. Seventeen sites were inmore » desert tortoise habitat, and six acres of tortoise habitat were documented as being disturbed this year. No tortoises were found in or displaced from project areas, and no tortoises were accidentally injured or killed. A topical report describing the classification of habitat types o n the NTS was completed. The report is the culmination of three years of field vegetation mapping and the analysis of vegetation data from over 1,500 ecological landform units. A long-term monitoring plan for important plant species that occur on the NTS was completed. Sitewide inventories were conducted for the western burrowing owl, bat species of concern, wild horses, raptor nests, and mule deer. Fifty-nine of 69 known owl burrows were monitored. Forty-four of the known burrows are in disturbed habitat. As in previous years, some owls were present year round on the NTS. An overall decrease in active owl burrows was observed within all three ecoregions (Mojave Desert, Transition, Great Basin Desert) from October through January. An increase in active owl burrows was observed from mid-March to early April. A total of 45 juvenile owls was detected from eight breeding pairs. One nest burrow was detected in the Mojave Desert,one in the Great Basin Desert, and six in the Transition ecoregion. Seventy bats, representing four bat species of concern, were captured in mist-nets at water sources in the Great Basin Desert ecoregion. Bats were detected with the Anabat II call-recording system at selected tunnel and mine entrances verifying that some NTS mines and tunnels are used as bat roosts. Thirty-seven adult horses and 11 foals were counted this year. Four of the five foals observed last year have survived to yearlings. A monitoring plan for NTS horses was completed. Six active red-tailed hawk nests and 10 nestling red-tailed hawks were detected this year. Two spotlighting surveys for mule deer were conducted, each over three consecutive nights in October 1999 and August 2000. The mean sighting rate in October was 1.2 deer/10 kilometers (km) and 1.6 deer/10 km in August. Selected wetlands and man-made water sources were monitored for physical parameters and wildlife use. No dead animals were observed this year in any plastic-lined sump. Pahute Mesa Pond was confirmed to have vegetation,hydrology, and soil indicators that qualify the site as a jurisdictional wetland. The chemical spill test plan for one experiment at the HAZMAT Spill Center was reviewed for its potential to impact biota downwind of spills on Frenchman Lake playa.« less

Multiscale ecosystem monitoring: an application of scaling data to answer multiple ecological questions

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

Standardized monitoring data collection efforts using a probabilistic sample design, such as in the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) Assessment, Inventory, and Monitoring (AIM) Strategy, provide a core suite of ecological indicators, maximize data collection efficiency, and promote reuse of monitor...

Comparing Selections of Environmental Variables for Ecological Studies: A Focus on Terrain Attributes.

PubMed

Lecours, Vincent; Brown, Craig J; Devillers, Rodolphe; Lucieer, Vanessa L; Edinger, Evan N

2016-01-01

Selecting appropriate environmental variables is a key step in ecology. Terrain attributes (e.g. slope, rugosity) are routinely used as abiotic surrogates of species distribution and to produce habitat maps that can be used in decision-making for conservation or management. Selecting appropriate terrain attributes for ecological studies may be a challenging process that can lead users to select a subjective, potentially sub-optimal combination of attributes for their applications. The objective of this paper is to assess the impacts of subjectively selecting terrain attributes for ecological applications by comparing the performance of different combinations of terrain attributes in the production of habitat maps and species distribution models. Seven different selections of terrain attributes, alone or in combination with other environmental variables, were used to map benthic habitats of German Bank (off Nova Scotia, Canada). 29 maps of potential habitats based on unsupervised classifications of biophysical characteristics of German Bank were produced, and 29 species distribution models of sea scallops were generated using MaxEnt. The performances of the 58 maps were quantified and compared to evaluate the effectiveness of the various combinations of environmental variables. One of the combinations of terrain attributes-recommended in a related study and that includes a measure of relative position, slope, two measures of orientation, topographic mean and a measure of rugosity-yielded better results than the other selections for both methodologies, confirming that they together best describe terrain properties. Important differences in performance (up to 47% in accuracy measurement) and spatial outputs (up to 58% in spatial distribution of habitats) highlighted the importance of carefully selecting variables for ecological applications. This paper demonstrates that making a subjective choice of variables may reduce map accuracy and produce maps that do not adequately represent habitats and species distributions, thus having important implications when these maps are used for decision-making.

Facilitating knowledge discovery and visualization through mining contextual data from published studies: lessons from JournalMap

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

Valuable information on the location and context of ecological studies are locked up in publications in myriad formats that are not easily machine readable. This presents significant challenges to building geographic-based tools to search for and visualize sources of ecological knowledge. JournalMap...

USING LANDSCAPE ECOLOGY AND PARTIAL LEAST SQUARES PREDICITIONS TO MAP WATERSHEDS THAT ARE VULNERABLE TO NON-POINT SOURCE POLLUTION

EPA Science Inventory

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency¿s Office of Research and Development have mapped and interpreted landscape-scale (i.e., broad scale) ecological metrics among watersheds in the upper White River watershed, producing the first geospatial models of water quality vulnerabili...

Temporally inter-comparable maps of terrestrial wilderness and the Last of the Wild

PubMed Central

Allan, James R.; Venter, Oscar; Watson, James E.M.

2017-01-01

Wilderness areas, defined as areas free of industrial scale activities and other human pressures which result in significant biophysical disturbance, are important for biodiversity conservation and sustaining the key ecological processes underpinning planetary life-support systems. Despite their importance, wilderness areas are being rapidly eroded in extent and fragmented. Here we present the most up-to-date temporally inter-comparable maps of global terrestrial wilderness areas, which are essential for monitoring changes in their extent, and for proactively planning conservation interventions to ensure their preservation. Using maps of human pressure on the natural environment for 1993 and 2009, we identified wilderness as all ‘pressure free’ lands with a contiguous area >10,000 km2. These places are likely operating in a natural state and represent the most intact habitats globally. We then created a regionally representative map of wilderness following the well-established ‘Last of the Wild’ methodology; which identifies the 10% area with the lowest human pressure within each of Earth’s 60 biogeographic realms, and identifies the ten largest contiguous areas, along with all contiguous areas >10,000 km2. PMID:29231923

Remote sensing research on fragile ecological environment in continental river basin

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wang, Ranghui; Peng, Ruyan; Zhang, Huizhi

2003-07-01

Based on some remote sensing data and software platform of image processing and analysis, the standard image for ecological thematic mapping is decided. Moreover, the vegetation type maps and land sandy desertification type maps are made. Relaying on differences of natural resources and ecological environment in Tarim River Basin, the assessment indicator system and ecological fragility index (EFI) of ecological environment are built up. The assessment results are very severely. That is, EFI is only 0.08 in Akesu River Basin, it belongs to slight fragility area. EFI of Yarkant River Basin and upper reaches of Tarim River Basin are 0.23 and 0.25 respectively, both of them belong to general fragility areas. Meanwhile, EFI of Hotan River Basin and middle reaches of Tarim River Basin are 0.32 and 0.49 respectively; they all belong to middle fragility areas. However, the fragility of the lower reaches of Tarim River Basin belongs to severe fragility area that the EFI is 0.87.The maladjustment among water with hot and land as well as salt are hindrance of energy transfer and material circulation and information transmission. It is also the main reason that caused ecological environment fragility.

The utilization of Depth Invariant Index and Principle Component Analysis for mapping seagrass ecosystem of Kotok Island and Karang Bongkok, Indonesia

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Manuputty, Agnestesya; Lumban Gaol, Jonson; Bahri Agus, Syamsul; Wayan Nurjaya, I.

2017-01-01

Seagrass perform a variety of functions within ecosystems, and have both economic and ecological values, therefore it has to be kept sustainable. One of the stages to preserve seagrass ecosystems is monitoring by utilizing thespatial data accurately. The purpose of the study was to assess and compare the accuracy of DII and PCA transformationsfor mapping of seagrass ecosystems. Fieldstudy was carried out in Karang Bongkok and Kotok Island waters, in Agustus 2014 and in March 2015. A WorldView-2 image acquisition date of 5 October 2013 was used in the study. The transformations for image processing data were Depth Invariant Index (DII) and Principle Component Analysis (PCA) using Support Vector Machine (SVM) classification. The result shows that benthic habitat mapping of Karang Bongkok using DII and PCA transformations were 72%and 81% overall’s accuracy respectively, whereas of Kotok Island were 83% and 84% overall’s accuracy respectively. There were seven benthic habitat types found in karang Bongkok waters and in Kotok Island namely seagrass, sand, rubble, coral, logoon, sand mix seagrass, and sand mix rubble. PCA transformation was effectively to improve mapping accuracy of sea grass mapping in Kotok Island and Karang Bongkok.

A survey of topsoil arsenic and mercury concentrations across France.

PubMed

Marchant, B P; Saby, N P A; Arrouays, D

2017-08-01

Even at low concentrations, the presence of arsenic and mercury in soils can lead to ecological and health impacts. The recent European-wide LUCAS Topsoil Survey found that the arsenic concentration of a large proportion of French soils exceeded a threshold which indicated that further investigation was required. A much smaller proportion of soils exceeded the corresponding threshold for mercury but the impacts of mining and industrial activities on mercury concentrations are not well understood. We use samples from the French national soil monitoring network (RMQS: Réseau de Mesures de la Qualité des Sols) to explore the variation of topsoil arsenic and mercury concentrations across mainland France at a finer spatial resolution than was reported by LUCAS Topsoil. We use geostatistical methods to map the expected concentrations of these elements in the topsoil and the probabilities that the legislative thresholds are exceeded. We find that, with the exception of some areas where the geogenic concentrations and soil adsorption capacities are very low, arsenic concentrations are generally larger than the threshold which indicates that further assessment of the area is required. The lower of two other guideline values indicating risks to ecology or health is exceeded in fewer than 5% of RMQS samples. These exceedances occur in localised hot-spots primarily associated with mining and mineralization. The probabilities of mercury concentrations exceeding the further assessment threshold value are everywhere less than 0.01 and none of the RMQS samples exceed either of the ecological and health risk thresholds. However, there are some regions with elevated concentrations which can be related to volcanic material, natural mineralizations and industrial contamination. These regions are more diffuse than the hot-spots of arsenic reflecting the greater volatility of mercury and therefore the greater ease with which it can be transported and redeposited. The maps provide a baseline against which future phases of the RMQS can be compared and highlight regions where the threat of soil contamination and its impacts should be more closely monitored. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Watershed Scale Analyses of Mangrove Ecosystems in the Americas and the Contributing Upland Area Land Cover Change Over Time

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Corcoran, J.; Simard, M.

2013-12-01

Ecosystems throughout the world have been under pressure by drivers of change both natural and anthropogenic. Coastal and marine ecosystems such as mangrove forests contribute to the biodiversity of land and ocean habitats at various scales, acting as direct link to biogeochemical cycles of both upland and coastal regions. All of the positive and negative drivers of change of both natural and anthropogenic, within watershed and political boundaries, play a role in the health and function of these ecosystems. As a result, they are among the most rapidly changing landscapes in the Americas. This research presents a watershed scale monitoring approach of mangrove ecosystems using datasets that contain several sources of remotely sensed data and intensive ecological field data. Spatially exclusive decision tree models were used to assess and monitor land use and land cover change in mangrove ecosystems for different regions of the Americas, representing varying geomorphologic settings across a latitudinal gradient. The integration of ecological, hydrological, and geomorphologic characteristics of the contributing areas to these critical downstream ecosystems is crucial for both mapping and monitoring these vulnerable ecosystems. This research develops the scientific and technical framework needed for advancement in regional scale natural resource management and valuation, informed policy making, and protection of coastal ecosystems. This research also provides a foundation for the development of forecast models to simulate and assess mangrove area, health, and viability changes under different land management and climate scenarios.

Interdisciplinary approach to the ecological status assessment of Rio Quequén Grande watershed in Argentina

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Teruggi, L. B.; Caporali, E.; Sala, S.; Kristensen, M. J.

2010-12-01

The Río Quequén Grande (RQG) watershed is located in the southeast section of Buenos Aires province, in Argentina, and it has an area of about 9.940 km2. The RQG outflows into the Atlantic Ocean, near the city of Necochea and it is a representative example of Argentinean River that drains the flat pampas of the region. The region is very important from a social and economical point of view, it is in fact characterized by intense agricultural activity and it is part of one of the most productive plain in the world. In spite of all that, the related environmental impacts, in this part of the world, are habitually faced studying specific aspects and using local measures, which often lead to the collapse of the living riverine systems. In this frame, the integration of all the available data, coupled with specific data from appropriate monitoring campaigns is proposed. Particularly geological, hydrological and geomorphological data are integrated with biological monitoring data for surface water quality assessment. Concepts like biotic integrity or ecological status are introduced to effectively protect and enhance water resources. The aim of the research is to recognize natural and anthropogenic spatial heterogeneity and to test methodologies for ecological status assessment of RQG watershed, integrating abiotic and biotic data together with all the available information. A dedicated Geographic Information System (GIS) is developed and an interdisciplinary approach is implemented. The watershed is characterized, using an integrated informative system of geological, geomorphological, sedimentological, hydrological, geochemical, land uses and biological information. Textural and geochemical river bed sediments data and water chemical parameters of the main tributaries and the main course were also monitored. Bankfull channel and caliche outcrops crossing the RQG channel were mapped and the fluvial cross sections were surveyed. The hydrological and hydraulic analyses have been carried out. All the data and analysis results are recorded in the dedicated GIS. As a preliminary approach, a biological monitoring campaign was defined and samples of principal nutrients analyses were collected. General habitat quality was also evaluated and benthic algal communities, aquatic and riparian vegetation were sampled. The results indicate that the monitored rivers have an insufficient water quality possibly related to the diffused pollution due to intensive agricultural activities. Even if the bio-monitoring activities need to be continued, and the number of monitoring sites need to be increased, the preliminary obtained results by the monitoring campaign and the modelling, integrating with the GIS, are giving encouraging response.

The European Drought Observatory (EDO): Current State and Future Directions

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Vogt, J.; Singleton, A.; Sepulcre, G.; Micale, F.; Barbosa, P.

2012-12-01

Europe has repeatedly been affected by droughts, resulting in considerable ecological and economic damage and climate change studies indicate a trend towards increasing climate variability most likely resulting in more frequent drought occurrences also in Europe. Against this background, the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) is developing methods and tools for assessing, monitoring and forecasting droughts in Europe and develops a European Drought Observatory (EDO) to complement and integrate national activities with a European view. At the core of the European Drought Observatory (EDO) is a portal, including a map server, a metadata catalogue, a media-monitor and analysis tools. The map server presents Europe-wide up-to-date information on the occurrence and severity of droughts, which is complemented by more detailed information provided by regional, national and local observatories through OGC compliant web mapping and web coverage services. In addition, time series of historical maps as well as graphs of the temporal evolution of drought indices for individual grid cells and administrative regions in Europe can be retrieved and analysed. Current work is focusing on validating the available products, improving the functionalities, extending the linkage to additional national and regional drought information systems and improving medium to long-range probabilistic drought forecasting products. Probabilistic forecasts are attractive in that they provide an estimate of the range of uncertainty in a particular forecast. Longer-term goals include the development of long-range drought forecasting products, the analysis of drought hazard and risk, the monitoring of drought impact and the integration of EDO in a global drought information system. The talk will provide an overview on the development and state of EDO, the different products, and the ways to include a wide range of stakeholders (i.e. European, national river basin, and local authorities) in the development of the system as well as an outlook on the future developments.

Mapping of Soil-Ecological Conditions of a Medium-Size Industrial City (Birobidzhan City, Jewish Autonomous Oblast, FarEast of Russia as an Example)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kalmanova, V. B.; Matiushkina, L. A.

2018-01-01

The authors analyze soil relations with other elements of the city ecosystem (the position in the landscape, soil-forming rocks and lithology, vegetation and its state) to develop the legend and map of soils in the City of Birobidzhan (scale 1:25 000). The focus of study is the morphological structure of urban soils with different degree of disturbance of these relations under the impact of technical effects, economic and recreational activities of the city population. The soil cover structure is composed of four large ecological groups of soils: natural untransformed, natural with a disturbed surface, anthropogenic soils and technogenic surface formations. Using cartometry of the mapped soil contours the authors created the scheme of soil-ecological city zoning, which in a general way depicts the state of soil ecological functions in the city as well as identified zones of soils with preserved, partially and fully distured ecological functions and zones of local geochemical anomalies at the initial formation stage (environmental risk zones).

Area Fish and Game Ecology [Sahuarita High School Career Curriculum Project.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Esser, Robert

This course entitled "Area Fish and Game Ecology" is one of a series of instructional guides prepared by teachers for the Sahuarita High School (Arizona) Career Curriculum Project. It consists of nine units of study, and 18 behavioral objectives relating to these units are stated. The topics covered include map projections, map symbols and…

The Social Maps of Children Approaching Adolescence: Studying the Ecology of Youth Development.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Garbarino, James; And Others

This paper reports the first results of a three-year longitudinal study of the social maps of children beginning the transition to adolescence. This exploratory study is guided by Bronfenbrenner's conception of the ecology of human development stressing the importance of a phenomenological orientation to development in the context of ecological…

USING LANDSCAPE ECOLOGY TO MAP WATERSHEDS THAT ARE VULNERABLE TO NON-POINT SOURCE POLLUTION IN THE OZARKS

EPA Science Inventory

The U.S. EPA's Office of Research and Development, and U.S. EPA Region 7 have collaborated to map and interpret landscape-scale (i.e. broad-scale) ecological metrics among watershed of the Upper White River, and have produced the first geospatial models of water quality vulnerabi...

Environmental Assessment for the Construction of a Shoppette, Class Six Store, and Car-Care Facilities at Dover Air Force Base, Kent County, Delaware

DTIC Science & Technology

2007-12-01

Ecology and Environment, Inc.FILE: \\\\Talbdl1\\gis\\DoverEA\\MAPS\\MXD\\FIG-1_DoverAFB_RegionalLocationMap.mxd DATE: August 03...7󈧢 "N 39° 7󈧢 "N © 2007 Ecology and Environment, Inc.FILE: \\\\Talbdl1\\GIS\\DoverEA\\MAPS\\MXD\\FIG-2_DoverAFB_ExistingProposed_SitePlans.mxd...34W 75°29𔃺"W 39° 8𔃺" N 39° 8𔃺" N 39° 7𔃺" N 39° 7𔃺" N 39° 6𔃺" N 39° 6𔃺" N © 2007 Ecology and Environment,

Monitoring changes in exotic vegetation

Treesearch

Robert D. Sutter

1998-01-01

Ecological monitoring provides critical information for management decisions by measuring changes in managed and unmanaged populations, communities and ecological systems. It integrates ecology, goal and objective setting, sampling design, sampling methods, and statistical analysis. It is a topic that I, with a team of Nature Conservancy ecologists, teach in a six day...

The Role of Bridging Organizations in Enhancing Ecosystem Services and Facilitating Adaptive Management of Social-Ecological Systems

EPA Science Inventory

Adaptive management is an approach for monitoring the response of ecological systems to different policies and practices and attempts to reduce the inherent uncertainty in ecological systems via system monitoring and iterative decision making and experimentation (Holling 1978). M...

Ecology and space: A case study in mapping harmful invasive species

USGS Publications Warehouse

David T. Barnett,; Jarnevich, Catherine S.; Chong, Geneva W.; Stohlgren, Thomas J.; Sunil Kumar,; Holcombe, Tracy R.; Brunn, Stanley D.; Dodge, Martin

2017-01-01

The establishment and invasion of non-native plant species have the ability to alter the composition of native species and functioning of ecological systems with financial costs resulting from mitigation and loss of ecological services. Spatially documenting invasions has applications for management and theory, but the utility of maps is challenged by availability and uncertainty of data, and the reliability of extrapolating mapped data in time and space. The extent and resolution of projections also impact the ability to inform invasive species science and management. Early invasive species maps were coarse-grained representations that underscored the phenomena, but had limited capacity to direct management aside from development of watch lists for priorities for prevention and containment. Integrating mapped data sets with fine-resolution environmental variables in the context of species-distribution models allows a description of species-environment relationships and an understanding of how, why, and where invasions may occur. As with maps, the extent and resolution of models impact the resulting insight. Models of cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum) across a variety of spatial scales and grain result in divergent species-environment relationships. New data can improve models and efficiently direct further inventories. Mapping can target areas of greater model uncertainty or the bounds of modeled distribution to efficiently refine models and maps. This iterative process results in dynamic, living maps capable of describing the ongoing process of species invasions.

The U.S. Geological Survey Flagstaff Science Campus—Providing expertise on planetary science, ecology, water resources, geologic processes, and human interactions with the Earth

USGS Publications Warehouse

Hart, Robert J.; Vaughan, R. Greg; McDougall, Kristin; Wojtowicz, Todd; Thenkenbail, Prasad

2017-06-29

The U.S. Geological Survey’s Flagstaff Science Campus is focused on interdisciplinary study of the Earth and solar system, and has the scientific expertise to detect early environmental changes and provide strategies to minimize possible adverse effects on humanity. The Flagstaff Science Campus (FSC) is located in Flagstaff, Arizona, which is situated in the northern part of the State, home to a wide variety of landscapes and natural resources, including (1) young volcanoes in the San Francisco Volcanic Field, (2) the seven ecological life zones of the San Francisco Peaks, (3) the extensive geologic record of the Colorado Plateau and Grand Canyon, (4) the Colorado River and its perennial, ephemeral, and intermittent tributaries, and (5) a multitude of canyons, mountains, arroyos, and plains. More than 200 scientists, technicians, and support staff provide research, monitoring, and technical advancements in planetary geology and mapping, biology and ecology, Earth-based geology, hydrology, and changing climate and landscapes. Scientists at the FSC work in collaboration with multiple State, Federal, Tribal, municipal, and academic partners to address regional, national, and global environmental issues, and provide scientific outreach to the general public.

United States Postal Service Hovercraft Transport of Alaska Bypass Mail Ecological Monitoring Summary Report

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

2000-03-01

The Alaska Hovercraft Ecological Monitoring Program evaluated the nature and extent of impacts, if any, from use of the hovercraft to fish, waterfowl, and subsistence efforts. This report documents monitoring methods, and presents results of the data...

BIRD COMMUNITIES AND HABITAT AS ECOLOGICAL INDICATORS OF FOREST CONDITION IN REGIONAL MONITORING

EPA Science Inventory

Ecological indicators for long-term monitoring programs are needed to detect and assess changing environmental conditions, We developed and tested community-level environmental indicators for monitoring forest bird populations and associated habitat. We surveyed 197 sampling plo...

Terrestrial Ecological Unit Inventory technical guide

Treesearch

E. Winthers; D. Fallon; J. Haglund; T. DeMeo; G. Nowacki; D. Tart; M. Ferwerda; G. Robertson; A. Gallegos; A. Rorick; D. T. Cleland; W. Robbie

2005-01-01

The purpose of this technical guide is to provide specific direction and guidance for conducting Terrestrial Ecological Unit Inventory (TEUI) at the landscape and land-unit scales. TEUI seeks to classify ecological types and map terrestrial ecological units (TEUs) to a consistent standard throughout National Forest System lands. The objectives, policies, and...

Ecological units of the Northern Region: Subsections

Treesearch

John A. Nesser; Gary L. Ford; C. Lee Maynard; Debbie Dumroese

1997-01-01

Ecological units are described at the subsection level of the Forest Service National Hierarchical Framework of Ecological Units. A total of 91 subsections are delineated on the 1996 map "Ecological Units of the Northern Region: Subsections," based on physical and biological criteria. This document consists of descriptions of the climate, geomorphology,...

Development and testing of method for assessing and mapping agricultural areas susceptible to atrazine leaching in the state of Washington

USGS Publications Warehouse

Voss, Frank D.

2003-01-01

In a joint effort by the Washington State Department of Agriculture, the Washington Department of Ecology, and the U.S. Geological Survey, the Environmental Protection Agency's Pesticide Root Zone Model and a Geographic Information System were used to develop and test a method for screening and mapping the susceptibility of ground water in agricultural areas to pesticide contamination. The objective was to produce a map that would be used by the Washington State Department of Agriculture to allocate resources for monitoring pesticide levels in ground water. The method was tested by producing a map showing susceptibility to leaching of the pesticide atrazine for the Columbia Basin Irrigation Project, which encompasses an area of intensive agriculture in eastern Washington. The reliability of the atrazine map was assessed by using statistical procedures to determine whether the median of the percentage of atrazine simulated to leach below the root zone in wells where atrazine was detected was statistically greater than the median percentage at wells where atrazine was not detected (at or above 0.001 microgram per liter) in 134 wells sampled by the U.S. Geological Survey. A statistical difference in medians was not found when all 134 wells were compared. However, a statistical difference was found in medians for two subsets of the 134 wells that were used in land-use studies (studies examining the quality of ground water beneath specific crops). The statistical results from wells from the land-use studies indicate that the model potentially can be used to map the relative susceptibility of agricultural areas to atrazine leaching. However, the distinction between areas of high and low susceptibility may not yet be sufficient to use the method for allocating resources to monitor water quality. Several options are offered for improving the reliability of future simulations.

Effective Management of Trans boundary Landscapes - Geospatial Applications

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kotru, R.; Rawal, R. S.; Mathur, P. K.; Chettri, N.; Chaudhari, S. A.; Uddin, K.; Murthy, M. S. R.; Singh, S.

2014-11-01

The Convention on Biological Diversity advocates the use of landscape and ecosystem approaches for managing biodiversity, in recognition of the need for increased regional cooperation. In this context, ICIMOD and regional partners have evolved Transboundary Landscape concept to address the issues of conservation and sustainable use of natural resources and systems (e.g., biodiversity, rangelands, farming systems, forests, wetlands, and watersheds, etc.). This concept defines the landscapes by ecosystems rather than political/administrative boundaries. The Hindu Kush Himalayan (HKH) region is extremely heterogeneous, with complex inter linkages of biomes and habitats as well as strong upstream-downstream linkages related to the provisioning of ecosystem services. Seven such transboundary landscapes, identified across west to east extent of HKH, have been considered for programmatic cooperation, include: Wakhan, Karakoram-Pamir, Kailash, Everest, Kangchenjunga, Brahmaputra-Salween, and Cherrapunjee- Chittagong. The approach is people centered and considers the cultural conservation as an essential first step towards resource conservation efforts in the region. Considering the multi-scale requirements of study, the geospatial technology has been effectively adopted towards: (i) understanding temporal changes in landscapes, (ii) long term ecological and social monitoring, (ii) identifying potential bio corridors, (iii) assessing landscape level vulnerability due to climatic and non-climatic drivers, and (iv) developing local plans on extractions of high value economic species supporting livelihoods, agroforestry system and ecotourism, etc. We present here our recent experiences across different landscapes on assessment of three decadal changes, vegetation type mapping, assessment of socio-ecological drivers, corridor assessment, ecosystem services assessment, models for optimal natural resource use systems and long term socio-ecological monitoring.

The Stranding Anomaly as Population Indicator: The Case of Harbour Porpoise Phocoena phocoena in North-Western Europe

PubMed Central

Peltier, Helene; Baagøe, Hans J.; Camphuysen, Kees C. J.; Czeck, Richard; Dabin, Willy; Daniel, Pierre; Deaville, Rob; Haelters, Jan; Jauniaux, Thierry; Jensen, Lasse F.; Jepson, Paul D.; Keijl, Guido O.; Siebert, Ursula; Van Canneyt, Olivier; Ridoux, Vincent

2013-01-01

Ecological indicators for monitoring strategies are expected to combine three major characteristics: ecological significance, statistical credibility, and cost-effectiveness. Strategies based on stranding networks rank highly in cost-effectiveness, but their ecological significance and statistical credibility are disputed. Our present goal is to improve the value of stranding data as population indicator as part of monitoring strategies by constructing the spatial and temporal null hypothesis for strandings. The null hypothesis is defined as: small cetacean distribution and mortality are uniform in space and constant in time. We used a drift model to map stranding probabilities and predict stranding patterns of cetacean carcasses under H0 across the North Sea, the Channel and the Bay of Biscay, for the period 1990–2009. As the most common cetacean occurring in this area, we chose the harbour porpoise Phocoena phocoena for our modelling. The difference between these strandings expected under H0 and observed strandings is defined as the stranding anomaly. It constituted the stranding data series corrected for drift conditions. Seasonal decomposition of stranding anomaly suggested that drift conditions did not explain observed seasonal variations of porpoise strandings. Long-term stranding anomalies increased first in the southern North Sea, the Channel and Bay of Biscay coasts, and finally the eastern North Sea. The hypothesis of changes in porpoise distribution was consistent with local visual surveys, mostly SCANS surveys (1994 and 2005). This new indicator could be applied to cetacean populations across the world and more widely to marine megafauna. PMID:23614031

High Resolution Mapping of Drought Impacts on Small Waterbodies using Sentinel 1 SAR and Landsat Observations

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Slinski, K.; Hogue, T. S.; McCray, J. E.

2017-12-01

Drought in semi-arid areas can have substantial impact on ephemeral and small water bodies, which provide critical ecological habitat and have important socio-economic value. This is particularly true in the pastoral areas of East Africa, where these ecosystems provide local communities with water for human and animal consumption and pasture for livestock. However, monitoring the impact of drought on ephemeral and small water bodies in East Africa is challenging because of sparse in situ observational systems. Satellite remote sensing observations have been shown to be a viable option for monitoring surface water change in data-poor regions. Landsat data is widely used to detect open water, but the use of Landsat data in small waterbody studies is limited by its 30-meter spatial resolution. New remote sensing-based tools are necessary to better understand the vulnerability of ephemeral and small waterbodies in semi-arid areas to drought and to monitor drought impacts. This study combines Landsat and Sentinel 1 SAR observations to create a series of monthly waterbody maps over the Awash River basin in Ethiopia depicting the change in surface water from October 2014 to March 2017. The study time period corresponds with a major drought event in the area. Waterbody maps were generated using a 10-meter resolution and utilized to monitor drought impacts on ephemeral and small waterbodies in the Awash River basin over the course of the drought event. Initial results show that surface waterbodies in the lower catchments of the Awash basin were more severely impacted by the drought event than the upper catchments. It is anticipated that the new information provided by this tool will inform decisions affecting the water, energy, agriculture and other sectors in East Africa reliant on water resources, enabling water authorities to better manage future drought events.

Monitoring for conservation

USGS Publications Warehouse

Nichols, J.D.; Williams, B.K.

2006-01-01

Human-mediated environmental changes have resulted in appropriate concern for the conservation of ecological systems and have led to the development of many ecological monitoring programs worldwide. Many programs that are identified with the purpose of `surveillance? represent an inefficient use of conservation funds and effort. Here, we revisit the 1964 paper by Platt and argue that his recommendations about the conduct of science are equally relevant to the conduct of ecological monitoring programs. In particular, we argue that monitoring should not be viewed as a stand-alone activity, but instead as a component of a larger process of either conservation-oriented science or management. Corresponding changes in monitoring focus and design would lead to substantial increases in the efficiency and usefulness of monitoring results in conservation.

Compilation of 1986 Annual Reports of the Navy ELF (Extremely Low Frequency) Communications System Ecological Monitoring Program. Volume 2. TABS D-G.

DTIC Science & Technology

1987-07-01

8217. -. , i U ELF ECOLOGICAL MONITORING PROGRAM INDEX OF 1986 ANNUAL REPORTS A. Herbaceous Plant Cover and Tree Studies \\ Michigan Technological University...SUBCONTRACT NUMBER EO 6549-84-C-005 LELF Communications System Ecological Monitoring Program BIOLOGICAL STUDIES ON POLLINATING INSECTS: MEGACHILID...such as those in the vicinity of the ELF antenna because they are pollinators of flowering plants , and are therefore important to the reproductive

Software for marine ecological environment comprehensive monitoring system based on MCGS

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wang, X. H.; Ma, R.; Cao, X.; Cao, L.; Chu, D. Z.; Zhang, L.; Zhang, T. P.

2017-08-01

The automatic integrated monitoring software for marine ecological environment based on MCGS configuration software is designed and developed to realize real-time automatic monitoring of many marine ecological parameters. The DTU data transmission terminal performs network communication and transmits the data to the user data center in a timely manner. The software adopts the modular design and has the advantages of stable and flexible data structure, strong portability and scalability, clear interface, simple user operation and convenient maintenance. Continuous site comparison test of 6 months showed that, the relative error of the parameters monitored by the system such as temperature, salinity, turbidity, pH, dissolved oxygen was controlled within 5% with the standard method and the relative error of the nutrient parameters was within 15%. Meanwhile, the system had few maintenance times, low failure rate, stable and efficient continuous monitoring capabilities. The field application shows that the software is stable and the data communication is reliable, and it has a good application prospect in the field of marine ecological environment comprehensive monitoring.

Respirable particulate monitoring with remote sensors. (Public health ecology: Air pollution)

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Severs, R. K.

1974-01-01

The feasibility of monitoring atmospheric aerosols in the respirable range from air or space platforms was studied. Secondary reflectance targets were located in the industrial area and near Galveston Bay. Multichannel remote sensor data were utilized to calculate the aerosol extinction coefficient and thus determine the aerosol size distribution. Houston Texas air sampling network high volume data were utilized to generate computer isopleth maps of suspended particulates and to establish the mass loading of the atmosphere. In addition, a five channel nephelometer and a multistage particulate air sampler were used to collect data. The extinction coefficient determined from remote sensor data proved more representative of wide areal phenomena than that calculated from on site measurements. It was also demonstrated that a significant reduction in the standard deviation of the extinction coefficient could be achieved by reducing the bandwidths used in remote sensor.

Estimating and mapping ecological processes influencing microbial community assembly

PubMed Central

Stegen, James C.; Lin, Xueju; Fredrickson, Jim K.; Konopka, Allan E.

2015-01-01

Ecological community assembly is governed by a combination of (i) selection resulting from among-taxa differences in performance; (ii) dispersal resulting from organismal movement; and (iii) ecological drift resulting from stochastic changes in population sizes. The relative importance and nature of these processes can vary across environments. Selection can be homogeneous or variable, and while dispersal is a rate, we conceptualize extreme dispersal rates as two categories; dispersal limitation results from limited exchange of organisms among communities, and homogenizing dispersal results from high levels of organism exchange. To estimate the influence and spatial variation of each process we extend a recently developed statistical framework, use a simulation model to evaluate the accuracy of the extended framework, and use the framework to examine subsurface microbial communities over two geologic formations. For each subsurface community we estimate the degree to which it is influenced by homogeneous selection, variable selection, dispersal limitation, and homogenizing dispersal. Our analyses revealed that the relative influences of these ecological processes vary substantially across communities even within a geologic formation. We further identify environmental and spatial features associated with each ecological process, which allowed mapping of spatial variation in ecological-process-influences. The resulting maps provide a new lens through which ecological systems can be understood; in the subsurface system investigated here they revealed that the influence of variable selection was associated with the rate at which redox conditions change with subsurface depth. PMID:25983725

Geographical information systems as a tool for monitoring tobacco industry advertising.

PubMed

Vardavas, C I; Connolly, G N; Kafatos, A G

2009-06-01

Although the use of a geographical information systems (GIS) approach is usually applied to epidemiological disease outbreaks and environmental exposure mapping, it has significant potential as a tobacco control research tool in monitoring point-of-purchase (POP) tobacco advertising. An ecological study design approach was applied so as to primarily evaluate and interpret the spatial density and intensity of POP and tobacco industry advertisements within <300 m to high schools in Greece with the application of GIS methodology combining mapping, photographing and global positioning data. The GIS approach identified 133 POP and 44 billboards within 300 m of the school gates of Heraklion schools. On average 13 POP (range 4-21) and 4.4 billboards (range 1-9) were located per school, and all had at least 1 POP within 20 m of the school gate. On average (SD) 9 (6) tobacco advertisements per POP (range 0-25) were noted, and 80% of them were below child height. The GIS protocol identified that kiosks, that were excepted from the Greek ban on tobacco advertising, in comparison to other POP, were found not only to be closer and visible from the school gates (44.1% vs 10.8%, p<0.001) but were also found to have more external advertisements (8 (5) vs 5 (3), p<0.001). This study demonstrates the effectiveness of a GIS system in monitoring tobacco industry advertising on a large population-based scale and implies its use as a standardised method for monitoring tobacco industry strategies and tobacco control efforts.

Making sense of human ecology mapping: an overview of approaches to integrating socio-spatial data into environmental planning

Treesearch

Rebecca McLain; Melissa R. Poe; Kelly Biedenweg; Lee K. Cerveny; Diane Besser; Dale J. Blahna

2013-01-01

Ecosystem-based planning and management have stimulated the need to gather sociocultural values and human uses of land in formats accessible to diverse planners and researchers. Human Ecology Mapping (HEM) approaches offer promising spatial data gathering and analytical tools, while also addressing important questions about human-landscape connections. This article...

Metabolite profiling of fish skin mucus: a novel approach for minimally-invasive environmental exposure monitoring and surveillance

EPA Science Inventory

The application of 'omics tools to biologically based monitoring and surveillance of aquatic environments shows considerable promise for complementing chemical monitoring in ecological risk assessments. However, few of the current approaches offer the ability to sample ecological...

Multi-scale ecosystem monitoring: an application of scaling data to answer multiple ecological questions

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

Background/Question/Methods Standardized monitoring data collection efforts using a probabilistic sample design, such as in the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) Assessment, Inventory, and Monitoring (AIM) Strategy, provide a core suite of ecological indicators, maximize data collection efficiency,...

Monitoring Ecological Resources within U.S. National Parks: Developing "Vital Signs" of Ecological Integrity for the Northeast Temperate Network

Treesearch

Don Faber-Langendoen; Geraldine Tierney; James Gibbs; Greg Shriver; Fred Dieffenbach; Pam Lombard

2006-01-01

The National Park Service (NPS) initiated a new “Vital Signs” program in 1998 to develop comprehensive, long-term monitoring of ecological resources within U.S. national parks. Vital signs (VS) are indicators, and are defined as key elements, processes or features of the environment that can be measured or estimated and that indicate the ecological integrity of an...

Compilation of 1987 Annual Reports of the Navy ELF (Extremely Low Frequency) Communications System Ecological Monitoring Program. Volume 2

DTIC Science & Technology

1988-08-01

such as those in the vicinity of the ELF antenna because they are pollinators of flowering plants , and are therefore important to the reproductive...COPY r- Compilation of 1987 Annual Reports o of the Navy ELF Communications System C4 Ecological Monitoring Program Volume 2 of 3 Volumes: TABS D -G...Security Classification) Compilation of 1987 Annual Reports of the Navy ELF Communications System Ecological Monitoring Program (Volume 2 of 3 Volumes

The role of ecological monitoring in managing wilderness

Treesearch

Peter B. Landres

1995-01-01

Good management requires good information. Monitoring provides this information when it is structured into the process of management, well designed and executed. As federal and state agencies strive to implement a management paradigm based on sustaining ecosystems, ecological information becomes a vital part of managing natural resources. Inventory and monitoring...

Toward best practices for developing regional connectivity maps.

PubMed

Beier, Paul; Spencer, Wayne; Baldwin, Robert F; McRae, Brad H

2011-10-01

To conserve ecological connectivity (the ability to support animal movement, gene flow, range shifts, and other ecological and evolutionary processes that require large areas), conservation professionals need coarse-grained maps to serve as decision-support tools or vision statements and fine-grained maps to prescribe site-specific interventions. To date, research has focused primarily on fine-grained maps (linkage designs) covering small areas. In contrast, we devised 7 steps to coarsely map dozens to hundreds of linkages over a large area, such as a nation, province, or ecoregion. We provide recommendations on how to perform each step on the basis of our experiences with 6 projects: California Missing Linkages (2001), Arizona Wildlife Linkage Assessment (2006), California Essential Habitat Connectivity (2010), Two Countries, One Forest (northeastern United States and southeastern Canada) (2010), Washington State Connected Landscapes (2010), and the Bhutan Biological Corridor Complex (2010). The 2 most difficult steps are mapping natural landscape blocks (areas whose conservation value derives from the species and ecological processes within them) and determining which pairs of blocks can feasibly be connected in a way that promotes conservation. Decision rules for mapping natural landscape blocks and determining which pairs of blocks to connect must reflect not only technical criteria, but also the values and priorities of stakeholders. We recommend blocks be mapped on the basis of a combination of naturalness, protection status, linear barriers, and habitat quality for selected species. We describe manual and automated procedures to identify currently functioning or restorable linkages. Once pairs of blocks have been identified, linkage polygons can be mapped by least-cost modeling, other approaches from graph theory, or individual-based movement models. The approaches we outline make assumptions explicit, have outputs that can be improved as underlying data are improved, and help implementers focus strictly on ecological connectivity. ©2011 Society for Conservation Biology.

Monitoring Corals and Submerged Aquatic Vegetation in Western Pacific Using Satellite Remote Sensing Integrated with Field Data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Roelfsema, C. M.; Phinn, S. R.; Lyons, M. B.; Kovacs, E.; Saunders, M. I.; Leon, J. X.

2013-12-01

Corals and Submerged Aquatic Vegetation (SAV) are typically found in highly dynamic environments where the magnitude and types of physical and biological processes controlling their distribution, diversity and function changes dramatically. Recent advances in the types of satellite image data and the length of their archives that are available globally, coupled with new techniques for extracting environmental information from these data sets has enabled significant advances to be made in our ability to map and monitor coral and SAV environments. Object Based Image Analysis techniques are one of the most significant advances in information extraction techniques for processing images to deliver environmental information at multiple spatial scales. This poster demonstrates OBIA applied to high spatial resolution satellite image data to map and monitor coral and SAV communities across a variety of environments in the Western Pacific that vary in their extent, biological composition, forcing physical factors and location. High spatial resolution satellite imagery (Quickbird, Ikonos and Worldview2) were acquired coincident with field surveys on each reef to collect georeferenced benthic photo transects, over various areas in the Western Pacific. Base line maps were created, from Roviana Lagoon Solomon island (600 km2), Bikini Atoll Marshall Island (800 Km2), Lizard Island, Australia (30 km2) and time series maps for geomorphic and benthic communities were collected for Heron Reef, Australia (24 km2) and Eastern Banks area of Moreton Bay, Australia (200 km2). The satellite image data were corrected for radiometric and atmospheric distortions to at-surface reflectance. Georeferenced benthic photos were acquired by divers or Autonomous Underwater Vehicles, analysed for benthic cover composition, and used for calibration and validation purposes. Hierarchical mapping from: reef/non-reef (1000's - 10000's m); reef type (100's - 1000's m); 'geomorphic zone' (10's - 100's m); to dominant components of benthic cover compositions (1 - 10's m); and individual benthic cover type scale (0.5-5.0's m), was completed using object based segmentation and semi-automated labelling through membership rules. Accuracy assessment of the satellite image based maps and field data sets scales maps produced with 90% maximum accuracy larger scales and less complex maps, versus 40 % at smaller scale and complex maps. The study showed that current data sets and object based analysis are able to reliable map at various scales and level of complexity covering a variety of extent and environments at various times; as a result science and management can use these tools to assess and understand the ecological processes taking place in coral and SAV environments.

The Ecological Life Zones of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands

Treesearch

J.J. Ewel; J.L. Whitmore

1973-01-01

Most of the neotropical nations except Mexico and Brazil are mapped according to the Moldridge system of ecological life zones. In order to have comparability with these areas, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands were mapped and a discussion and a description of each life zone were written. The manuscript in English offers water balances, a description of the...

A strategy for maximizing native plant material diversity for ecological restoration, germplasm conservation and genecology research

Treesearch

Berta Youtie; Nancy Shaw; Matt Fisk; Scott Jensen

2012-01-01

One of the most important steps in planning a restoration project is careful selection of ecologically adapted native plant material. As species-specific seed zone maps are not available for most species in the Artemisia tridentata ssp. wyomingensis (Wyoming big sagebrush) ecoregion in the Great Basin, USA, we are employing a provisional seed zone map based on annual...

Detecting spatial regimes in ecosystems | Science Inventory ...

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Research on early warning indicators has generally focused on assessing temporal transitions with limited application of these methods to detecting spatial regimes. Traditional spatial boundary detection procedures that result in ecoregion maps are typically based on ecological potential (i.e. potential vegetation), and often fail to account for ongoing changes due to stressors such as land use change and climate change and their effects on plant and animal communities. We use Fisher information, an information theory based method, on both terrestrial and aquatic animal data (US Breeding Bird Survey and marine zooplankton) to identify ecological boundaries, and compare our results to traditional early warning indicators, conventional ecoregion maps, and multivariate analysis such as nMDS (non-metric Multidimensional Scaling) and cluster analysis. We successfully detect spatial regimes and transitions in both terrestrial and aquatic systems using Fisher information. Furthermore, Fisher information provided explicit spatial information about community change that is absent from other multivariate approaches. Our results suggest that defining spatial regimes based on animal communities may better reflect ecological reality than do traditional ecoregion maps, especially in our current era of rapid and unpredictable ecological change. Use an information theory based method to identify ecological boundaries and compare our results to traditional early warning

An automated approach to mapping ecological sites using hyper-temporal remote sensing and SVM classification

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

The development of ecological sites as management units has emerged as a highly effective land management framework, but its utility has been limited by spatial ambiguity of ecological site locations in the U.S., lack of ecological site concepts in many other parts of the world, and the inability to...

Quantifying Landscape Spatial Pattern: What Is the State of the Art?

Treesearch

Eric J. Gustafson

1998-01-01

Landscape ecology is based on the premise that there are strong links between ecological pattern and ecological function and process. Ecological systems are spatially heterogeneous, exhibiting consid-erable complexity and variability in time and space. This variability is typically represented by categorical maps or by a collection of samples taken at specific spatial...

Mapping risk of Nipah virus transmission across Asia and across Bangladesh.

PubMed

Peterson, A Townsend

2015-03-01

Nipah virus is a highly pathogenic but poorly known paramyxovirus from South and Southeast Asia. In spite of the risks that it poses to human health, the geography and ecology of its occurrence remain little understood-the virus is basically known from Bangladesh and peninsular Malaysia, and little in between. In this contribution, I use documented occurrences of the virus to develop ecological niche-based maps summarizing its likely broader occurrence-although rangewide maps could not be developed that had significant predictive abilities, reflecting minimal sample sizes available, maps within Bangladesh were quite successful in identifying areas in which the virus is predictably present and likely transmitted. © 2013 APJPH.

Estimating and mapping ecological processes influencing microbial community assembly

DOE PAGES

Stegen, James C.; Lin, Xueju; Fredrickson, Jim K.; ...

2015-05-01

Ecological community assembly is governed by a combination of (i) selection resulting from among-taxa differences in performance; (ii) dispersal resulting from organismal movement; and (iii) ecological drift resulting from stochastic changes in population sizes. The relative importance and nature of these processes can vary across environments. Selection can be homogeneous or variable, and while dispersal is a rate, we conceptualize extreme dispersal rates as two categories; dispersal limitation results from limited exchange of organisms among communities, and homogenizing dispersal results from high levels of organism exchange. To estimate the influence and spatial variation of each process we extend a recentlymore » developed statistical framework, use a simulation model to evaluate the accuracy of the extended framework, and use the framework to examine subsurface microbial communities over two geologic formations. For each subsurface community we estimate the degree to which it is influenced by homogeneous selection, variable selection, dispersal limitation, and homogenizing dispersal. Our analyses revealed that the relative influences of these ecological processes vary substantially across communities even within a geologic formation. We further identify environmental and spatial features associated with each ecological process, which allowed mapping of spatial variation in ecological-process-influences. The resulting maps provide a new lens through which ecological systems can be understood; in the subsurface system investigated here they revealed that the influence of variable selection was associated with the rate at which redox conditions change with subsurface depth.« less

Landscape scale ecological monitoring as part of an EIA of major construction activities: experience at the Turkish section of the BTC crude oil pipeline project.

PubMed

Sahin, Sükran; Kurum, Ekrem

2009-09-01

Ecological monitoring is a complementary component of the overall environmental management and monitoring program of any Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report. The monitoring method should be developed for each project phase and allow for periodic reporting and assessment of compliance with the environmental conditions and requirements of the EIA. Also, this method should incorporate a variance request program since site-specific conditions can affect construction on a daily basis and require time-critical application of alternative construction scenarios or environmental management methods integrated with alternative mitigation measures. Finally, taking full advantage of the latest information and communication technologies can enhance the quality of, and public involvement in, the environmental management program. In this paper, a landscape-scale ecological monitoring method for major construction projects is described using, as a basis, 20 months of experience on the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) Crude Oil Pipeline Project, covering Turkish Sections Lot B and Lot C. This analysis presents suggestions for improving ecological monitoring for major construction activities.

Ecoregions of California

USGS Publications Warehouse

Griffith, Glenn E.; Omernik, James M.; Smith, David W.; Cook, Terry D.; Tallyn, Ed; Moseley, Kendra; Johnson, Colleen B.

2016-02-23

Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. By recognizing the spatial differences in the capacities and potentials of ecosystems, ecoregions stratify the environment by its probable response to disturbance (Bryce and others, 1999). These general purpose regions are critical for structuring and implementing ecosystem management strategies across Federal agencies, State agencies, and nongovernment organizations that are responsible for different types of resources in the same geographical areas (Omernik and others, 2000).The approach used to compile this map is based on the premise that ecological regions are hierarchical and can be identified through the analysis of the spatial patterns and the composition of biotic and abiotic phenomena that affect or reflect differences in ecosystem quality and integrity (Wiken, 1986; Omernik, 1987, 1995). These phenomena include geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another regardless of the hierarchical level. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels of ecological regions. Level I is the coarsest level, dividing North America into 15 ecological regions. Level II divides the continent into 50 regions (Commission for Environmental Cooperation Working Group, 1997, map revised 2006). At level III, the continental United States contains 105 ecoregions and the conterminous United States has 85 ecoregions (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2013). Level IV, depicted here for California, is a further refinement of level III ecoregions. Explanations of the methods used to define these ecoregions are given in Omernik (1995), Omernik and others (2000), and Omernik and Griffith (2014).California has great ecological and biological diversity. The State contains offshore islands and coastal lowlands, large alluvial valleys, forested mountain ranges, deserts, and various aquatic habitats. There are 13 level III ecoregions and 177 level IV ecoregions in California and most continue into ecologically similar parts of adjacent States of the United States or Mexico (Bryce and others, 2003; Thorson and others, 2003; Griffith and others, 2014).The California ecoregion map was compiled at a scale of 1:250,000. It revises and subdivides an earlier national ecoregion map that was originally compiled at a smaller scale (Omernik, 1987; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2013). This poster is the result of a collaborative project primarily between U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) Region IX, USEPA National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory (Corvallis, Oregon), California Department of Fish and Wildlife (DFW), U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)–Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), U.S. Department of the Interior–Geological Survey (USGS), and other State of California agencies and universities.The project is associated with interagency efforts to develop a common framework of ecological regions (McMahon and others, 2001). Reaching that objective requires recognition of the differences in the conceptual approaches and mapping methodologies applied to develop the most common ecoregion-type frameworks, including those developed by the USDA–Forest Service (Bailey and others, 1994; Miles and Goudy, 1997; Cleland and others, 2007), the USEPA (Omernik 1987, 1995), and the NRCS (U.S. Department of Agriculture–Soil Conservation Service, 1981; U.S. Department of Agriculture–Natural Resources Conservation Service, 2006). As each of these frameworks is further refined, their differences are becoming less discernible. Regional collaborative projects such as this one in California, where some agreement has been reached among multiple resource-management agencies, are a step toward attaining consensus and consistency in ecoregion frameworks for the entire nation.

Terrestrial Ecology Guide.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Morrison, James W., Ed.; Hall, James A., Ed.

This collection of study units focuses on the study of the ecology of land habitats. Considered are such topics as map reading, field techniques, forest ecosystem, birds, insects, small mammals, soils, plant ecology, preparation of terrariums, air pollution, photography, and essentials of an environmental studies program. Each unit contains…

Detecting the changes in rural communities in Taiwan by applying multiphase segmentation on FORMOSA-2 satellite imagery

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Huang, Yishuo

2015-09-01

Agricultural activities mainly occur in rural areas; recently, ecological conservation and biological diversity are being emphasized in rural communities to promote sustainable development for rural communities, especially for rural communities in Taiwan. Therefore, since 2005, many rural communities in Taiwan have compiled their own development strategies in order to create their own unique characteristics to attract people to visit and stay in rural communities. By implementing these strategies, young people can stay in their own rural communities and the rural communities are rejuvenated. However, some rural communities introduce artificial construction into the community such that the ecological and biological environments are significantly degraded. The strategies need to be efficiently monitored because up to 67 rural communities have proposed rejuvenation projects. In 2015, up to 440 rural communities were estimated to be involved in rural community rejuvenations. How to monitor the changes occurring in those rural communities participating in rural community rejuvenation such that ecological conservation and ecological diversity can be satisfied is an important issue in rural community management. Remote sensing provides an efficient and rapid method to achieve this issue. Segmentation plays a fundamental role in human perception. In this respect, segmentation can be used as the process of transforming the collection of pixels of an image into a group of regions or objects with meaning. This paper proposed an algorithm based on the multiphase approach to segment the normalized difference vegetation index, NDVI, of the rural communities into several sub-regions, and to have the NDVI distribution in each sub-region be homogeneous. Those regions whose values of NDVI are close will be merged into the same class. In doing so, a complex NDVI map can be simplified into two groups: the high and low values of NDVI. The class with low NDVI values corresponds to those regions containing roads, buildings, and other manmade construction works and the class with high values of NDVI indicates that those regions contain vegetation in good health. In order to verify the processed results, the regional boundaries were extracted and laid down on the given images to check whether the extracted boundaries were laid down on buildings, roads, or other artificial constructions. In addition to the proposed approach, another approach called statistical region merging was employed by grouping sets of pixels with homogeneous properties such that those sets are iteratively grown by combining smaller regions or pixels. In doing so, the segmented NDVI map can be generated. By comparing the areas of the merged classes in different years, the changes occurring in the rural communities of Taiwan can be detected. The satellite imagery of FORMOSA-2 with 2-m ground resolution is employed to evaluate the performance of the proposed approach. The satellite imagery of two rural communities (Jhumen and Taomi communities) is chosen to evaluate environmental changes between 2005 and 2010. The change maps of 2005-2010 show that a high density of green on a patch of land is increased by 19.62 ha in Jhumen community and conversely a similar patch of land is significantly decreased by 236.59 ha in Taomi community. Furthermore, the change maps created by another image segmentation method called statistical region merging generate similar processed results to multiphase segmentation.

Geographic analysis of shigellosis in Vietnam.

PubMed

Kim, Deok Ryun; Ali, Mohammad; Thiem, Vu Dinh; Park, Jin-Kyung; von Seidlein, Lorenz; Clemens, John

2008-12-01

Geographic and ecological analysis may provide investigators useful ecological information for the control of shigellosis. This paper provides distribution of individual Shigella species in space, and ecological covariates for shigellosis in Nha Trang, Vietnam. Data on shigellosis in neighborhoods were used to identify ecological covariates. A Bayesian hierarchical model was used to obtain joint posterior distribution of model parameters and to construct smoothed risk maps for shigellosis. Neighborhoods with a high proportion of worshippers of traditional religion, close proximity to hospital, or close proximity to the river had increased risk for shigellosis. The ecological covariates associated with Shigella flexneri differed from the covariates for Shigella sonnei. In contrast the spatial distribution of the two species was similar. The disease maps can help identify high-risk areas of shigellosis that can be targeted for interventions. This approach may be useful for the selection of populations and the analysis of vaccine trials.

Compilation of 1989 annual reports of the Navy ELF Communications System Ecological Monitoring Program. Volume 2. tabs C-F. Annual progress report, Jan-Dec 89

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Not Available

1990-08-01

This is the eighth compilation of annual reports for the Navy's ELF Communications Systems Ecological Monitoring Program. The reports document the progress of eight studies performed during 1989 near the Naval Radio Transmitting Facility -- Republic, Michigan. The purpose of the monitoring is to determine whether electromagnetic fields produced by the ELF Communications System will affect resident biota or their ecological relationships. Soil Amoeba: Arthropoda and Earthworms: Pollinating Insects: Small Mammals and Nesting Birds.

Rift Valley Fever Prediction and Risk Mapping: 2014-2015 Season

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Anyamba, Assaf

2015-01-01

Extremes in either direction (+-) of precipitation temperature have significant implications for disease vectors and pathogen emergence and spread Magnitude of ENSO influence on precipitation temperature cannot be currently predicted rely on average history and patterns. Timing of event and emergence disease can be exploited (GAP) in to undertake vector control and preparedness measures. Currently - no risk for ecologically-coupled RVFV activity however we need to be vigilant during the coming fall season due the ongoing buildup of energy in the central Pacific Ocean. Potential for the dual-use of the RVF Monitor system for other VBDs Need to invest in early ground surveillance and the use of rapid field diagnostic capabilities for vector identification and virus isolation.

Extracting distribution and expansion of rubber plantations from Landsat imagery using the C5.0 decision tree method

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sun, Zhongchang; Leinenkugel, Patrick; Guo, Huadong; Huang, Chong; Kuenzer, Claudia

2017-04-01

Natural tropical rainforests in China's Xishuangbanna region have undergone dramatic conversion to rubber plantations in recent decades, resulting in altering the region's environment and ecological systems. Therefore, it is of great importance for local environmental and ecological protection agencies to research the distribution and expansion of rubber plantations. The objective of this paper is to monitor dynamic changes of rubber plantations in China's Xishuangbanna region based on multitemporal Landsat images (acquired in 1989, 2000, and 2013) using a C5.0-based decision-tree method. A practical and semiautomatic data processing procedure for mapping rubber plantations was proposed. Especially, haze removal and deshadowing were proposed to perform atmospheric and topographic correction and reduce the effects of haze, shadow, and terrain. Our results showed that the atmospheric and topographic correction could improve the extraction accuracy of rubber plantations, especially in mountainous areas. The overall classification accuracies were 84.2%, 83.9%, and 86.5% for the Landsat images acquired in 1989, 2000, and 2013, respectively. This study also found that the Landsat-8 images could provide significant improvement in the ability to identify rubber plantations. The extracted maps showed the selected study area underwent rapid conversion of natural and seminatural forest to a rubber plantations from 1989 to 2013. The rubber plantation area increased from 2.8% in 1989 to 17.8% in 2013, while the forest/woodland area decreased from 75.6% in 1989 to 44.8% in 2013. The proposed data processing procedure is a promising approach to mapping the spatial distribution and temporal dynamics of rubber plantations on a regional scale.

Avalanche ecology and large magnitude avalanche events: Glacier National Park, Montana, USA

USGS Publications Warehouse

Fagre, Daniel B.; Peitzsch, Erich H.

2010-01-01

Large magnitude snow avalanches play an important role ecologically in terms of wildlife habitat, vegetation diversity, and sediment transport within a watershed. Ecological effects from these infrequent avalanches can last for decades. Understanding the frequency of such large magnitude avalanches is also critical to avalanche forecasting for the Going-to-the-Sun Road (GTSR). In January 2009, a large magnitude avalanche cycle occurred in and around Glacier National Park, Montana. The study site is the Little Granite avalanche path located along the GTSR. The study is designed to quantify change in vegetative cover immediately after a large magnitude event and document ecological response over a multi-year period. GPS field mapping was completed to determine the redefined perimeter of the avalanche path. Vegetation was inventoried using modified U.S. Forest Service Forest Inventory and Analysis plots, cross sections were taken from over 100 dead trees throughout the avalanche path, and an avalanche chronology was developed. Initial results indicate that the perimeter of this path was expanded by 30%. The avalanche travelled approximately 1200 vertical meters and 3 linear kilometers. Stands of large conifers as old as 150 years were decimated by the avalanche, causing a shift in dominant vegetation types in many parts of the avalanche path. Woody debris is a major ground cover up to 3 m in depth on lower portions of the avalanche path and will likely affect tree regrowth. Monitoring and measuring the post-avalanche vegetation recovery of this particular avalanche path provides a unique dataset for determining the ecological role of avalanches in mountain landscapes.

U.S. Geological Survey shrub/grass products provide new approach to shrubland monitoring

USGS Publications Warehouse

Young, Steven M.

2017-12-11

In the Western United States, shrubland ecosystems provide vital ecological, hydrological, biological, agricultural, and recreational services. However, disturbances such as livestock grazing, exotic species invasion, conversion to agriculture, climate change, urban expansion, and energy development are altering these ecosystems.Improving our understanding of how shrublands are distributed, where they are changing, the extent of the historical change, and likely future change directions is critical for successful management of these ecosystems. Remote-sensing technologies provide the most likely data source for large-area monitoring of ecosystem disturbance—both near-real time and historically. A monitoring framework supported by remote-sensing data can offer efficient and accurate analysis of change across a range of spatial and temporal scales.The U.S. Geological Survey has been working to develop new remote-sensing data, tools, and products to characterize and monitor these changing shrubland landscapes. Nine individual map products (components) have been developed that quantify the percent of shrub, sagebrush, big sagebrush, herbaceous, annual herbaceous, litter, bare ground, shrub height, and sagebrush height at 1-percent intervals in each 30-meter grid cell. These component products are designed to be combined and customized to widely support different applications in rangeland monitoring, analysis of wildlife habitat, resource inventory, adaptive management, and environmental review.

Completing the Picture: Importance of Considering Participatory Mapping for REDD+ Measurement, Reporting and Verification (MRV)

PubMed Central

Rafanoharana, Serge; Boissière, Manuel; Wijaya, Arief; Wardhana, Wahyu

2016-01-01

Remote sensing has been widely used for mapping land cover and is considered key to monitoring changes in forest areas in the REDD+ Measurement, Reporting and Verification (MRV) system. But Remote Sensing as a desk study cannot capture the whole picture; it also requires ground checking. Therefore, complementing remote sensing analysis using participatory mapping can help provide information for an initial forest cover assessment, gain better understanding of how local land use might affect changes, and provide a way to engage local communities in REDD+. Our study looked at the potential of participatory mapping in providing complementary information for remotely sensed maps. The research sites were located in different ecological and socio-economic contexts in the provinces of Papua, West Kalimantan and Central Java, Indonesia. Twenty-one maps of land cover and land use were drawn with local community participation during focus group discussions in seven villages. These maps, covering a total of 270,000ha, were used to add information to maps developed using remote sensing, adding 39 land covers to the eight from our initial desk assessment. They also provided additional information on drivers of land use and land cover change, resource areas, territory claims and land status, which we were able to correlate to understand changes in forest cover. Incorporating participatory mapping in the REDD+ MRV protocol would help with initial remotely sensed land classifications, stratify an area for ground checks and measurement plots, and add other valuable social data not visible at the RS scale. Ultimately, it would provide a forum for local communities to discuss REDD+ activities and develop a better understanding of REDD+. PMID:27977685

Construction and Application of Enhanced Remote Sensing Ecological Index

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wang, X.; Liu, C.; Fu, Q.; Yin, B.

2018-04-01

In order to monitor the change of regional ecological environment quality, this paper use MODIS and DMSP / OLS remote sensing data, from the production capacity, external disturbance changes and human socio-economic development of the three main factors affecting the quality of ecosystems, select the net primary productivity, vegetation index and light index, using the principal component analysis method to automatically determine the weight coefficient, construction of the formation of enhanced remote sensing ecological index, and the ecological environment quality of Hainan Island from 2001 to 2013 was monitored and analyzed. The enhanced remote sensing ecological index combines the effects of the natural environment and human activities on ecosystems, and according to the contribution of each principal component automatically determine the weight coefficient, avoid the design of the weight of the parameters caused by the calculation of the human error, which provides a new method for the operational operation of regional macro ecological environment quality monitoring. During the period from 2001 to 2013, the ecological environment quality of Hainan Island showed the characteristics of decend first and then rise, the ecological environment in 2005 was affected by severe natural disasters, and the quality of ecological environment dropped sharply. Compared with 2001, in 2013 about 20000 square kilometers regional ecological environmental quality has improved, about 8760 square kilometers regional ecological environment quality is relatively stable, about 5272 square kilometers regional ecological environment quality has decreased. On the whole, the quality of ecological environment in the study area is good, the frequent occurrence of natural disasters, on the quality of the ecological environment to a certain extent.

Remote Sensing of Vegetation Species Diversity: The Utility of Integrated Airborne Hyperspectral and Lidar Data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Krause, Keith Stuart

The change, reduction, or extinction of species is a major issue currently facing the Earth. Efforts are underway to measure, monitor, and protect habitats that contain high species diversity. Remote sensing technology shows extreme value for monitoring species diversity by mapping ecosystems and using those land cover maps or other derived data as proxies to species number and distribution. The National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) Airborne Observation Platform (AOP) consists of remote sensing instruments such as an imaging spectrometer, a full-waveform lidar, and a high-resolution color camera. AOP collected data over the Ordway-Swisher Biological Station (OSBS) in May 2014. A majority of the OSBS site is covered by the Sandhill ecosystem, which contains a very high diversity of vegetation species and is a native habitat for several threatened fauna species. The research presented here investigates ways to analyze the AOP data to map ecosystems at the OSBS site. The research attempts to leverage the high spatial resolution data and study the variability of the data within a ground plot scale along with integrating data from the different sensors. Mathematical features are derived from the data and brought into a decision tree classification algorithm (rpart), in order to create an ecosystem map for the site. The hyperspectral and lidar features serve as proxies for chemical, functional, and structural differences in the vegetation types for each of the ecosystems. K-folds cross validation shows a training accuracy of 91%, a validation accuracy of 78%, and a 66% accuracy using independent ground validation. The results presented here represent an important contribution to utilizing integrated hyperspectral and lidar remote sensing data for ecosystem mapping, by relating the spatial variability of the data within a ground plot scale to a collection of vegetation types that make up a given ecosystem.

A criteria and indicators monitoring framework for food forestry embedded in the principles of ecological restoration.

PubMed

Park, Hyeone; Higgs, Eric

2018-02-02

Food forestry is a burgeoning practice in North America, representing a strong multifunctional approach that combines agriculture, forestry, and ecological restoration. The Galiano Conservancy Association (GCA), a community conservation, restoration, and educational organization on Galiano Island, British Columbia in Canada, recently has created two food forests on their protected forested lands: one with primarily non-native species and the other comprising native species. These projects, aimed at food production, education, and promotion of local food security and sustainability, are also intended to contribute to the overall ecological integrity of the landscape. Monitoring is essential for assessing how effectively a project is meeting its goal and thus informing its adaptive management. Yet, presently, there are no comprehensive monitoring frameworks for food forestry available. To fill this need, this study developed a generic Criteria and Indicators (C&I) monitoring framework for food forestry, embedded in ecological restoration principles, by employing qualitative content analysis of 61 literature resources and semi-structured interviews with 16 experts in the fields of food forestry and ecological restoration. The generic C&I framework comprises 14 criteria, 39 indicators, and 109 measures and is intended to guide a comprehensive and systematic assessment for food forest projects. The GCA adapted the generic C&I framework to develop a customized monitoring framework. The Galiano C&I monitoring framework has comprehensive suite of monitoring parameters, which are collectively address multiple values and goals.

Monitoring the extent and occurrence of fire in the different veld types of South Africa with particular reference to its ecological role and role in range management

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Edwards, D. (Principal Investigator)

1977-01-01

The author has identified the following significant results. Veld burning was recorded from LANDSAT imagery covering approximately 75 million ha or 62% of the surface of the eastern part of South Africa. All basic data on the location, areas, and numbers of burns for 10 biomes, composed of 67 veld types, are available on 1:250,000 and 1:500,000 map overlays, and are summarized on small scale maps showing fire distribution and amount burned in classes per 15 minute square of latitude and longitude. Veld burning is not randomly distributed, but is almost continuous over a broad belt, widest in the north and narrowing southeastwards, and then southwestwards between the eastern escarpment and the area. It is shown that over almost the whole sea, the overall pattern of veld burning is clearly marked out as early as July in midwinter, subsequent development being merely an intensification of the pattern.

Ground-water vulnerability to nitrate contamination in the mid-atlantic region

USGS Publications Warehouse

Greene, Earl A.; LaMotte, Andrew E.; Cullinan, Kerri-Ann; Smith, Elizabeth R.

2005-01-01

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency?s (USEPA) Regional Vulnerability Assessment (ReVA) Program has developed a set of statistical tools to support regional-scale, integrated ecological risk-assessment studies. One of these tools, developed by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), is used with available water-quality data obtained from USGS National Water-Quality Assessment (NAWQA) and other studies in association with land cover, geology, soils, and other geographic data to develop logistic-regression equations that predict the vulnerability of ground water to nitrate concentrations exceeding specified thresholds in the Mid-Atlantic Region. The models were developed and applied to produce spatial probability maps showing the likelihood of elevated concentrations of nitrate in the region. These maps can be used to identify areas that currently are at risk and help identify areas where ground water has been affected by human activities. This information can be used by regional and local water managers to protect water supplies and identify land-use planning solutions and monitoring programs in these vulnerable areas.

Assessment of habitat representation across a network of marine protected areas with implications for the spatial design of monitoring.

PubMed

Young, Mary; Carr, Mark

2015-01-01

Networks of marine protected areas (MPAs) are being adopted globally to protect ecosystems and supplement fisheries management. The state of California recently implemented a coast-wide network of MPAs, a statewide seafloor mapping program, and ecological characterizations of species and ecosystems targeted for protection by the network. The main goals of this study were to use these data to evaluate how well seafloor features, as proxies for habitats, are represented and replicated across an MPA network and how well ecological surveys representatively sampled fish habitats inside MPAs and adjacent reference sites. Seafloor data were classified into broad substrate categories (rock and sediment) and finer scale geomorphic classifications standard to marine classification schemes using surface analyses (slope, ruggedness, etc.) done on the digital elevation model derived from multibeam bathymetry data. These classifications were then used to evaluate the representation and replication of seafloor structure within the MPAs and across the ecological surveys. Both the broad substrate categories and the finer scale geomorphic features were proportionately represented for many of the classes with deviations of 1-6% and 0-7%, respectively. Within MPAs, however, representation of seafloor features differed markedly from original estimates, with differences ranging up to 28%. Seafloor structure in the biological monitoring design had mismatches between sampling in the MPAs and their corresponding reference sites and some seafloor structure classes were missed entirely. The geomorphic variables derived from multibeam bathymetry data for these analyses are known determinants of the distribution and abundance of marine species and for coastal marine biodiversity. Thus, analyses like those performed in this study can be a valuable initial method of evaluating and predicting the conservation value of MPAs across a regional network.

Assessment of Habitat Representation across a Network of Marine Protected Areas with Implications for the Spatial Design of Monitoring

PubMed Central

Young, Mary; Carr, Mark

2015-01-01

Networks of marine protected areas (MPAs) are being adopted globally to protect ecosystems and supplement fisheries management. The state of California recently implemented a coast-wide network of MPAs, a statewide seafloor mapping program, and ecological characterizations of species and ecosystems targeted for protection by the network. The main goals of this study were to use these data to evaluate how well seafloor features, as proxies for habitats, are represented and replicated across an MPA network and how well ecological surveys representatively sampled fish habitats inside MPAs and adjacent reference sites. Seafloor data were classified into broad substrate categories (rock and sediment) and finer scale geomorphic classifications standard to marine classification schemes using surface analyses (slope, ruggedness, etc.) done on the digital elevation model derived from multibeam bathymetry data. These classifications were then used to evaluate the representation and replication of seafloor structure within the MPAs and across the ecological surveys. Both the broad substrate categories and the finer scale geomorphic features were proportionately represented for many of the classes with deviations of 1-6% and 0-7%, respectively. Within MPAs, however, representation of seafloor features differed markedly from original estimates, with differences ranging up to 28%. Seafloor structure in the biological monitoring design had mismatches between sampling in the MPAs and their corresponding reference sites and some seafloor structure classes were missed entirely. The geomorphic variables derived from multibeam bathymetry data for these analyses are known determinants of the distribution and abundance of marine species and for coastal marine biodiversity. Thus, analyses like those performed in this study can be a valuable initial method of evaluating and predicting the conservation value of MPAs across a regional network. PMID:25760858

Detecting spatial regimes in ecosystems

USGS Publications Warehouse

Sundstrom, Shana M.; Eason, Tarsha; Nelson, R. John; Angeler, David G.; Barichievy, Chris; Garmestani, Ahjond S.; Graham, Nicholas A.J.; Granholm, Dean; Gunderson, Lance; Knutson, Melinda; Nash, Kirsty L.; Spanbauer, Trisha; Stow, Craig A.; Allen, Craig R.

2017-01-01

Research on early warning indicators has generally focused on assessing temporal transitions with limited application of these methods to detecting spatial regimes. Traditional spatial boundary detection procedures that result in ecoregion maps are typically based on ecological potential (i.e. potential vegetation), and often fail to account for ongoing changes due to stressors such as land use change and climate change and their effects on plant and animal communities. We use Fisher information, an information theory-based method, on both terrestrial and aquatic animal data (U.S. Breeding Bird Survey and marine zooplankton) to identify ecological boundaries, and compare our results to traditional early warning indicators, conventional ecoregion maps and multivariate analyses such as nMDS and cluster analysis. We successfully detected spatial regimes and transitions in both terrestrial and aquatic systems using Fisher information. Furthermore, Fisher information provided explicit spatial information about community change that is absent from other multivariate approaches. Our results suggest that defining spatial regimes based on animal communities may better reflect ecological reality than do traditional ecoregion maps, especially in our current era of rapid and unpredictable ecological change.

MAPPING SPATIAL ACCURACY AND ESTIMATING LANDSCAPE INDICATORS FROM THEMATIC LAND COVER MAPS USING FUZZY SET THEORY

EPA Science Inventory

This paper presents a fuzzy set-based method of mapping spatial accuracy of thematic map and computing several ecological indicators while taking into account spatial variation of accuracy associated with different land cover types and other factors (e.g., slope, soil type, etc.)...

[Ecological risk assessment and its management of Bailongjiang watershed, southern Gansu based on landscape pattern].

PubMed

Gong, Jie; Zhao, Cai-Xia; Xie, Yu-Chu; Gao, Yan-Jing

2014-07-01

Watershed ecological risk assessment is an important research subject of watershed ecological protection and environmental management. Research on the ecological risk focuses on addressing the influence of human activities and its spatial variation at watershed scale is vital to policy-making to control the impact of human activity and protocols for sustainable economic and societal development. A comprehensive ecological environment index, incorporating a landscape index and an assessment of ecological vulnerability, was put forward to assess the spatio-temporal characteristics of ecological risk of the Bailongjiang watershed, southern Gansu Province, Northwest China. Using ArcGIS and Fragstats software and a land use map of 2010, an ecological risk map was obtained through spatial sampling and disjunctive Kriging interpolation. The results indicated that there were some obvious spatial differences of ecological risk levels in the watershed. The ecological risk level of the north and northwest of the Bailongjiang was higher than that of the western and southern extremities of the watershed. Ecological risk index (ERI) of Wudu and Tanchang was higher than that of Wenxian and Diebu. Some measures for ecological risk management were put forward on the basis of ERI of Bailongjiang watershed. To strengthen the integrated management of human activities and land use in the watershed, to carry out the vegetation restoration and ecological reconstruction, and to reduce the ecological risks and hazards of irrational human disturbance, are vital to the realization 'multiple-win' of the economic, social and ecological protection and for the sustainable development in the hilly area in southern Gansu.

PROBABILITY SURVEYS , CONDITIONAL PROBABILITIES AND ECOLOGICAL RISK ASSESSMENT

EPA Science Inventory

We show that probability-based environmental resource monitoring programs, such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (U.S. EPA) Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program, and conditional probability analysis can serve as a basis for estimating ecological risk over ...

Using a neural network approach and time series data from an international monitoring station in the Yellow Sea for modeling marine ecosystems.

PubMed

Zhang, Yingying; Wang, Juncheng; Vorontsov, A M; Hou, Guangli; Nikanorova, M N; Wang, Hongliang

2014-01-01

The international marine ecological safety monitoring demonstration station in the Yellow Sea was developed as a collaborative project between China and Russia. It is a nonprofit technical workstation designed as a facility for marine scientific research for public welfare. By undertaking long-term monitoring of the marine environment and automatic data collection, this station will provide valuable information for marine ecological protection and disaster prevention and reduction. The results of some initial research by scientists at the research station into predictive modeling of marine ecological environments and early warning are described in this paper. Marine ecological processes are influenced by many factors including hydrological and meteorological conditions, biological factors, and human activities. Consequently, it is very difficult to incorporate all these influences and their interactions in a deterministic or analysis model. A prediction model integrating a time series prediction approach with neural network nonlinear modeling is proposed for marine ecological parameters. The model explores the natural fluctuations in marine ecological parameters by learning from the latest observed data automatically, and then predicting future values of the parameter. The model is updated in a "rolling" fashion with new observed data from the monitoring station. Prediction experiments results showed that the neural network prediction model based on time series data is effective for marine ecological prediction and can be used for the development of early warning systems.

Using JournalMap to improve ecological knowledge discovery and visualization

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

Background/Question/Methods Most of the ecological research conducted around the world is tied to specific places, however, that location information is locked up in the text and figures of scientific articles in myriad forms that are not easily searchable. While access to ecological literature ha...

LANDSCAPE ECOLOGY APPROACHES FOR DETECTING, MAPPING, AND ASSESSING THE VULNERABILITY OF DEPRESSIONAL WETLANDS

EPA Science Inventory

U.S. EPA is using a landscape ecology approach to assess the ecological/hydrologic functions and related human values of depressional wetlands along coastal Texas, considered to be vulnerable to human disturbance. Many of those wetlands may be at high risk because of recent court...

Systematic Representation of Knowledge of Ecology: Concepts and Relationships.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Garb, Yaakov; And Others

This study describes efforts to apply principles of systematic knowledge representation (concept mapping and computer-based semantic networking techniques) to the domain of ecology. A set of 24 relationships and modifiers is presented that seem sufficient for describing all ecological relationships discussed in an introductory course. Many of…

The Use of Geostatistics in the Study of Floral Phenology of Vulpia geniculata (L.) Link

PubMed Central

León Ruiz, Eduardo J.; García Mozo, Herminia; Domínguez Vilches, Eugenio; Galán, Carmen

2012-01-01

Traditionally phenology studies have been focused on changes through time, but there exist many instances in ecological research where it is necessary to interpolate among spatially stratified samples. The combined use of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and Geostatistics can be an essential tool for spatial analysis in phenological studies. Geostatistics are a family of statistics that describe correlations through space/time and they can be used for both quantifying spatial correlation and interpolating unsampled points. In the present work, estimations based upon Geostatistics and GIS mapping have enabled the construction of spatial models that reflect phenological evolution of Vulpia geniculata (L.) Link throughout the study area during sampling season. Ten sampling points, scattered troughout the city and low mountains in the “Sierra de Córdoba” were chosen to carry out the weekly phenological monitoring during flowering season. The phenological data were interpolated by applying the traditional geostatitical method of Kriging, which was used to ellaborate weekly estimations of V. geniculata phenology in unsampled areas. Finally, the application of Geostatistics and GIS to create phenological maps could be an essential complement in pollen aerobiological studies, given the increased interest in obtaining automatic aerobiological forecasting maps. PMID:22629169

The use of geostatistics in the study of floral phenology of Vulpia geniculata (L.) link.

PubMed

León Ruiz, Eduardo J; García Mozo, Herminia; Domínguez Vilches, Eugenio; Galán, Carmen

2012-01-01

Traditionally phenology studies have been focused on changes through time, but there exist many instances in ecological research where it is necessary to interpolate among spatially stratified samples. The combined use of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and Geostatistics can be an essential tool for spatial analysis in phenological studies. Geostatistics are a family of statistics that describe correlations through space/time and they can be used for both quantifying spatial correlation and interpolating unsampled points. In the present work, estimations based upon Geostatistics and GIS mapping have enabled the construction of spatial models that reflect phenological evolution of Vulpia geniculata (L.) Link throughout the study area during sampling season. Ten sampling points, scattered throughout the city and low mountains in the "Sierra de Córdoba" were chosen to carry out the weekly phenological monitoring during flowering season. The phenological data were interpolated by applying the traditional geostatitical method of Kriging, which was used to elaborate weekly estimations of V. geniculata phenology in unsampled areas. Finally, the application of Geostatistics and GIS to create phenological maps could be an essential complement in pollen aerobiological studies, given the increased interest in obtaining automatic aerobiological forecasting maps.

Skylab and ERTS-1 investigations of coastal land use and water properties. [Delaware Bay

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Klemas, V. (Principal Investigator); Bartlett, D.; Rogers, R.

1974-01-01

The author has identified the following significant results. ERTS-1 multispectral scanner and Skylab's S190A, S190B, and S192 data products were evaluated for their utility in studying current circulation, suspended sediment concentrations and pollution dispersal in Delaware Bay and in mapping coastal vegetation and land use. Imagery from the ERTS-1 MSS, S190A and S190B cameras shows considerable detail in water structure, circulation, suspended sediment distribution and within waste disposal plumes in shelf waters. These data products were also used in differentiating and mapping twelve coastal vegetation and land use classes. The spatial resolution of the S190A multispectral facility appears to be about 30 to 70 meters while that of the S190B earth terrain camera is about 10 to 30 meters. Such resolution, along with good cartographic quality, indicates a considerable potential for mapping coastal land use and monitoring water properties in estuaries and on the continental shelf. The ERTS-1 MSS has a resolution of about 70-100 meters. Moreover, its regular 18-day cycle permits observation of important changes, including the environmental impact of coastal zone development on coastal vegetation and ecology.

Plague: Frequently Asked Questions

MedlinePlus

... visit this page: About CDC.gov . Plague Home Ecology & Transmission Symptoms Diagnosis & Treatment Maps & Statistics Info for ... periods in the fleas. An illustration of plague ecology in the United States is available. Top of ...

[Progress and prospects on evaluation of ecological restoration: a review of the 5th World Conference on Ecological Restoration].

PubMed

Ding, Jing-Yi; Zhao, Wen-Wu

2014-09-01

The 5th World Conference on Ecological Restoration was held in Madison, Wisconsin, USA on October 6-11, 2013. About 1200 delegates from more than 50 countries attended the conference, and discussed the latest developments in different thematic areas of ecological restoration. Discussions on evaluation of ecological restoration were mainly from three aspects: The construction for evaluation indicator system of ecological restoration; the evaluation methods of ecological restoration; monitoring and dynamic evaluation of ecological restoration. The meeting stressed the importance of evaluation in the process of ecological restoration and concerned the challenges in evaluation of ecological restoration. The conference had the following enlightenments for China' s research on evaluation of ecological restoration: 1) Strengthening the construction of comprehensive evaluation indicators system and focusing on the multi-participation in the evaluation process. 2) Paying more attentions on scale effect and scale transformation in the evaluation process of ecological restoration. 3) Expanding the application of 3S technology in assessing the success of ecological restoration and promoting the dynamic monitoring of ecological restoration. 4) Carrying out international exchanges and cooperation actively, and promoting China's international influence in ecological restoration research.

Probability Surveys, Conditional Probability, and Ecological Risk Assessment

EPA Science Inventory

We show that probability-based environmental resource monitoring programs, such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (U.S. EPA) Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program, and conditional probability analysis can serve as a basis for estimating ecological risk over ...

Integrated use of SRS Data &GIS Technique for Monitoring Changes in Riverine Forest of Sindh, Pakistan

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Siddiqui, M.; Ali, Z.

Deforestation / depletion in forest area threaten the sustainability of agricultural production systems and en-danger the economy of the country. Every year extensive areas of arable agricultural and forestlands are degraded and turned into wastelands, due to natural causes or human interventions. There are several causes of deforestation, such as expansion in agricultural area, urban development, forest fires, commercial logging, illicit cutting, grazing, constructions of dams / reservoirs and barrages, com munication links, etc. Depletion in forest cover, therefore, has an important impact on socio - economic development and ecological balance. High population growth rate in Pakistan is one of the main causes for the rapid deterioration of physical environment and natural resource base. In view of this, it is felt necessary to carryout land -u s e studies focusing on strategies for mapping the past and present conditions and extent of forests and rangelands using Satellite Remote Sensing (SRS) data and GIS t echnology. The SRS and GIS technology provides a possible means of monitoring and mapping changes occurring in natural resources and the environment on a continuing basis. The riverine forests of Sindh mostly grow along the River Indus in the flood plains, spread over an area of 241,000 ha are disappearing very rapidly. Construction of dams / barrages on the upper reaches of the River Indus for hydroelectric power and irrigation works have significantly reduced the discharge of fresh water into the lower Indus basin and as a result, 100,000 acres of forests have disappeared. Furthermore, the heavy floods that occurred in 1978, 1988, 1992 and 1997, altered the course of the River Indus in many places, especially in the lower reaches, this has also damaged the riverine forests of Sindh. An integrated approach involving analysis of SRS data from 1977 to 1998 and GIS technique have been used to evaluate the geographic ex-tent and distribution of the riverine forests of Sindh and to monitor temporal changes in the forest cover between 1977 &1990 and 1990 &1998. The integrated landuse forest cover maps of riverine forest, shows temporal changes in the forest cover between 1977 &1990 and 1990 &1998, as well as in the River Indus course. The digital thematic maps based on SRS data and GIS technology can supplement existing conventional ground based sources of information for monitoring changes in forest cover on a regular basis, which can be helpful for forest resource management and planning and monitoring environmental changes.

Marine habitat mapping, classification and monitoring in the coastal North Sea: Scientific vs. stakeholder interests

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hass, H. Christian; Mielck, Finn; Papenmeier, Svenja; Fiorentino, Dario

2016-04-01

Producing detailed maps of the seafloor that include both, water depth and simple textural characteristics has always been a challenge to scientists. In this context, marine habitat maps are an essential tool to comprehend the complexity, the spatial distribution and the ecological status of different seafloor types. The increasing need for more detail demands additional information on the texture of the sediment, bedforms and information on benthic sessile life. For long time, taking samples and videos/photographs followed by interpolation over larger distances was the only feasible way to gain information about sedimentary features such as grain-size distribution and bedforms. While ground truthing is still necessary, swath systems such as multibeam echo sounders (MBES) and sidescan sonars (SSS), as well as single beam acoustic ground discrimination systems (AGDS) became available to map the seafloor area-wide (MBES, SSS), fast and in great detail. Where area-wide measurements are impossible or unavailable point measurements are interpolated, classified and modeled. To keep pace with environmental change in the highly dynamic coastal areas of the North Sea (here: German Bight) monitoring that utilizes all of the mentioned techniques is a necessity. Since monitoring of larger areas is quite expensive, concepts for monitoring strategies were developed in scientific projects such as "WIMO" ("Scientific monitoring concepts for the German Bight, SE North Sea"). While instrumentation becomes better and better and interdisciplinary methods are being developed, the gap between basic scientific interests and stakeholder needs often seem to move in opposite directions. There are two main tendencies: the need to better understand nature systems (for theoretical purposes) and the one to simplify nature (for applied purposes). Science trends to resolve the most detail in highest precision employing soft gradients and/or fuzzy borders instead of crisp demarcations and classifications of habitats wherever this is suitable. At the same time e.g. the European authorities put much effort into the standardization of habitat classifications (e.g. EUNIS) which is essentially a massive reduction of the information content. While standardization is a necessary and important task aiming at aiding e.g. the public authorities in protecting and managing marine habitats, much information is lost on the way without actually knowing its role in explaining the natural system. In this study we show examples from various coastal areas of the North Sea concerning raw data, processed data, interpolated, modeled and classified data. We compare classifications and evaluate the information contents as well as the entropy change across the data processing stages.

[Application of electronic fence technology based on GIS in Oncomelania hupensis snail monitoring].

PubMed

Zhi-Hua, Chen; Yi-Sheng, Zhu; Zhi-Qiang, Xue; Xue-Bing, Li; Yi-Min, Ding; Li-Jun, Bi; Kai-Min, Gao; You, Zhang

2017-07-27

To study the application of Geographic Information System (GIS) electronic fence technique in Oncomelania hupensis snail monitoring. The electronic fence was set around the history and existing snail environments in the electronic map, the information about snail monitoring and controlling was linked to the electronic fence, and the snail monitoring information system was established on these bases. The monitoring information was input through the computer and smart phone. The electronic fence around the history and existing snail environments was set in the electronic map (Baidu map), and the snail monitoring information system and smart phone APP were established. The monitoring information was input and upload real-time, and the snail monitoring information was demonstrated in real time on Baidu map. By using the electronic fence technology based on GIS, the unique "environment electronic archives" for each snail monitoring environment can be established in the electronic map, and real-time, dynamic monitoring and visual management can be realized.

Restoration ecology: The state of an emerging field

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Cairns, J. Jr.; Heckman, J.R.

1996-12-31

The field of restoration ecology represents an emerging synthesis of ecological theory and concern about human impact on the natural world. Restoration ecology can be viewed as the study of how to repair anthropogenic damage to the integrity of ecological systems. However, attempts to repair ecological damage should not diminish protection of existing healthy ecosystems. Restoration ecology allows for the testing of ecological theories; however, restoration ecology is not limited to, nor is it a subdiscipline of, the field of ecology. Restoration ecology requires approaches that integrate ecology and environmental sciences, economics, sociology, and politics. This review illustrates these pointsmore » by providing a conceptual map of the origin, present practices, and future directions of the field. 97 refs., 4 tabs.« less

What Should We Monitor? Indicators of Human Disturbance and Ecological Impact

EPA Science Inventory

Ecological indicators are physical, chemical, and biological measures of environmental condition that change predictably with levels of human disturbance. Historically, indicators have been used to monitor and assess the status and trends of coastal waters and to diagnose the ma...

Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF)

MedlinePlus

... Congo Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF) [PDF – 2 pages] Virus Ecology Viral Hemorrhagic Fever (VHF) Information for Specific Groups ... Diagnosis Treatment Prevention Outbreak Distribution Map Resources Virus Ecology File Formats Help: How do I view different ...

Integrated risk and recovery monitoring of ecosystem restorations on contaminated sites

USGS Publications Warehouse

Hooper, Michael J.; Glomb, Stephen J.; Harper, David; Hoelzle, Timothy B.; McIntosh, Lisa M.; Mulligan, David R.

2016-01-01

Ecological restorations of contaminated sites balance the human and ecological risks of residual contamination with the benefits of ecological recovery and the return of lost ecological function and ecosystem services. Risk and recovery are interrelated dynamic conditions, changing as remediation and restoration activities progress through implementation into long-term management and ecosystem maturation. Monitoring restoration progress provides data critical to minimizing residual contaminant risk and uncertainty, while measuring ecological advancement toward recovery goals. Effective monitoring plans are designed concurrently with restoration plan development and implementation and are focused on assessing the effectiveness of activities performed in support of restoration goals for the site. Physical, chemical, and biotic measures characterize progress toward desired structural and functional ecosystem components of the goals. Structural metrics, linked to ecosystem functions and services, inform restoration practitioners of work plan modifications or more substantial adaptive management actions necessary to maintain desired recovery. Monitoring frequency, duration, and scale depend on specific attributes and goals of the restoration project. Often tied to restoration milestones, critical assessment of monitoring metrics ensures attainment of risk minimization and ecosystem recovery. Finally, interpretation and communication of monitoring findings inform and engage regulators, other stakeholders, the scientific community, and the public. Because restoration activities will likely cease before full ecosystem recovery, monitoring endpoints should demonstrate risk reduction and a successional trajectory toward the condition established in the restoration goals. A detailed assessment of the completed project's achievements, as well as unrealized objectives, attained through project monitoring, will determine if contaminant risk has been minimized, if injured resources have recovered, and if ecosystem services have been returned. Such retrospective analysis will allow better planning for future restoration goals and strengthen the evidence base for quantifying injuries and damages at other sites in the future.

[Characteristics of heavy metal elements and their relationship with magnetic properties of river sediment from urban area in Lanzhou].

PubMed

Wang, Bo; Zhao, Shuang; Xia, Dun-sheng; Yu, Ye; Tian, Shi-li; Jia, Jia; Jiang, Xiao-rong

2011-05-01

The contents of As, Co, Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb, V and Zn in the surface sediments from 8 rivers in urban area in Lanzhou were monitored by ecological risk which was assessed by the potential ecological Håkanson index, and the index of geoaccumulation (Igeo), sediment enrichment factor (R), and environmental magnetism. The results showed that: (1) the potential ecological risk of heavy metals of As, Co, Ni, V in surface sediments from 8 rivers were low, which belonged to low ecological risk. But the risk of heave metals Cr, Pb, Zn in surface sediments from Yuer river was high, which belonged to middle ecological risk, and in downstream of Yuer river, the element of Cu belonged to high ecological risk. (2) The rivers in Lanzhou could be divided into four groups according to the heavy mental pollution degree: first type, such as Paihong river, Shier river, Yuer river and Shuimo river, called downstream concentrate type; second type, such as Qili river, called upstream concentrate type; third type, such as Luoguo river and Dasha river, called less affected type; fourth type, Lanni river, which polluted heavily in up and downstream; (3) The correlation analysis between magnetic parameters and element contents show that the parameters which mainly reflect the concentration of the magnetic minerals (X, SIRM, Ms) have close association with Cr, Ni, Pb, Zn, Cu, So we can infer that the magnetic minerals in deposits samples mainly came from electroplating effluent, motor vehicle emission, and domestic sewage. SIRM/X shows a strong correlation with Cr, Ni, Pb, Zn, indicating the distribution of anthropogenic particulates. (4) The magnetic minerals(X, SIRM, Ms) have a strong correlation with the geoaccumulation (Igeo) than potential ecological risk index and enrichment factor (R). These results suggest a possible approach for source identification of magnetic material in pollution studies and the validity of using magnetic measurements to mapping the polluted area.

Ecological subregion codes by county, coterminous United States

Treesearch

Victor A. Rudis

1999-01-01

This publication presents the National Hierarchical Framework of Ecological Units (ECOMAP 1993) by county for the coterminous United States. Assignment of the framework to individual counties is based on the predominant area by province and section to facilitate integration of county-referenced information with areas of uniform ecological potential. Included are maps...

Analyzing key ecological functions for transboundary subbasin assessments.

Treesearch

B.G Marcot; T.A. O' Neil; J.B. Nyberg; A. MacKinnon; P.J. Paquet; D.H. Johnson

2007-01-01

We present an evaluation of the ecological roles ("key ecological functions" or KEFs) of 618 wildlife species as one facet of subbasin assessment in the Columbia River basin (CRB) of the United States and Canada. Using a wildlife-habitat relationships database (IBIS) and geographic information system, we have mapped KEFs as levels of functional redundancy (...

PROFILE: Integrating Stressor and Response Monitoring into a Resource-Based Water-Quality Assessment Framework.

PubMed

ROUX; KEMPSTER; KLEYNHANS; VAN; DU

1999-01-01

/ South African water law as well as the country's water resource management policies are currently under review. The Water Law Principles, which were established as part of this review process, indicate a commitment to sustainable development of water resources and the protection of an ecological "reserve." Such policy goals highlight the limitations of traditional and current water-quality management strategies, which rely on stressor monitoring and associated regulation of pollution. The concept of an assimilative capacity is central to the implementation of the current water-quality management approach. Weaknesses inherent in basing water management on the concept of assimilative capacity are discussed. Response monitoring is proposed as a way of addressing some of the weaknesses. Following a global trend, the new policy goals emphasize the need to protect rather than to use the ability of ecosystems to recover from disturbances. This necessitates the adoption of response measurements to quantify ecological condition and monitor ecological change. Response monitoring focuses on properties that are essential to the sustainability of the ecosystem. These monitoring tools can be used to establish natural ranges of ecological change within ecosystems, as well as to quantify conceptually acceptable and unacceptable ranges of change. Through a framework of biological criteria and biological impairment standards, the results of response monitoring can become an integral part of future water resource management strategies in South Africa. KEY WORDS: Stressor monitoring; Response monitoring; Assimilative capacity; Ecosystem stability; Resilience; Biocriteria

[Application of 3S techniques in ecological landscape planning of Harbin suburb].

PubMed

Fan, Wenyi; Gong, Wenfeng; Liu, Dandan; Zhou, Hongze; Zhu, Ning

2005-12-01

With the image data (SPOT), soil utilization map (1:50000) and other related materials of Harbin, and under the support of GIS, RS and GPS techniques, this paper obtained the landscape pattern of Harbin suburb and the Digital Elevation Model (DEM) of Harbin. Indices including mean patch area, landscape dominance, mean slope, mean altitude, and fragmentation degree were selected and synthetically analyzed, with the ecological landscape planning made by DEM model. The results showed that 3S techniques could help to decide typical landscape types. The landscape type database was established, and the landscape type thematic map was generated, with land use status and landscape distribution, physiognomy, and land use types combined. The ecological landscape planning was described in large scale with the image data and DEM combined, and the landscape structure of Harbin suburb was reflected directly with the ecological landscape planning and DEM combined, which improved the ecological function in this region, and provided scientific bases to the healthy development in urban-rural integration area.

Monitoring network-design influence on assessment of ecological condition in wadeable streams

EPA Science Inventory

We investigated outcomes of three monitoring networks for assessing ecological character and condition of wadeable streams in the Waikato region, New Zealand. Sites were selected 1) based on a professional judgment network, 2) within categories of stream and watershed characteris...

Can ecological land classification increase the utility of vegetation monitoring data

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

Vegetation dynamics in rangelands and other ecosystems are known to be mediated by topoedaphic properties. Vegetation monitoring programs, however, often do not consider the impact of soils and other sources of landscape heterogeneity on the temporal patterns observed. Ecological sites (ES) comprise...

Potential of VIIRS Time Series Data for Aiding the USDA Forest Service Early Warning System for Forest Health Threats: A Gypsy Moth Defoliation Case Study

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Spruce, Joseph P.; Ryan, Robert E.; McKellip, Rodney

2008-01-01

The Healthy Forest Restoration Act of 2003 mandated that a national forest threat Early Warning System (EWS) be developed. The USFS (USDA Forest Service) is currently building this EWS. NASA is helping the USFS to integrate remotely sensed data into the EWS, including MODIS data for monitoring forest disturbance at broad regional scales. This RPC experiment assesses the potential of VIIRS (Visible/Infrared Imager/Radiometer Suite) and MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) data for contribution to the EWS. In doing so, the RPC project employed multitemporal simulated VIIRS and MODIS data for detecting and monitoring forest defoliation from the non-native Eurasian gypsy moth (Lymantria despar). Gypsy moth is an invasive species threatening eastern U.S. hardwood forests. It is one of eight major forest insect threats listed in the Healthy Forest Restoration Act of 2003. This RPC experiment is relevant to several nationally important mapping applications, including carbon management, ecological forecasting, coastal management, and disaster management

Studying social cognition using near-infrared spectroscopy: the case of social Simon effect

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Costantini, Marcello; Di Vacri, Assunta; Maria Chiarelli, Antonio; Ferri, Francesca; Luca Romani, Gian; Merla, Arcangelo

2013-02-01

In order to understand the so-called "social brain," we need to monitor social interactions in face-to-face paradigms. Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) is a promising technique to achieve this goal. We investigate the neuronal underpinnings of sharing a task in a proper social context. We record cortical activity by means of NIRS, while participants perform a joint Simon task. Different from other hemodynamic techniques, NIRS allows us to have both participants sit comfortably close to each other in a realistic and ecological environment. We found higher activation in the sensorimotor cortex while processing compatible trials as compared to incompatible ones referring to one's own action alternative. Strikingly, when the participant was not responding because it was the turn of the other member of the pair, the inferior parietal was activated. This study provides twofold findings: first, they suggest that the joint Simon effect relies more on shared attentional mechanisms than a proper mapping of the other's motor response. Second, they highlight the invaluable contribution NIRS can afford to social neuroscience in order to preserve ecological and naturalistic settings.

Divers-Operated Underwater Photogrammetry: Applications in the Study of Antarctic Benthos

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Piazza, P.; Cummings, V.; Lohrer, D.; Marini, S.; Marriott, P.; Menna, F.; Nocerino, E.; Peirano, A.; Schiaparelli, S.

2018-05-01

Ecological studies about marine benthic communities received a major leap from the application of a variety of non-destructive sampling and mapping techniques based on underwater image and video recording. The well-established scientific diving practice consists in the acquisition of single path or `round-trip' over elongated transects, with the imaging device oriented in a nadir looking direction. As it may be expected, the application of automatic image processing procedures to data not specifically acquired for 3D modelling can be risky, especially if proper tools for assessing the quality of the produced results are not employed. This paper, born from an international cooperation, focuses on this topic, which is of great interest for ecological and monitoring benthic studies in Antarctica. Several video footages recorded from different scientific teams in different years are processed with an automatic photogrammetric procedure and salient statistical features are reported to critically analyse the derived results. As expected, the inclusion of oblique images from additional lateral strips may improve the expected accuracy in the object space, without altering too much the current video recording practices.

Mapping and monitoring cheatgrass dieoff in rangelands of the Northern Great Basin, USA

USGS Publications Warehouse

Boyte, Stephen P.; Wylie, Bruce K.; Major, Donald J.

2015-01-01

Understanding cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum) dynamics in the Northern Great Basin rangelands, USA, is necessary to effectively manage the region’s lands. This study’s goal was to map and monitor cheatgrass performance to identify where and when cheatgrass dieoff occurred in the Northern Great Basin and to discover how this phenomenon was affected by climatic, topographic, and edaphic variables. We also examined how fire affected cheatgrass performance. Land managers and scientists are concerned by cheatgrass dieoff because it can increase land degradation, and its causes and effects are not fully known. To better understand the scope of cheatgrass dieoff, we developed multiple ecological models that integrated remote sensing data with geophysical and biophysical data. The models’ R2 ranged from 0.71 to 0.88, and their root mean squared errors (RMSEs) ranged from 3.07 to 6.95. Validation of dieoff data showed that 41% of pixels within independently developed dieoff polygons were accurately classified as dieoff, whereas 2% of pixels outside of dieoff polygons were classified as dieoff. Site potential, a long-term spatial average of cheatgrass cover, dominated the development of the cheatgrass performance model. Fire negatively affected cheatgrass performance 1 year postfire, but by the second year postfire performance exceeded prefire levels. The landscape-scale monitoring study presented in this paper helps increase knowledge about recent rangeland dynamics, including where cheatgrass dieoffs occurred and how cheatgrass responded to fire. This knowledge can help direct further investigation and/or guide land management activities that can capitalize on, or mitigate the effects of, cheatgrass dieoff.

[Implementation of Oncomelania hupensis monitoring system based on Baidu Map].

PubMed

Zhi-Hua, Chen; Yi-Sheng, Zhu; Zhi-Qiang, Xue; Xue-Bing, Li; Yi-Min, Ding; Li-Jun, Bi; Kai-Min, Gao; You, Zhang

2017-10-25

To construct the Oncomelania hupensis snail monitoring system based on the Baidu Map. The environmental basic information about historical snail environment and existing snail environment, etc. was collected with the monitoring data about different kinds of O. hupensis snails, and then the O. hupensis snail monitoring system was built. Geographic Information System (GIS) and the electronic fence technology and Application Program Interface (API) were applied to set up the electronic fence of the snail surveillance environments, and the electronic fence was connected to the database of the snail surveillance. The O. hupensis snail monitoring system based on the Baidu Map were built up, including three modules of O. hupensis Snail Monitoring Environmental Database, Dynamic Monitoring Platform and Electronic Map. The information about monitoring O. hupensis snails could be obtained through the computer and smartphone simultaneously. The O. hupensis snail monitoring system, which is based on Baidu Map, is a visible platform to follow the process of snailsearching and molluscaciding.

Unsupervised Change Detection for Geological and Ecological Monitoring via Remote Sensing: Application on a Volcanic Area

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Falco, N.; Pedersen, G. B. M.; Vilmunandardóttir, O. K.; Belart, J. M. M. C.; Sigurmundsson, F. S.; Benediktsson, J. A.

2016-12-01

The project "Environmental Mapping and Monitoring of Iceland by Remote Sensing (EMMIRS)" aims at providing fast and reliable mapping and monitoring techniques on a big spatial scale with a high temporal resolution of the Icelandic landscape. Such mapping and monitoring will be crucial to both mitigate and understand the scale of processes and their often complex interlinked feedback mechanisms.In the EMMIRS project, the Hekla volcano area is one of the main sites under study, where the volcanic eruptions, extreme weather and human activities had an extensive impact on the landscape degradation. The development of innovative remote sensing approaches to compute earth observation variables as automatically as possible is one of the main tasks of the EMMIRS project. Furthermore, a temporal remote sensing archive is created and composed by images acquired by different sensors (Landsat, RapidEye, ASTER and SPOT5). Moreover, historical aerial stereo photos allowed decadal reconstruction of the landscape by reconstruction of digital elevation models. Here, we propose a novel architecture for automatic unsupervised change detection analysis able to ingest multi-source data in order to detect landscape changes in the Hekla area. The change detection analysis is based on multi-scale analysis, which allows the identification of changes at different level of abstraction, from pixel-level to region-level. For this purpose, operators defined in mathematical morphology framework are implemented to model the contextual information, represented by the neighbour system of a pixel, allowing the identification of changes related to both geometrical and spectral domains. Automatic radiometric normalization strategy is also implemented as pre-processing step, aiming at minimizing the effect of different acquisition conditions. The proposed architecture is tested on multi-temporal data sets acquired over different time periods coinciding with the last three eruptions (1980-1981, 1991, 2000) occurred on Hekla volcano. The results reveal emplacement of new lava flows and the initial vegetation succession, providing insightful information on the evolving of vegetation in such environment. Shadow and snow patch changes are resolved in post-processing by exploiting the available spectral information.

Use of crayfishes as ecological indicator of water quality in natural lakes and city water grid

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sapunov, Valentin; Fedotov, Valery

2017-04-01

Crayfishes are organisms having strong demands for water quality. Their different species have different ecological limits. Nobel crayfishes Astacus astacus are organisms with narrow ecological limits need clear water that crayfish Pontastacus leptodactylus. Relation between populations of different crayfishes is criteria of water pollution, level of water bodies eutrofication and ecological pressure. Environmental policy of all countries is directed to water supply by drinking water of high quality and preserving the rivers, lakes and seas, suitable for people and wildlife. However, now freshwater reservoirs and water bodies, as well as including centralized drinking water supply, have been exposed to escalating anthropogenic loading, and risk of sudden emergency pollution. Besides, the problem of providing an ecological safety of the population and prevention of threats of ecological crime and terrorism in a zone of drinking water for many countries. The work is devoted to realization and perspectives of use of the biological early warning stations about changes of quality of surface waters, dangerous to a biota, on the basis of bioelectronic systems as elements of environmental monitoring of water areas. Regular monitoring of crayfish population is a way to follow ecological evolution of ponds. Such a monitoring took place in some lakes of Pskov and Leningrad regions. Ecological characters of crayfishes are appropriate for control of water quality in St. Petersburg and Khabarovsk grids. Fore species were used: Procambarus clarcii, Cherax quadricarinatus, A. astacus and P. leptodactilus. The results of the present work and experiments carried out us to conclude that before assessing any concentration of pollutant on water organisms, it is necessary to investigate not only their development, growth and survival, also their adaptive capacity relative to the variation of environmental parameters. Regular monitoring of heart oscillation was base for control of water pollution in real time. Algorithm and equipment for such a monitoring would be demonstrated.

Ecoregions and ecodistricts: Ecological regionalizations for the Netherlands' environmental policy

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Klijn, Frans; de Waal, Rein W.; Oude Voshaar, Jan H.

1995-11-01

For communicating data on the state of the environment to policy makers, various integrative frameworks are used, including regional integration. For this kind of integration we have developed two related ecological regionalizations, ecoregions and ecodistricts, which are two levels in a series of classifications for hierarchically nested ecosystems at different spatial scale levels. We explain the compilation of the maps from existing geographical data, demonstrating the relatively holistic, a priori integrated approach. The resulting maps are submitted to discriminant analysis to test the consistancy of the use of mapping characteristics, using data on individual abiotic ecosystem components from a national database on a 1-km2 grid. This reveals that the spatial patterns of soil, groundwater, and geomorphology correspond with the ecoregion and ecodistrict maps. Differences between the original maps and maps formed by automatically reclassifying 1-km2 cells with these discriminant components are found to be few. These differences are discussed against the background of the principal dilemma between deductive, a priori integrated, and inductive, a posteriori, classification.

Shore zone land use and land cover: Central Atlantic Regional Ecological Test Site

USGS Publications Warehouse

Dolan, R.; Hayden, B.P.; Vincent, C.L.

1974-01-01

Anderson's 1972 United States Geological Survey classification in modified form was applied to the barrier-island coastline within the CARETS region. High-altitude, color-infrared photography of December, 1972, and January, 1973, served as the primary data base in this study. The CARETS shore zone studied was divided into six distinct geographical regions; area percentages for each class in the modified Anderson classification are presented. Similarities and differences between regions are discussed within the framework of man's modification of these landscapes. The results of this study are presented as a series of 19 maps of land-use categories. Recommendations are made for a remote-sensing system for monitoring the CARETS shore zone within the context of the dynamics of the landscapes studied.

Development of ecological indicator guilds for land management

USGS Publications Warehouse

Krzysik, A.J.; Balbach, H.E.; Duda, J.J.; Emlen, J.M.; Freeman, D.C.; Graham, J.H.; Kovacic, D.A.; Smith, L.M.; Zak, J.C.

2005-01-01

Agency land-use must be efficiently and cost-effectively monitored to assess conditions and trends in ecosystem processes and natural resources relevant to mission requirements and legal mandates. Ecological Indicators represent important land management tools for tracking ecological changes and preventing irreversible environmental damage in disturbed landscapes. The overall objective of the research was to develop both individual and integrated sets (i.e., statistically derived guilds) of Ecological Indicators to: quantify habitat conditions and trends, track and monitor ecological changes, provide early warning or threshold detection, and provide guidance for land managers. The derivation of Ecological Indicators was based on statistical criteria, ecosystem relevance, reliability and robustness, economy and ease of use for land managers, multi-scale performance, and stress response criteria. The basis for the development of statistically based Ecological Indicators was the identification of ecosystem metrics that analytically tracked a landscape disturbance gradient.

STATISTICAL ISSUES FOR MONITORING ECOLOGICAL AND NATURAL RESOURCES IN THE UNITED STATES

EPA Science Inventory

The United States funds a number of national monitoring programs to measure the status and trends of ecological and natural resources. Each of these programs has a unique focus: the scientific objectives are different as are the sample designs. However, individuals and committees...

Chemical ecology of Xyleborus glabratus and implications for monitoring and management

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

Abstract Chemical ecology of Xyleborus glabratus and implications for monitoring and management Paul E. Kendra, Wayne S. Montgomery, Jerome Niogret, Elena Q. Schnell, and Nancy D. Epsky USDA-ARS, Subtropical Horticulture Research Station, 13601 Old Cutler Rd., Miami, FL 33158 The redbay ambrosia b...

DEVELOPING TOOLS TO ASSESS THE ECOLOGICAL CONDITION OF THE NATION'S AQUATIC SYSTEMS

EPA Science Inventory

The Aquatic Monitoring and Bioassement Branch (AMBB) at the Environmental Protection Agency's Western Ecology Division leads ORD's research on monitoring freshwater aquatic systems. This work is in response to the Clean Water Act (CWA, Section 305b) that requires EPA to report bi...

NEON Citizen Science: Planning and Prototyping (Invited)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gram, W.

2010-12-01

The National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) will be a national resource for ecological research and education. NEON citizen science projects are being designed to increase awareness and educate citizen scientists about the impacts of climate change, land-use change, and invasive species on continental-scale ecological processes as well as expand NEON data collection capacity by enabling laypersons to collect geographically distributed data. The citizen science area of the NEON web portal will enable citizen scientists to collect, contribute, interpret, and visualize scientific data, as well as access training modules, collection protocols and targeted learning experiences related to citizen science project topics. For NEON, citizen science projects are a means for interested people to interact with and contribute to NEON science. Investigations at vast spatial and temporal scales often require rapid acquisition of large amounts of data from a geographically distributed population of “human sensors.” As a continental-scale ecological observatory, NEON is uniquely positioned to develop strategies to effectively integrate data collected by non-scientists into scientific databases. Ultimately, we plan to work collaboratively to transform the practice of science to include “citizens” or non-scientists in the process. Doing science is not limited to scientists, and breaking down the barriers between scientists and citizens will help people better understand the power of using science in their own decision making. In preparation for fully developing the NEON citizen science program, we are partnering with Project BudBurst (PBB), a citizen science project focused on monitoring plant phenology. The educational goals of PBB are to: (1) increase awareness of climate change, (2) educate citizen scientists about the impacts of climate change on plants and the environment, and (3) increase science literacy by engaging participants in the scientific process. Phenology was chosen as the focus of this citizen science campaign because it is a visible and comprehensible way of demonstrating the effects of climate change. In addition, plants are readily accessible in nearly every neighborhood and park, and wild areas across the continent, so people can make observations whether they live near an inner city park or in the rural countryside. Recently, NEON built 3 web tools that enable users to visualize PBB data. The tools include a mapping function that displays selected PBB distributional data on a map, an animated map that shows “green up” through time and space, and a graphing tool that compares number of species flowering or leafing out with day length. This prototyping will help NEON better understand how to engage citizen science participants in “doing science” beyond data collection.

Hiawatha National Forest Riparian Inventory: A Case Study

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Abood, S. A.

2014-12-01

Riparian areas are dynamic, transitional ecotones between aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems with well-defined vegetation and soil characteristics. Riparian areas offers wildlife habitat and stream water quality, offers bank stability and protects against erosions, provides aesthetics and recreational value, and other numerous valuable ecosystem functions. Quantifying and delineating riparian areas is an essential step in riparian monitoring, riparian management/planning and policy decisions, and in preserving its valuable ecological functions. Previous approaches to riparian areas mapping have primarily utilized fixed width buffers. However, these methodologies only take the watercourse into consideration and ignore critical geomorphology, associated vegetation and soil characteristics. Other approaches utilize remote sensing technologies such as aerial photos interpretation or satellite imagery riparian vegetation classification. Such techniques requires expert knowledge, high spatial resolution data, and expensive when mapping riparian areas on a landscape scale. The goal of this study is to develop a cost effective robust workflow to consistently map the geographic extent and composition of riparian areas within the Hiawatha National Forest boundary utilizing the Riparian Buffer Delineation Model (RBDM) v3.0 and open source geospatial data. This approach recognizes the dynamic and transitional natures of riparian areas by accounting for hydrologic, geomorphic and vegetation data as inputs into the delineation process and the results would suggests incorporating functional variable width riparian mapping within watershed management planning to improve protection and restoration of valuable riparian functionality and biodiversity.

Faith, Morality and Mortality: The Ecological Impact of Religion on Population Health

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Blanchard, Troy C.; Bartkowski, John P.; Matthews, Todd L.; Kerley, Kent R.

2008-01-01

Although the past decade has witnessed increased usage of ecological data to map the community-level effects of religion, the vast majority of studies in this body of scholarship continue to be plagued by two key shortcomings. First, ecological research on religion is often conducted in an atheoretical manner, one that privileges the structural…

The long-term ecological research community metada standardisation project: a progress report

Treesearch

Inigo San Gil; Karen Baker; John Campbell; Ellen G. Denny; Kristin Vanderbilt; Brian Riordan; Rebecca Koskela; Jason Downing; Sabine Grabner; Eda Melendez; Jonathan M. Walsh; Masib Kortz; James Conners; Lynn Yarmey; Nicole Kaplan; Emery R. Boose; Linda Powell; Corinna Gries; Robin Schroeder; Todd Ackerman; Ken Ramsey; Barbara Benson; Jonathan Chipman; James Laundre; Hap Garritt; Don Henshaw; Barrie Collins; Christopher Gardner; Sven Bohm; Margaret O' Brien; Jincheng Gao; Wade Sheldon; Stephanie Lyon; Dan Bahauddin; Mark Servilla; Duane Costa; James Brunt

2009-01-01

We describe the process by which the Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network standardized their metadata through the adoption of the Ecological Metadata Language (EML). We describe the strategies developed to improve motivation and to complement the information technology resources available at the LTER sites. EML implementation is presented as a mapping process...

Assessing Social Learning Outcomes through Participatory Mind Mapping

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Smith, Justin G.; DuBois, Bryce; Corwin, Jason

2016-01-01

This article presents a method for using mind mapping to assess social learning outcomes in collaborative environmental restoration and participatory natural resource management initiatives. Using mind mapping for preassessment and postassessment can reveal changes in individual and collective thinking about critical social and ecological issues.…

Mapping the Climate of Puerto Rico, Vieques and Culebra.

Treesearch

CHRISTOPHER DALY; E. H. HELMER; MAYA QUINONES

2003-01-01

Spatially explicit climate data contribute to watershed resource management, mapping vegetation type with satellite imagery, mapping present and hypothetical future ecological zones, and predicting species distributions. The regression based Parameter-elevation Regressions on Independent Slopes Model (PRISM) uses spatial data sets, a knowledge base and expert...

A generic method for improving the spatial interoperability of medical and ecological databases.

PubMed

Ghenassia, A; Beuscart, J B; Ficheur, G; Occelli, F; Babykina, E; Chazard, E; Genin, M

2017-10-03

The availability of big data in healthcare and the intensive development of data reuse and georeferencing have opened up perspectives for health spatial analysis. However, fine-scale spatial studies of ecological and medical databases are limited by the change of support problem and thus a lack of spatial unit interoperability. The use of spatial disaggregation methods to solve this problem introduces errors into the spatial estimations. Here, we present a generic, two-step method for merging medical and ecological databases that avoids the use of spatial disaggregation methods, while maximizing the spatial resolution. Firstly, a mapping table is created after one or more transition matrices have been defined. The latter link the spatial units of the original databases to the spatial units of the final database. Secondly, the mapping table is validated by (1) comparing the covariates contained in the two original databases, and (2) checking the spatial validity with a spatial continuity criterion and a spatial resolution index. We used our novel method to merge a medical database (the French national diagnosis-related group database, containing 5644 spatial units) with an ecological database (produced by the French National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies, and containing with 36,594 spatial units). The mapping table yielded 5632 final spatial units. The mapping table's validity was evaluated by comparing the number of births in the medical database and the ecological databases in each final spatial unit. The median [interquartile range] relative difference was 2.3% [0; 5.7]. The spatial continuity criterion was low (2.4%), and the spatial resolution index was greater than for most French administrative areas. Our innovative approach improves interoperability between medical and ecological databases and facilitates fine-scale spatial analyses. We have shown that disaggregation models and large aggregation techniques are not necessarily the best ways to tackle the change of support problem.

Long-term comparison of Kuparuk Watershed active layer maps, northern Alaska, USA

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Nyland, K. E.; Queen, C.; Nelson, F. E.; Shiklomanov, N. I.; Streletskiy, D. A.; Klene, A. E.

2017-12-01

The active layer, or the uppermost soil horizon that thaws seasonally, is among the most dynamic components of the permafrost system. Evaluation of the thickness and spatial variation of the active layer is critical to many components of Arctic research, including climatology, ecology, environmental monitoring, and engineering. In this study we mapped active-layer thickness (ALT) across the 22,278 sq. km Kuparuk River basin on Alaska's North Slope throughout the summer of 2016. The Kuparuk River extends from the Brooks Range through the Arctic Foothills and across the Arctic Coastal Plain physiographic provinces, and drains into the Beaufort Sea. Methodology followed procedures used to produce an ALT map of the basin in 1995 accounting for the effects of topography, vegetation, topoclimate, and soils, using the same spatial sampling scheme for direct ALT and temperature measurement at representative locations and relating these parameters to vegetation-soil associations. A simple semi-empirical engineering solution was used to estimate thaw rates for the different associations. An improved lapse-rate formulation and a higher-resolution DEM were used to relate temperature to elevation. Three ALT maps were generated for the 2016 summer, combining measured thaw depth, temperature records, the 25 m ArcticDEM, high resolution remote sensed data, empirical laps rates, and a topoclimatic index through the thaw solution. These maps were used to track the spatial progression of thaw through the 2016 summer season and estimate a total volume of thawed soil. Maps produced in this study were compared to the 1995 map to track areas of significant geographic changes in patterns of ALT and total volume of thawed soil.

Uav Photogrammetry for Mapping and Monitoring of Northern Permafrost Landscapes

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Fraser, R. H.; Olthof, I.; Maloley, M.; Fernandes, R.; Prevost, C.; van der Sluijs, J.

2015-08-01

Northern environments are changing in response to recent climate warming, resource development, and natural disturbances. The Arctic climate has warmed by 2-3°C since the 1950's, causing a range of cryospheric changes including declines in sea ice extent, snow cover duration, and glacier mass, and warming permafrost. The terrestrial Arctic has also undergone significant temperature-driven changes in the form of increased thermokarst, larger tundra fires, and enhanced shrub growth. Monitoring these changes to inform land managers and decision makers is challenging due to the vast spatial extents involved and difficult access. Environmental monitoring in Canada's North is often based on local-scale measurements derived from aerial reconnaissance and photography, and ecological, hydrologic, and geologic sampling and surveying. Satellite remote sensing can provide a complementary tool for more spatially comprehensive monitoring but at coarser spatial resolutions. Satellite remote sensing has been used to map Arctic landscape changes related to vegetation productivity, lake expansion and drainage, glacier retreat, thermokarst, and wildfire activity. However, a current limitation with existing satellite-based techniques is the measurement gap between field measurements and high resolution satellite imagery. Bridging this gap is important for scaling up field measurements to landscape levels, and validating and calibrating satellite-based analyses. This gap can be filled to a certain extent using helicopter or fixed-wing aerial surveys, but at a cost that is often prohibitive. Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technology has only recently progressed to the point where it can provide an inexpensive and efficient means of capturing imagery at this middle scale of measurement with detail that is adequate to interpret Arctic vegetation (i.e. 1-5 cm) and coverage that can be directly related to satellite imagery (1-10 km2). Unlike satellite measurements, UAVs permit frequent surveys (e.g. for monitoring vegetation phenology, fires, and hydrology), are not constrained by repeat cycle or cloud cover, can be rapidly deployed following a significant event, and are better suited than manned aircraft for mapping small areas. UAVs are becoming more common for agriculture, law enforcement, and marketing, but their use in the Arctic is still rare and represents untapped technology for northern mapping, monitoring, and environmental research. We are conducting surveys over a range of sensitive or changing northern landscapes using a variety of UAV multicopter platforms and small sensors. Survey targets include retrogressive thaw slumps, tundra shrub vegetation, recently burned vegetation, road infrastructure, and snow. Working with scientific partners involved in northern monitoring programs (NWT CIMP, CHARS, NASA ABOVE, NRCan-GSC) we are investigating the advantages, challenges, and best practices for acquiring high resolution imagery from multicopters to create detailed orthomosaics and co-registered 3D terrain models. Colour and multispectral orthomosaics are being integrated with field measurements and satellite imagery to conduct spatial scaling of environmental parameters. Highly detailed digital terrain models derived using structure from motion (SfM) photogrammetry are being applied to measure thaw slump morphology and change, snow depth, tundra vegetation structure, and surface condition of road infrastructure. These surveys and monitoring applications demonstrate that UAV-based photogrammetry is poised to make a rapid contribution to a wide range of northern monitoring and research applications.

What does remote sensing do for ecology?

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Roughgarden, J.; Running, S. W.; Matson, P. A.

1991-01-01

The application of remote sensing to ecological investigations is briefly discussed. Emphasis is given to the recruitment problem in marine population dynamics, the regional analysis of terrestrial ecosystems, and the monitoring of ecological changes. Impediments to the use of remote sensing data in ecology are addressed.

Integrated inventory and monitoring

Treesearch

George Lightner; Hans T. Schreuder; Barry Bollenbacher; Kerry McMenus

2001-01-01

Understanding and inventorying our ecological systems is key to addressing how issues, questions, and management actions will affect the composition, structure, and function of these systems. Taking an ecological systems approach to the inventory and monitoring framework, is one which we feel will allow answers to currently identified management questions and new ones...

Life+ EnvEurope DEIMS - improving access to long-term ecosystem monitoring data in Europe

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kliment, Tomas; Peterseil, Johannes; Oggioni, Alessandro; Pugnetti, Alessandra; Blankman, David

2013-04-01

Long-term ecological (LTER) studies aim at detecting environmental changes and analysing its related drivers. In this respect LTER Europe provides a network of about 450 sites and platforms. However, data on various types of ecosystems and at a broad geographical scale is still not easily available. Managing data resulting from long-term observations is therefore one of the important tasks not only for an LTER site itself but also on the network level. Exchanging and sharing the information within a wider community is a crucial objective in the upcoming years. Due to the fragmented nature of long-term ecological research and monitoring (LTER) in Europe - and also on the global scale - information management has to face several challenges: distributed data sources, heterogeneous data models, heterogeneous data management solutions and the complex domain of ecosystem monitoring with regard to the resulting data. The Life+ EnvEurope project (2010-2013) provides a case study for a workflow using data from the distributed network of LTER-Europe sites. In order to enhance discovery, evaluation and access to data, the EnvEurope Drupal Ecological Information Management System (DEIMS) has been developed. This is based on the first official release of the Drupal metadata editor developed by US LTER. EnvEurope DEIMS consists of three main components: 1) Metadata editor: a web-based client interface to manage metadata of three information resource types - datasets, persons and research sites. A metadata model describing datasets based on Ecological Metadata Language (EML) was developed within the initial phase of the project. A crosswalk to the INSPIRE metadata model was implemented to convey to the currently on-going European activities. Person and research site metadata models defined within the LTER Europe were adapted for the project needs. The three metadata models are interconnected within the system in order to provide easy way to navigate the user among the related resources. 2) Discovery client: provides several search profiles for datasets, persons, research sites and external resources commonly used in the domain, e.g. Catalogue of Life , based on several search patterns ranging from simple full text search, glossary browsing to categorized faceted search. 3) Geo-Viewer: a map client that portrays boundaries and centroids of the research sites as Web Map Service (WMS) layers. Each layer provides a link to both Metadata editor and Discovery client in order to create or discover metadata describing the data collected within the individual research site. Sharing of the dataset metadata with DEIMS is ensured in two ways: XML export of individual metadata records according to the EML schema for inclusion in the international DataOne network, and periodic harvesting of metadata into GeoNetwork catalogue, thus providing catalogue service for web (CSW), which can be invoked by remote clients. The final version of DEIMS will be a pilot implementation for the information system of LTER-Europe, which should establish a common information management framework within the European ecosystem research domain and provide valuable environmental information to other European information infrastructures as SEIS, Copernicus and INSPIRE.

Inorganic nitrogenous air pollutants, atmospheric nitrogen deposition and their potential ecological impacts in remote areas of western North America (Invited)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bytnerowicz, A.; Fenn, M. E.; Fraczek, W.; Johnson, R.; Allen, E. B.

2013-12-01

Dry deposition of gaseous inorganic nitrogenous (N) air pollutants plays an important role in total atmospheric N deposition and its ecological effects in the arid and semi-arid ecosystems. Passive samplers and denuder/ filter pack systems have been used for determining ambient concentrations of ammonia (NH3), nitric oxide (NO), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), and nitric acid vapor (HNO3) in the topographically complex remote areas of the western United States and Canada. Concentrations of the measured pollutants varied significantly between the monitoring areas. Highest NH3, NO2 and HNO3 levels occurred in southern California areas downwind of the Los Angeles Basin and in the western Sierra Nevada impacted by emissions from the California Central Valley and the San Francisco Bay area. Strong spatial gradients of N pollutants were also present in southeastern Alaska due to cruise ship emissions and in the Athabasca Oil Sands Region in Canada affected by oil exploitation. Distribution of these pollutants has been depicted by maps generated by several geostatistical methodologies within the ArcGIS Geostatistical Analyst (ESRI, USA). Such maps help to understand spatial and temporal changes of air pollutants caused by various anthropogenic activities and locally-generated vs. long range-transported air pollutants. Pollution distribution maps for individual N species and gaseous inorganic reactive nitrogen (Nr) have been developed for the southern portion of the Sierra Nevada, Lake Tahoe Basin, San Bernardino Mountains, Joshua Tree National Park and the Athabasca Oil Sands Region. The N air pollution data have been utilized for estimates of dry and total N deposition by a GIS-based inferential method specifically developed for understanding potential ecological impacts in arid and semi-arid areas. The method is based on spatial and temporal distribution of concentrations of major drivers of N dry deposition, their surface deposition velocities and stomatal conductance values, satellite-derived leaf area index and landscape cover. Ion exchange resin throughfall collectors and atmospheric simulation models have provided complementary data critical to better understanding of ecosystem responses to Nr in western North America. Such deposition data and maps have been used to set N deposition critical loads (CL) and to map areas of exceedance for a variety of ecosystem and biological effects. Empirical CL and exceedance areas have been established for many Western ecosystems including forest, desert, shrub, grassland, subalpine and aquatic habitats, thus providing an important management tool for protection of key ecosystems and the services they provide. An important finding is that biodiversity and community responses of sensitive elements of several Western aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems respond to relatively low levels of atmospheric N deposition (e.g., 3-6 kg N/ha/yr).

Ecological Monitoring and Compliance Program 2011 Report

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Hansen, D. J.; Anderson, D. C.; Hall, D. B.

The Ecological Monitoring and Compliance (EMAC) Program, funded through the U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration Nevada Site Office, monitors the ecosystem of the Nevada National Security Site and ensures compliance with laws and regulations pertaining to NNSS biota. This report summarizes the program's activities conducted by National Security Technologies, LLC, during calendar year 2011. Program activities included (a) biological surveys at proposed construction sites, (b) desert tortoise compliance, (c) ecosystem monitoring, (d) sensitive plant species monitoring, (e) sensitive and protected/regulated animal monitoring, (f) habitat restoration monitoring, and (g) monitoring of the Nonproliferation Test and Evaluation Complex. Duringmore » 2011, all applicable laws, regulations, and permit requirements were met, enabling EMAC to achieve its intended goals and objectives.« less

Small unmanned aerial vehicles (micro-UAVs, drones) in plant ecology.

PubMed

Cruzan, Mitchell B; Weinstein, Ben G; Grasty, Monica R; Kohrn, Brendan F; Hendrickson, Elizabeth C; Arredondo, Tina M; Thompson, Pamela G

2016-09-01

Low-elevation surveys with small aerial drones (micro-unmanned aerial vehicles [UAVs]) may be used for a wide variety of applications in plant ecology, including mapping vegetation over small- to medium-sized regions. We provide an overview of methods and procedures for conducting surveys and illustrate some of these applications. Aerial images were obtained by flying a small drone along transects over the area of interest. Images were used to create a composite image (orthomosaic) and a digital surface model (DSM). Vegetation classification was conducted manually and using an automated routine. Coverage of an individual species was estimated from aerial images. We created a vegetation map for the entire region from the orthomosaic and DSM, and mapped the density of one species. Comparison of our manual and automated habitat classification confirmed that our mapping methods were accurate. A species with high contrast to the background matrix allowed adequate estimate of its coverage. The example surveys demonstrate that small aerial drones are capable of gathering large amounts of information on the distribution of vegetation and individual species with minimal impact to sensitive habitats. Low-elevation aerial surveys have potential for a wide range of applications in plant ecology.

Land Ecology Essay I: The siren song of the finish line

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

As the National Cooperative Soils Survey nears the completion of initial mapping and description activities, the options for next steps are being considered. One option is to deploy new and emerging mapping technologies for existing and refined concepts of soil behavior to create more precise maps ...

Using Community Mapping in Human Ecology

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Robinson, Chery M.; Vineyard, Michelle L.; Reagor, Jane D.

2004-01-01

Community asset mapping is one approach to community assessment. According to Kretzmann and McKnight (1993), discovering the assets, capacities, and resources embedded in a community leads people to take responsibility for and ownership of rebuilding and renewing their community. Community mapping is a tool for consideration by family and consumer…

A vegetation mapping strategy for conifer forests by combining airborne LiDAR data and aerial imagery

Treesearch

Yanjun Su; Qinghua Guo; Danny L. Fry; Brandon M. Collins; Maggi Kelly; Jacob P. Flanagan; John J. Battles

2016-01-01

Abstract. Accurate vegetation mapping is critical for natural resources management, ecological analysis, and hydrological modeling, among other tasks. Remotely sensed multispectral and hyperspectral imageries have proved to be valuable inputs to the vegetation mapping process, but they can provide only limited vegetation structure...

Using JournalMap to link spatial information with ecological site descriptions

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

JournalMap is a scientific literature search engine that empowers you to find relevant research based on location and biophysical variables as well as traditional keyword searches. All publications are geotagged based on reported location information and plotted on a world map showing where the rese...

A novel and cost-effective monitoring approach for outcomes in an Australian biodiversity conservation incentive program.

PubMed

Lindenmayer, David B; Zammit, Charles; Attwood, Simon J; Burns, Emma; Shepherd, Claire L; Kay, Geoff; Wood, Jeff

2012-01-01

We report on the design and implementation of ecological monitoring for an Australian biodiversity conservation incentive scheme - the Environmental Stewardship Program. The Program uses competitive auctions to contract individual land managers for up to 15 years to conserve matters of National Environmental Significance (with an initial priority on nationally threatened ecological communities). The ecological monitoring was explicitly aligned with the Program's policy objective and desired outcomes and was applied to the Program's initial Project which targeted the critically endangered White Box-Yellow Box-Blakely's Red Gum Grassy Woodland and Derived Native Grassland ecological community in south eastern Australia. These woodlands have been reduced to <3% of their original extent and persist mostly as small remnants of variable condition on private farmland. We established monitoring sites on 153 farms located over 172,232 sq km. On each farm we established a monitoring site within the woodland patch funded for management and, wherever possible, a matched control site. The monitoring has entailed gathering data on vegetation condition, reptiles and birds. We also gathered data on the costs of experimental design, site establishment, field survey, and data analysis. The costs of monitoring are approximately 8.5% of the Program's investment in the first four years and hence are in broad accord with the general rule of thumb that 5-10% of a program's funding should be invested in monitoring. Once initial monitoring and site benchmarking are completed we propose to implement a novel rotating sampling approach that will maintain scientific integrity while achieving an annual cost-efficiency of up to 23%. We discuss useful lessons relevant to other monitoring programs where there is a need to provide managers with reliable early evidence of program effectiveness and to demonstrate opportunities for cost-efficiencies.

CPC - Monitoring & Data: Regional Climate Maps

Science.gov Websites

Weather Service NWS logo - Click to go to the NWS home page Climate Prediction Center Site Map News Information CPC Web Team HOME > Monitoring and Data > Global Climate Data & Maps > Global Regional Climate Maps Regional Climate Maps Banner The Monthly regional analyses products are usually

Critical slowing down as early warning for the onset of collapse in mutualistic communities.

PubMed

Dakos, Vasilis; Bascompte, Jordi

2014-12-09

Tipping points are crossed when small changes in external conditions cause abrupt unexpected responses in the current state of a system. In the case of ecological communities under stress, the risk of approaching a tipping point is unknown, but its stakes are high. Here, we test recently developed critical slowing-down indicators as early-warning signals for detecting the proximity to a potential tipping point in structurally complex ecological communities. We use the structure of 79 empirical mutualistic networks to simulate a scenario of gradual environmental change that leads to an abrupt first extinction event followed by a sequence of species losses until the point of complete community collapse. We find that critical slowing-down indicators derived from time series of biomasses measured at the species and community level signal the proximity to the onset of community collapse. In particular, we identify specialist species as likely the best-indicator species for monitoring the proximity of a community to collapse. In addition, trends in slowing-down indicators are strongly correlated to the timing of species extinctions. This correlation offers a promising way for mapping species resilience and ranking species risk to extinction in a given community. Our findings pave the road for combining theory on tipping points with patterns of network structure that might prove useful for the management of a broad class of ecological networks under global environmental change.

Do sampling methods differ in their utility for ecological monitoring? Comparison of line-point intercept, grid-point intercept, and ocular estimate methods

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

This study compared the utility of three sampling methods for ecological monitoring based on: interchangeability of data (rank correlations), precision (coefficient of variation), cost (minutes/transect), and potential of each method to generate multiple indicators. Species richness and foliar cover...

Passive monitoring techniques for evaluating atmospheric ozone and nitrogen exposure and deposition to California ecosystems

Treesearch

Mark E. Fenn; Andrzej Bytnerowicz; Susan L. Schilling

2018-01-01

Measuring the exposure of ecosystems to ecologically relevant pollutants is needed for evaluating ecosystem effects and to identify regions and resources at risk. In California, ozone (O3) and nitrogen (N) pollutants are of greatest concern for ecological effects. "Passive" monitoring methods have been developed to obtain spatially...

Monitoring the resilience of rivers as social-ecological systems: a paradigm shift for river assessment in the 21st Century

EPA Science Inventory

First, we briefly describe the development of the major, biophysically-focused river assessment and monitoring approaches over the last 50 years. We then assess the utility of biophysical parameters for assessing rivers as social-ecological systems. We then develop a framework de...

A new detailed map of total phosphorus stocks in Australian soil.

PubMed

Viscarra Rossel, Raphael A; Bui, Elisabeth N

2016-01-15

Accurate data are needed to effectively monitor environmental condition, and develop sound policies to plan for the future. Globally, current estimates of soil total phosphorus (P) stocks are very uncertain because they are derived from sparse data, with large gaps over many areas of the Earth. Here, we derive spatially explicit estimates, and their uncertainty, of the distribution and stock of total P in Australian soil. Data from several sources were harmonized to produce the most comprehensive inventory of total P in soil of the continent. They were used to produce fine spatial resolution continental maps of total P in six depth layers by combining the bootstrap, a decision tree with piecewise regression on environmental variables and geostatistical modelling of residuals. Values of percent total P were predicted at the nodes of a 3-arcsecond (approximately 90 m) grid and mapped together with their uncertainties. We combined these predictions with those for bulk density and mapped the total soil P stock in the 0-30 cm layer over the whole of Australia. The average amount of P in Australian topsoil is estimated to be 0.98 t ha(-1) with 90% confidence limits of 0.2 and 4.2 t ha(-1). The total stock of P in the 0-30 cm layer of soil for the continent is 0.91 Gt with 90% confidence limits of 0.19 and 3.9 Gt. The estimates are the most reliable approximation of the stock of total P in Australian soil to date. They could help improve ecological models, guide the formulation of policy around food and water security, biodiversity and conservation, inform future sampling for inventory, guide the design of monitoring networks, and provide a benchmark against which to assess the impact of changes in land cover, land use and management and climate on soil P stocks and water quality in Australia. Crown Copyright © 2015. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Discerning spatial and temporal LAI and clear-sky FAPAR variability during summer at the Toolik Lake vegetation monitoring grid (North Slope, Alaska)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Heim, B.; Beamish, A. L.; Walker, D. A.; Epstein, H. E.; Sachs, T.; Chabrillat, S.; Buchhorn, M.; Prakash, A.

2016-12-01

Ground data for the validation of satellite-derived terrestrial Essential Climate Variables (ECVs) at high latitudes are sparse. Also for regional model evaluation (e.g. climate models, land surface models, permafrost models), we lack accurate ranges of terrestrial ground data and face the problem of a large mismatch in scale. Within the German research programs `Regional Climate Change' (REKLIM) and the Environmental Mapping and Analysis Program (EnMAP), we conducted a study on ground data representativeness for vegetation-related variables within a monitoring grid at the Toolik Lake Long-Term Ecological Research station; the Toolik Lake station lies in the Kuparuk River watershed on the North Slope of the Brooks Mountain Range in Alaska. The Toolik Lake grid covers an area of 1 km2 containing Eight five grid points spaced 100 meters apart. Moist acidic tussock tundra is the most dominant vegetation type within the grid. Eight five permanent 1 m2 plots were also established to be representative of the individual gridpoints. Researchers from the University of Alaska Fairbanks have undertaken assessments at these plots, including Leaf Area Index (LAI) and field spectrometry to derive the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). During summer 2016, we conducted field spectrometry and LAI measurements at selected plots during early, peak and late summer. We experimentally measured LAI on more spatially extensive Elementary Sampling Units (ESUs) to investigate the spatial representativeness of the permanent 1 m2 plots and to map ESUs for various tundra types. LAI measurements are potentially influenced by landscape-inherent microtopography, sparse vascular plant cover, and dead woody matter. From field spectrometer measurements, we derived a clear-sky mid-day Fraction of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (FAPAR). We will present the first data analyses comparing FAPAR and LAI, and maps of biophysically-focused ESUs for evaluation of the use of remote sensing data to estimate these ecosystem properties.

Testing estimation of water surface in Italian rice district from MODIS satellite data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ranghetti, Luigi; Busetto, Lorenzo; Crema, Alberto; Fasola, Mauro; Cardarelli, Elisa; Boschetti, Mirco

2016-10-01

Recent changes in rice crop management within Northern Italy rice district led to a reduction of seeding in flooding condition, which may have an impact on reservoir water management and on the animal and plant communities that depend on the flooded paddies. Therefore, monitoring and quantifying the spatial and temporal variability of water presence in paddy fields is becoming important. In this study we present a method to estimate dynamics of presence of standing water (i.e. fraction of flooded area) in rice fields using MODIS data. First, we produced high resolution water presence maps from Landsat by thresholding the Normalised Difference Flood Index (NDFI) made: we made it by comparing five Landsat 8 images with field-obtained information about rice field status and water presence. Using these data we developed an empirical model to estimate the flooding fraction of each MODIS cell. Finally we validated the MODIS-based flooding maps with both Landsat and ground information. Results showed a good predictability of water surface from Landsat (OA = 92%) and a robust usability of MODIS data to predict water fraction (R2 = 0.73, EF = 0.57, RMSE = 0.13 at 1 × 1 km resolution). Analysis showed that the predictive ability of the model decreases with the greening up of rice, so we used NDVI to automatically discriminate estimations for inaccurate cells in order to provide the water maps with a reliability flag. Results demonstrate that it is possible to monitor water dynamics in rice paddies using moderate resolution multispectral satellite data. The achievement is a proof of concept for the analysis of MODIS archives to investigate irrigation dynamics in the last 15 years to retrieve information for ecological and hydrological studies.

Wetland Change Detection in Protected and Unprotected Indus Coastal and Inland Delta

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Baig, M. H. Ali; Sultan, M.; Riaz Khan, M.; Zhang, L.; Kozlova, M.; Malik, N. Abbas; Wang, S.

2017-09-01

Worth of wetland sites lies in their ecological importance. They enhance ecosystem via provision of ecological services like improving water quality, groundwater infiltration, flood risk reduction and biodiversity regulation. Like other parts of the world Pakistan is also facing wetlands degradation. Ecological and economic significance of wetlands was recognized officially in 1971 as Pakistan became signatory of Ramsar wetland convention. Wetlands provide habitat to species of ecological and economic importance. Despite being recognized for international importance, Ramsar figures state that almost half of Pakistan's wetlands are at moderate or prominent level threat. Wetlands ecosystems are deteriorating at a rapid rate, if uncontrolled this trend may lead to substantial losses. Therefore, management of these resources demands regular monitoring. Present study is dedicated to assessing levels of change overtime in three distinct types of wetlands in Pakistan i.e. Indus delta a coastal wetland, Uchhali complex an inland wetland which are both protected sites while another site Nurri Lagoon which is not sheltered under any category of protected areas. Remotely sensed data has remarkable applications in change detection. Multitemporal Landsat images were used to map changes occurring from 2006 to 2016. Results reveal that wetland area has considerably decreased for all types. Both protected sites have experienced degradation though impact is comparatively lesser than unprotected Nurri lagoon. Significance of protection strategies cannot be denied, it is recommended that mere declaration of a site protected area is not sufficient. It is equally important to control non-point pollutants and ensuring the compliance of conservation strategy.

REPORT OF THE DECEMBER 15, 1999 EPA SATELLITE FORUM ON OZONE MONITORING, MAPPING AND PUBLIC OUTREACH

EPA Science Inventory

This report provides a summary of the US EPA's December 15, 1999 satellite forum on technology transfer tools for ozone monitoring, mapping, and public outreach under the EPA Environmental Monitoring for Public Access and Community Tracking (EMPACT) Program's Ozone Mapping Projec...

Ecological Dimensions of Information Literacy

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Steinerova, Jela

2010-01-01

Introduction: We examine relationships between information literacy and information ecology with regard to conceptual innovation in information science. We aim to expand our understanding of human information behaviour and relevance assessment in the electronic environment. Method: Conceptual analysis and conceptual mapping is used and…

Ecological Monitoring and Compliance Program 2015 Report

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Hall, Derek B.; Ostler, W. Kent; Anderson, David C.

The Ecological Monitoring and Compliance Program (EMAC), funded through the U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration Nevada Field Office (NNSA/NFO), monitors the ecosystem of the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS) and ensures compliance with laws and regulations pertaining to NNSS biota. This report summarizes the program’s activities conducted by National Security Technologies, LLC (NSTec), during calendar year 2015. Program activities included (a) biological surveys at proposed activity sites, (b) desert tortoise compliance, (c) ecosystem monitoring, (d) sensitive plant species monitoring, (e) sensitive and protected/regulated animal monitoring, and (f) habitat restoration monitoring. During 2015, all applicable laws, regulations, andmore » permit requirements were met, enabling EMAC to achieve its intended goals and objectives.« less

Ecological Monitoring and Compliance Program 2013 Report

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Hall, Derek B.; Anderson, David C.; Greger, Paul D.

The Ecological Monitoring and Compliance Program (EMAC), funded through the U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration Nevada Field Office (NNSA/NFO, formerly Nevada Site Office), monitors the ecosystem of the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS) and ensures compliance with laws and regulations pertaining to NNSS biota. This report summarizes the program’s activities conducted by National Security Technologies, LLC (NSTec), during calendar year 2013. Program activities included (a) biological surveys at proposed activity sites, (b) desert tortoise compliance, (c) ecosystem monitoring, (d) sensitive plant species monitoring, (e) sensitive and protected/regulated animal monitoring, and (f) habitat restoration monitoring. During 2013, allmore » applicable laws, regulations, and permit requirements were met, enabling EMAC to achieve its intended goals and objectives.« less

Ecological Monitoring and Compliance Program 2016 Report

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Hall, Derek; Perry, Jeanette; Ostler, W. Kent

The Ecological Monitoring and Compliance Program (EMAC), funded through the U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration Nevada Field Office (NNSA/NFO), monitors the ecosystem of the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS) and ensures compliance with laws and regulations pertaining to NNSS biota. This report summarizes the program’s activities conducted by National Security Technologies, LLC (NSTec), during calendar year 2016. Program activities included (a) biological surveys at proposed activity sites, (b) desert tortoise compliance, (c) ecosystem monitoring, (d) sensitive plant species monitoring, (e) sensitive and protected/regulated animal monitoring, and (f) habitat restoration monitoring. During 2016, all applicable laws, regulations, andmore » permit requirements were met, enabling EMAC to achieve its intended goals and objectives.« less

Very High Resolution Tree Cover Mapping for Continental United States using Deep Convolutional Neural Networks

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Ganguly, Sangram; Kalia, Subodh; Li, Shuang; Michaelis, Andrew; Nemani, Ramakrishna R.; Saatchi, Sassan A

2017-01-01

Uncertainties in input land cover estimates contribute to a significant bias in modeled above ground biomass (AGB) and carbon estimates from satellite-derived data. The resolution of most currently used passive remote sensing products is not sufficient to capture tree canopy cover of less than ca. 10-20 percent, limiting their utility to estimate canopy cover and AGB for trees outside of forest land. In our study, we created a first of its kind Continental United States (CONUS) tree cover map at a spatial resolution of 1-m for the 2010-2012 epoch using the USDA NAIP imagery to address the present uncertainties in AGB estimates. The process involves different tasks including data acquisition ingestion to pre-processing and running a state-of-art encoder-decoder based deep convolutional neural network (CNN) algorithm for automatically generating a tree non-tree map for almost a quarter million scenes. The entire processing chain including generation of the largest open source existing aerial satellite image training database was performed at the NEX supercomputing and storage facility. We believe the resulting forest cover product will substantially contribute to filling the gaps in ongoing carbon and ecological monitoring research and help quantifying the errors and uncertainties in derived products.

Very High Resolution Tree Cover Mapping for Continental United States using Deep Convolutional Neural Networks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ganguly, S.; Kalia, S.; Li, S.; Michaelis, A.; Nemani, R. R.; Saatchi, S.

2017-12-01

Uncertainties in input land cover estimates contribute to a significant bias in modeled above gound biomass (AGB) and carbon estimates from satellite-derived data. The resolution of most currently used passive remote sensing products is not sufficient to capture tree canopy cover of less than ca. 10-20 percent, limiting their utility to estimate canopy cover and AGB for trees outside of forest land. In our study, we created a first of its kind Continental United States (CONUS) tree cover map at a spatial resolution of 1-m for the 2010-2012 epoch using the USDA NAIP imagery to address the present uncertainties in AGB estimates. The process involves different tasks including data acquisition/ingestion to pre-processing and running a state-of-art encoder-decoder based deep convolutional neural network (CNN) algorithm for automatically generating a tree/non-tree map for almost a quarter million scenes. The entire processing chain including generation of the largest open source existing aerial/satellite image training database was performed at the NEX supercomputing and storage facility. We believe the resulting forest cover product will substantially contribute to filling the gaps in ongoing carbon and ecological monitoring research and help quantifying the errors and uncertainties in derived products.

Ecological Monitoring and Compliance Program 2010 Report

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Hansen, D.J.; Anderson, D.C.; Hall, D.B.

The Ecological Monitoring and Compliance (EMAC) Program, funded through the U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration Nevada Site Office (NNSA/NSO), monitors the ecosystem of the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS) and ensures compliance with laws and regulations pertaining to NNSS biota. This report summarizes the program’s activities conducted by National Security Technologies, LLC (NSTec), during calendar year 2010. Program activities included (a) biological surveys at proposed construction sites, (b) desert tortoise compliance, (c) ecosystem monitoring, (d) sensitive plant species monitoring, (e) sensitive and protected/regulated animal monitoring, (f) habitat restoration monitoring, and (g) monitoring of the Nonproliferation Test andmore » Evaluation Complex (NPTEC). During 2010, all applicable laws, regulations, and permit requirements were met, enabling EMAC to achieve its intended goals and objectives.« less

Ecological Monitoring and Compliance Program 2012 Report

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Hall, Derek B.; Anderson, David C.; Greger, Paul D.

The Ecological Monitoring and Compliance Program (EMAC), funded through the U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration Nevada Field Office (NNSA/NFO, formerly Nevada Site Office), monitors the ecosystem of the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS) and ensures compliance with laws and regulations pertaining to NNSS biota. This report summarizes the program’s activities conducted by National Security Technologies, LLC (NSTec), during calendar year 2012. Program activities included (a) biological surveys at proposed construction sites, (b) desert tortoise compliance, (c) ecosystem monitoring, (d) sensitive plant species monitoring, (e) sensitive and protected/regulated animal monitoring, (f) habitat restoration monitoring, and (g) monitoring ofmore » the Nonproliferation Test and Evaluation Complex (NPTEC). During 2012, all applicable laws, regulations, and permit requirements were met, enabling EMAC to achieve its intended goals and objectives.« less

Beliefs about the Potential Impacts of Exploiting Non-Timber Forest Products Predict Voluntary Participation in Monitoring

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Dantas Brites, Alice; Morsello, Carla

2017-06-01

Harvesting and trading non-timber forest products is advocated as a win-win strategy for conservation and development, yet it can produce negative ecological and socioeconomic impacts. Hence, monitoring exploitation outcomes is essential, and participatory monitoring has been suggested to be the most suitable approach. Among possible approaches, participatory monitoring is preferred because it is likely to increase people's awareness and beliefs regarding impacts or potential impacts, thus inducing behavioral changes, although the evidence in this regard is contradictory. We therefore evaluated whether people's beliefs about the potential ecological and socioeconomic impacts of non-timber forest product exploitation increased their likelihood of volunteering to monitor. We studied a community of forest inhabitants in the Brazilian Amazon who harvested and traded a commercially important non-timber forest product. Two methods of data gathering were employed: (i) a survey of 166 adults (51 households) to evaluate people's beliefs and their stated intention to engage in four different monitoring tasks and (ii) four pilot monitoring tasks to evaluate who actually participated. Based on mixed-effects regressions, the results indicated that beliefs regarding both types of impacts could predict participation in certain tasks, although gender, age and schooling were occasionally stronger predictors. On average, people had stronger beliefs about potential socioeconomic impacts than about potential ecological impacts, with the former also predicting participation in ecological data gathering. This finding reinforces the importance of monitoring both types of impacts to help achieve the win-win outcomes originally proposed by non-timber forest product trade initiatives.

Beliefs about the Potential Impacts of Exploiting Non-Timber Forest Products Predict Voluntary Participation in Monitoring.

PubMed

Dantas Brites, Alice; Morsello, Carla

2017-06-01

Harvesting and trading non-timber forest products is advocated as a win-win strategy for conservation and development, yet it can produce negative ecological and socioeconomic impacts. Hence, monitoring exploitation outcomes is essential, and participatory monitoring has been suggested to be the most suitable approach. Among possible approaches, participatory monitoring is preferred because it is likely to increase people's awareness and beliefs regarding impacts or potential impacts, thus inducing behavioral changes, although the evidence in this regard is contradictory. We therefore evaluated whether people's beliefs about the potential ecological and socioeconomic impacts of non-timber forest product exploitation increased their likelihood of volunteering to monitor. We studied a community of forest inhabitants in the Brazilian Amazon who harvested and traded a commercially important non-timber forest product. Two methods of data gathering were employed: (i) a survey of 166 adults (51 households) to evaluate people's beliefs and their stated intention to engage in four different monitoring tasks and (ii) four pilot monitoring tasks to evaluate who actually participated. Based on mixed-effects regressions, the results indicated that beliefs regarding both types of impacts could predict participation in certain tasks, although gender, age and schooling were occasionally stronger predictors. On average, people had stronger beliefs about potential socioeconomic impacts than about potential ecological impacts, with the former also predicting participation in ecological data gathering. This finding reinforces the importance of monitoring both types of impacts to help achieve the win-win outcomes originally proposed by non-timber forest product trade initiatives.

Landsat-Derived, Time-Series Remote Sensing Analysis of Fire Regime, Microclimate, and Urbanization's Influence on Biodiversity in the Santa Monica Mountain Coastal Range

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ma, J.; Dmochowski, J. E.

2016-12-01

Southern California's Santa Monica Mountain coastal range hosts chaparral and coastal sage scrub ecosystems with distinct, local variations in their fire regime, microclimate, and proximity to urbanization. The high biodiversity combined with ongoing human impact make monitoring the ecological and land cover changes crucial. Due to their extensive, continuous temporal coverage and high spatial resolution, Landsat data are well suited to this purpose. Landsat-derived time-series NDVI data and classification maps have been compiled to identify regions most sensitive to change in order to determine the effects of fire regime, geography, and urbanization on vegetative changes; and assess the encroachment of non-native grasses. Spatial analysis of the classification maps identified the factors more conducive to land-cover changes as native shrubs were replaced with non-native grasses. Understanding the dynamics that govern semi-arid resilience, overall greening, and fire regime is important to predicting and managing large scale ecosystem changes as pressures from global climate change and urbanization intensify.

Appendix A: Ecoprovinces of the Central North American Cordillera and adjacent plains

Treesearch

Dennis A. Demarchi

1994-01-01

The fundamental difference between the map presented here and other regional ecosystem classifications is that this map's ecological units are based on climatic processes rather than vegetation communities (map appears at the end of this appendix). Macroclimatic processes are the physical and thermodynamic interaction between climatic controls, or the relatively...

15-METER LANDSAT ANALYSES OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER - MAP SERIES FROM HEADWATERS IN THE GULF OF MEXICO

EPA Science Inventory

The purpose of the Mississippi River map series is to provide reference for ecological vulnerability throughout the entire Mississippi River Basin, which is a forthcoming product. This map series product consists of seven 32 inch x 40 inch posters, with a nominal scale of 1 inch ...

Ecological effects of the Hayman Fire - Part 3: Soil properties, erosion, and implications for rehabilitation and aquatic ecosystems

Treesearch

Jan E. Cipra; Eugene F. Kelly; Lee MacDonald; John Norman

2003-01-01

This team was asked to address three questions regarding soil properties, erosion and sedimentation, and how aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems have responded or could respond to various land management options. We have used soil survey maps, burn severity maps, and digital elevation model (DEM) maps as primary map data. We used our own field measurements and...

Developing an Agro-Ecological Zoning Model for Tumbleweed (Salsola kali), as Energy Crop in Drylands of Argentina

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Falasca, Silvia; Pitta-Alvarez, Sandra; Ulberich, Ana

2016-12-01

Salsola kali is considered extremely valuable as an energy crop worldwide because it adapts easily to environments with strong abiotic stresses (hydric, saline and alkaline) and produces large amounts of biomass in drylands. This species is categorized as an important weed in Argentina. The aim of this work was to design an agro-ecological zoning model for tumbleweed in Argentina, employing a Geography Information System. Based on the bioclimatic requirements for the species and the climatic data for Argentina (1981-2010 period), an agro-climatic suitability map was drawn. This map was superimposed on the saline and alkaline soil maps delineated by the Food and Agriculture Organization for dry climates, generating the agro-ecological zoning on a scale of 1 : 500 000. This zoning revealed very suitable and suitable cultivation areas on halomorphic soils. The potential growing areas extend from N of the Salta province (approximately 22° S) to the Santa Cruz province (50° S). The use of tumbleweed on halomorphic soils under semi-arid to arid conditions, for the dual purpose of forage use and source of lignocellulosic material for bioenergy, could improve agricultural productivity in these lands. Furthermore, it could also contribute to their environmental sustainability, since the species can be used to reclaim saline soils over the years. Based on international bibliography, the authors outlined an agro-ecological zoning model. This model may be applied to any part of the world, using the agro-ecological limits presented here.

Mapping the ecological dimensions and potential distributions of endangered relic shrubs in western Ordos biodiversity center

PubMed Central

Zhu, Geng-Ping; Li, Hui-Qi; Zhao, Li; Man, Liang; Liu, Qiang

2016-01-01

Potential distributions of endemic relic shrubs in western Ordos were poorly mapped, which hindered our implementation of proper conservation. Here we investigated the applicability of ecological niche modeling for endangered relic shrubs to detect areas of priority for biodiversity conservation and analyze differences in ecological niche spaces used by relic shrubs. We applied ordination and niche modeling techniques to assess main environmental drivers of five endemic relic shrubs in western Ordos, namely, Ammopiptanthus mongolicus, Amygdalus mongolica, Helianthemum songaricum, Potaninia mongolica, and Tetraena mongolica. We calculated niche overlap metrics in gridded environmental spaces and compared geographical projections of ecological niches to determine similarities and differences of niches occupied by relic shrubs. All studied taxa presented different responses to environmental factors, which resulted in a unique combination of niche conditions. Precipitation availability and soil quality characteristics play important roles in the distributions of most shrubs. Each relic shrub is constrained by a unique set of environmental conditions, the distribution of one species cannot be implied by the distribution of another, highlighting the inadequacy of one-fits-all type of conservation measure. Our stacked habitat suitability maps revealed regions around Yellow River, which are highly suitable for most species, thereby providing high conservation value. PMID:27199260

Mapping the ecological dimensions and potential distributions of endangered relic shrubs in western Ordos biodiversity center.

PubMed

Zhu, Geng-Ping; Li, Hui-Qi; Zhao, Li; Man, Liang; Liu, Qiang

2016-05-20

Potential distributions of endemic relic shrubs in western Ordos were poorly mapped, which hindered our implementation of proper conservation. Here we investigated the applicability of ecological niche modeling for endangered relic shrubs to detect areas of priority for biodiversity conservation and analyze differences in ecological niche spaces used by relic shrubs. We applied ordination and niche modeling techniques to assess main environmental drivers of five endemic relic shrubs in western Ordos, namely, Ammopiptanthus mongolicus, Amygdalus mongolica, Helianthemum songaricum, Potaninia mongolica, and Tetraena mongolica. We calculated niche overlap metrics in gridded environmental spaces and compared geographical projections of ecological niches to determine similarities and differences of niches occupied by relic shrubs. All studied taxa presented different responses to environmental factors, which resulted in a unique combination of niche conditions. Precipitation availability and soil quality characteristics play important roles in the distributions of most shrubs. Each relic shrub is constrained by a unique set of environmental conditions, the distribution of one species cannot be implied by the distribution of another, highlighting the inadequacy of one-fits-all type of conservation measure. Our stacked habitat suitability maps revealed regions around Yellow River, which are highly suitable for most species, thereby providing high conservation value.

Modelling and mapping tick dynamics using volunteered observations.

PubMed

Garcia-Martí, Irene; Zurita-Milla, Raúl; van Vliet, Arnold J H; Takken, Willem

2017-11-14

Tick populations and tick-borne infections have steadily increased since the mid-1990s posing an ever-increasing risk to public health. Yet, modelling tick dynamics remains challenging because of the lack of data and knowledge on this complex phenomenon. Here we present an approach to model and map tick dynamics using volunteered data. This approach is illustrated with 9 years of data collected by a group of trained volunteers who sampled active questing ticks (AQT) on a monthly basis and for 15 locations in the Netherlands. We aimed at finding the main environmental drivers of AQT at multiple time-scales, and to devise daily AQT maps at the national level for 2014. Tick dynamics is a complex ecological problem driven by biotic (e.g. pathogens, wildlife, humans) and abiotic (e.g. weather, landscape) factors. We enriched the volunteered AQT collection with six types of weather variables (aggregated at 11 temporal scales), three types of satellite-derived vegetation indices, land cover, and mast years. Then, we applied a feature engineering process to derive a set of 101 features to characterize the conditions that yielded a particular count of AQT on a date and location. To devise models predicting the AQT, we use a time-aware Random Forest regression method, which is suitable to find non-linear relationships in complex ecological problems, and provides an estimation of the most important features to predict the AQT. We trained a model capable of fitting AQT with reduced statistical metrics. The multi-temporal study on the feature importance indicates that variables linked to water levels in the atmosphere (i.e. evapotranspiration, relative humidity) consistently showed a higher explanatory power than previous works using temperature. As a product of this study, we are able of mapping daily tick dynamics at the national level. This study paves the way towards the design of new applications in the fields of environmental research, nature management, and public health. It also illustrates how Citizen Science initiatives produce geospatial data collections that can support scientific analysis, thus enabling the monitoring of complex environmental phenomena.

Endangered Cultural Heritage: Global Mapping of Protected and Heritage Sites

DTIC Science & Technology

2017-07-01

the physical, ecologi - cal, and sociocultural attributes for transition into existing Programs of ERDC/CERL MP-17-1 12 Records. The development of...ENSITE’s Qualitative Assessment Frame- work allows physical, ecological , and sociocultural environmental attrib- utes to be spatially defined in...support of the commander’s intent. Furthermore, research as part of ENSITE develops a statistical algorithm to classify physical, ecological , and

LANDSCAPE SCALE INDICATORS OF MINING ACTIVITY

EPA Science Inventory

Ecological indicators of stress are used by the Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program (EMAP) to quantify the status, trends and changes of ecological goods and services. The purpose of developing landscape indicators of stress is to identify environmental and ecological...

77 FR 13238 - Partial Approval and Promulgation of Implementation Plans; Washington: Infrastructure...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2012-03-06

... from the Washington State Department of Ecology (Ecology) to demonstrate that the SIP meets the...; Chapter 43.21 RCW Department of Ecology; Chapter 34.05 RCW Administrative Procedure Act; Chapter 42.30 RCW...) which requires Ecology to provide for or conduct surveillance program that: monitors the quality of the...

Mapping Plant Diversity and Composition Across North Carolina Piedmont Forest Landscapes Using Lidar-Hyperspectral Remote Sensing

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hakkenberg, Christopher R.

Forest modification, from local stress to global change, has given rise to efforts to model, map, and monitor critical properties of forest communities like structure, composition, and diversity. Predictive models based on data from spatially-nested field plots and LiDAR-hyperspectral remote sensing systems are one particularly effective means towards the otherwise prohibitively resource-intensive task of consistently characterizing forest community dynamics at landscape scales. However, to date, most predictive models fail to account for actual (rather than idealized) species and community distributions, are unsuccessful in predicting understory components in structurally and taxonomically heterogeneous forests, and may suffer from diminished predictive accuracy due to incongruity in scale and precision between field plot samples, remotely-sensed data, and target biota of varying size and density. This three-part study addresses these and other concerns in the modeling and mapping of emergent properties of forest communities by shifting the scope of prediction from the individual or taxon to the whole stand or community. It is, after all, at the stand scale where emergent properties like functional processes, biodiversity, and habitat aggregate and manifest. In the first study, I explore the relationship between forest structure (a proxy for successional demographics and resource competition) and tree species diversity in the North Carolina Piedmont, highlighting the empirical basis and potential for utilizing forest structure from LiDAR in predictive models of tree species diversity. I then extend these conclusions to map landscape pattern in multi-scale vascular plant diversity as well as turnover in community-continua at varying compositional resolutions in a North Carolina Piedmont landscape using remotely-sensed LiDAR-hyperspectral estimates of topography, canopy structure, and foliar biochemistry. Recognizing that the distinction between correlation and causation mirrors that between knowledge and understanding, all three studies distinguish between prediction of pattern and inference of process. Thus, in addition to advancing mapping methodologies relevant to a range of forest ecosystem management and monitoring applications, all three studies are noteworthy for assessing the ecological relationship between environmental predictors and emergent landscape patterns in plant composition and diversity in North Carolina Piedmont forests.

Mapping of the Seagrass Cover Along the Mediterranean Coast of Turkey Using Landsat 8 Oli Images

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bakirman, T.; Gumusay, M. U.; Tuney, I.

2016-06-01

Benthic habitat is defined as ecological environment where marine animals, plants and other organisms live in. Benthic habitat mapping is defined as plotting the distribution and extent of habitats to create a map with complete coverage of the seabed showing distinct boundaries separating adjacent habitats or the use of spatially continuous environmental data sets to represent and predict biological patterns on the seafloor. Seagrass is an essential endemic marine species that prevents coast erosion and regulates carbon dioxide absorption in both undersea and atmosphere. Fishing, mining, pollution and other human activities cause serious damage to seabed ecosystems and reduce benthic biodiversity. According to the latest studies, only 5-10% of the seafloor is mapped, therefore it is not possible to manage resources effectively, protect ecologically important areas. In this study, it is aimed to map seagrass cover using Landsat 8 OLI images in the northern part of Mediterranean coast of Turkey. After pre-processing (e.g. radiometric, atmospheric, water depth correction) of Landsat images, coverage maps are produced with supervised classification using in-situ data which are underwater photos and videos. Result maps and accuracy assessment are presented and discussed.

Evaluating ecological monitoring of civic environmental stewardship in the Green-Duwamish watershed, Washington

Treesearch

Jacob C. Sheppard; Clare M. Ryan; Dale J. Blahna

2017-01-01

The ecological outcomes of civic environmental stewardship are poorly understood, especially at scales larger than individual sites. In this study we characterized civic environmental stewardship programs in the Green-Duwamish watershed in King County, WA, and evaluated the extent to which stewardship outcomes were monitored. We developed a four-step process based on...

FFI: What it is and what it can do for you

Treesearch

Duncan C. Lutes; MaryBeth Keifer; Nathan C. Benson; John F. Caratti

2009-01-01

A new monitoring tool called FFI (FEAT/FIREMON Integrated) has been developed to assist managers with collection, storage and analysis of ecological information. The tool was developed through the complementary integration of two fire effects monitoring systems commonly used in the United States: FIREMON and the Fire Ecology Assessment Tool (FEAT). FFI provides...

Forest Connectivity Regions of Canada Using Circuit Theory and Image Analysis

PubMed Central

Pelletier, David; Lapointe, Marc-Élie; Wulder, Michael A.; White, Joanne C.; Cardille, Jeffrey A.

2017-01-01

Ecological processes are increasingly well understood over smaller areas, yet information regarding interconnections and the hierarchical nature of ecosystems remains less studied and understood. Information on connectivity over large areas with high resolution source information provides for both local detail and regional context. The emerging capacity to apply circuit theory to create maps of omnidirectional connectivity provides an opportunity for improved and quantitative depictions of forest connectivity, supporting the formation and testing of hypotheses about the density of animal movement, ecosystem structure, and related links to natural and anthropogenic forces. In this research, our goal was to delineate regions where connectivity regimes are similar across the boreal region of Canada using new quantitative analyses for characterizing connectivity over large areas (e.g., millions of hectares). Utilizing the Earth Observation for Sustainable Development of forests (EOSD) circa 2000 Landsat-derived land-cover map, we created and analyzed a national-scale map of omnidirectional forest connectivity at 25m resolution over 10000 tiles of 625 km2 each, spanning the forested regions of Canada. Using image recognition software to detect corridors, pinch points, and barriers to movements at multiple spatial scales in each tile, we developed a simple measure of the structural complexity of connectivity patterns in omnidirectional connectivity maps. We then mapped the Circuitscape resistance distance measure and used it in conjunction with the complexity data to study connectivity characteristics in each forested ecozone. Ecozone boundaries masked substantial systematic patterns in connectivity characteristics that are uncovered using a new classification of connectivity patterns that revealed six clear groups of forest connectivity patterns found in Canada. The resulting maps allow exploration of omnidirectional forest connectivity patterns at full resolution while permitting quantitative analyses of connectivity over broad areas, informing modeling, planning and monitoring efforts. PMID:28146573

Mapping topographic plant location properties using a dense matching approach

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Niederheiser, Robert; Rutzinger, Martin; Lamprecht, Andrea; Bardy-Durchhalter, Manfred; Pauli, Harald; Winkler, Manuela

2017-04-01

Within the project MEDIALPS (Disentangling anthropogenic drivers of climate change impacts on alpine plant species: Alps vs. Mediterranean mountains) six regions in Alpine and in Mediterranean mountain regions are investigated to assess how plant species respond to climate change. The project is embedded in the Global Observation Research Initiative in Alpine Environments (GLORIA), which is a well-established global monitoring initiative for systematic observation of changes in the plant species composition and soil temperature on mountain summits worldwide to discern accelerating climate change pressures on these fragile alpine ecosystems. Close-range sensing techniques such as terrestrial photogrammetry are well suited for mapping terrain topography of small areas with high resolution. Lightweight equipment, flexible positioning for image acquisition in the field, and independence on weather conditions (i.e. wind) make this a feasible method for in-situ data collection. New developments of dense matching approaches allow high quality 3D terrain mapping with less requirements for field set-up. However, challenges occur in post-processing and required data storage if many sites have to be mapped. Within MEDIALPS dense matching is used for mapping high resolution topography for 284 3x3 meter plots deriving information on vegetation coverage, roughness, slope, aspect and modelled solar radiation. This information helps identifying types of topography-dependent ecological growing conditions and evaluating the potential for existing refugial locations for specific plant species under climate change. This research is conducted within the project MEDIALPS - Disentangling anthropogenic drivers of climate change impacts on alpine plant species: Alps vs. Mediterranean mountains funded by the Earth System Sciences Programme of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

Assessment of marine ecosystem services indicators: Experiences and lessons learned from 14 European case studies.

PubMed

Lillebø, Ana I; Somma, Francesca; Norén, Katja; Gonçalves, Jorge; Alves, M Fátima; Ballarini, Elisabetta; Bentes, Luis; Bielecka, Malgorzata; Chubarenko, Boris V; Heise, Susanne; Khokhlov, Valeriy; Klaoudatos, Dimitris; Lloret, Javier; Margonski, Piotr; Marín, Atucha; Matczak, Magdalena; Oen, Amy Mp; Palmieri, Maria G; Przedrzymirska, Joanna; Różyński, Grzegorz; Sousa, Ana I; Sousa, Lisa P; Tuchkovenko, Yurii; Zaucha, Jacek

2016-10-01

This article shares the experiences, observations, and discussions that occurred during the completing of an ecosystem services (ES) indicator framework to be used at European Union (EU) and Member States' level. The experience base was drawn from 3 European research projects and 14 associated case study sites that include 13 transitional-water bodies (specifically 8 coastal lagoons, 4 riverine estuaries, and 1 fjord) and 1 coastal-water ecosystem. The ES pertinent to each case study site were identified along with indicators of these ES and data sources that could be used for mapping. During the process, several questions and uncertainties arose, followed by discussion, leading to these main lessons learned: 1) ES identification: Some ES that do not seem important at the European scale emerge as relevant at regional or local scales; 2) ES indicators: When direct indicators are not available, proxies for indicators (indirect indicators) might be used, including combined data on monitoring requirements imposed by EU legislation and international agreements; 3) ES mapping: Boundaries and appropriate data spatial resolution must be established because ES can be mapped at different temporal and spatial scales. We also acknowledge that mapping and assessment of ES supports the dialogue between human well-being and ecological status. From an evidence-based marine planning-process point of view, mapping and assessment of marine ES are of paramount importance to sustainable use of marine natural capital and to halt the loss of marine biodiversity. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2016;12:726-734. © 2016 SETAC. © 2016 SETAC.

Towards understanding temporal and spatial dynamics of seagrass landscapes using time-series remote sensing

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lyons, Mitchell B.; Roelfsema, Chris M.; Phinn, Stuart R.

2013-03-01

The spatial and temporal dynamics of seagrasses have been well studied at the leaf to patch scales, however, the link to large spatial extent landscape and population dynamics is still unresolved in seagrass ecology. Traditional remote sensing approaches have lacked the temporal resolution and consistency to appropriately address this issue. This study uses two high temporal resolution time-series of thematic seagrass cover maps to examine the spatial and temporal dynamics of seagrass at both an inter- and intra-annual time scales, one of the first globally to do so at this scale. Previous work by the authors developed an object-based approach to map seagrass cover level distribution from a long term archive of Landsat TM and ETM+ images on the Eastern Banks (≈200 km2), Moreton Bay, Australia. In this work a range of trend and time-series analysis methods are demonstrated for a time-series of 23 annual maps from 1988 to 2010 and a time-series of 16 monthly maps during 2008-2010. Significant new insight was presented regarding the inter- and intra-annual dynamics of seagrass persistence over time, seagrass cover level variability, seagrass cover level trajectory, and change in area of seagrass and cover levels over time. Overall we found that there was no significant decline in total seagrass area on the Eastern Banks, but there was a significant decline in seagrass cover level condition. A case study of two smaller communities within the Eastern Banks that experienced a decline in both overall seagrass area and condition are examined in detail, highlighting possible differences in environmental and process drivers. We demonstrate how trend and time-series analysis enabled seagrass distribution to be appropriately assessed in context of its spatial and temporal history and provides the ability to not only quantify change, but also describe the type of change. We also demonstrate the potential use of time-series analysis products to investigate seagrass growth and decline as well as the processes that drive it. This study demonstrates clear benefits over traditional seagrass mapping and monitoring approaches, and provides a proof of concept for the use of trend and time-series analysis of remotely sensed seagrass products to benefit current endeavours in seagrass ecology.

A New Map of Standardized Terrestrial Ecosystems of the Conterminous United States

USGS Publications Warehouse

Sayre, Roger G.; Comer, Patrick; Warner, Harumi; Cress, Jill

2009-01-01

A new map of standardized, mesoscale (tens to thousands of hectares) terrestrial ecosystems for the conterminous United States was developed by using a biophysical stratification approach. The ecosystems delineated in this top-down, deductive modeling effort are described in NatureServe's classification of terrestrial ecological systems of the United States. The ecosystems were mapped as physically distinct areas and were associated with known distributions of vegetation assemblages by using a standardized methodology first developed for South America. This approach follows the geoecosystems concept of R.J. Huggett and the ecosystem geography approach of R.G. Bailey. Unique physical environments were delineated through a geospatial combination of national data layers for biogeography, bioclimate, surficial materials lithology, land surface forms, and topographic moisture potential. Combining these layers resulted in a comprehensive biophysical stratification of the conterminous United States, which produced 13,482 unique biophysical areas. These were considered as fundamental units of ecosystem structure and were aggregated into 419 potential terrestrial ecosystems. The ecosystems classification effort preceded the mapping effort and involved the independent development of diagnostic criteria, descriptions, and nomenclature for describing expert-derived ecological systems. The aggregation and labeling of the mapped ecosystem structure units into the ecological systems classification was accomplished in an iterative, expert-knowledge-based process using automated rulesets for identifying ecosystems on the basis of their biophysical and biogeographic attributes. The mapped ecosystems, at a 30-meter base resolution, represent an improvement in spatial and thematic (class) resolution over existing ecoregionalizations and are useful for a variety of applications, including ecosystem services assessments, climate change impact studies, biodiversity conservation, and resource management.

Quantitative retrieving forest ecological parameters based on remote sensing in Liping County of China

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tian, Qingjiu; Chen, Jing M.; Zheng, Guang; Xia, Xueqi; Chen, Junying

2006-09-01

Forest ecosystem is an important component of terrestrial ecosystem and plays an important role in global changes. Aboveground biomass (AGB) of forest ecosystem is an important factor in global carbon cycle studies. The purpose of this study was to retrieve the yearly Net Primary Productivity (NPP) of forest from the 8-days-interval MODIS-LAI images of a year and produce a yearly NPP distribution map. The LAI, DBH (diameter at breast height), tree height, and tree age field were measured in different 80 plots for Chinese fir, Masson pine, bamboo, broadleaf, mix forest in Liping County. Based on the DEM image and Landsat TM images acquired on May 14th, 2000, the geometric correction and terrain correction were taken. In addition, the "6S"model was used to gain the surface reflectance image. Then the correlation between Leaf Area Index (LAI) and Reduced Simple Ratio (RSR) was built. Combined with the Landcover map, forest stand map, the LAI, aboveground biomass, tree age map were produced respectively. After that, the 8-days- interval LAI images of a year, meteorology data, soil data, forest stand image and Landcover image were inputted into the BEPS model to get the NPP spatial distribution. At last, the yearly NPP spatial distribution map with 30m spatial resolution was produced. The values in those forest ecological parameters distribution maps were quite consistent with those of field measurements. So it's possible, feasible and time-saving to estimate forest ecological parameters at a large scale by using remote sensing.

EPA APPROACH TO EVALUATION OF INDICATORS FOR ECOLOGICAL RISK ASSESSMENT

EPA Science Inventory

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Research and Development (ORD) is continuing research efforts initiated by the Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program (EMAP) on ecological indicator development. An ORD Ecological Indicators Working Group has been form...

A Decision Support System for Ecosystem-Based Management of Tropical Coral Reef Environments

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Muller-Karger, F. E.; Eakin, C.; Guild, L. S.; Nemani, R. R.; Hu, C.; Lynds, S. E.; Li, J.; Vega-Rodriguez, M.; Coral Reef Watch Decision Support System Team

2010-12-01

We review a new collaborative program established between the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to augment the NOAA Coral Reef Watch decision-support system. NOAA has developed a Decision Support System (DSS) under the Coral Reef Watch (CRW) program to forecast environmental stress in coral reef ecosystems around the world. This DSS uses models and 50 km Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) to generate “HotSpot” and Degree Heating Week coral bleaching indices. These are used by scientists and resource managers around the world. These users, including National Marine Sanctuary managers, have expressed the need for higher spatial resolution tools to understand local issues. The project will develop a series of coral bleaching products at higher spatial resolution using Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and AVHRR data. We will generate and validate products at 1 km resolution for the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico, and test global assessments at 4 and 50 km. The project will also incorporate the Global Coral Reef Millennium Map, a 30-m resolution thematic classification of coral reefs developed by the NASA Landsat-7 Science Team, into the CRW. The Millennium Maps help understand the geomorphology of individual reefs around the world. The products will be available through the NOAA CRW and UNEP-WCMC web portals. The products will help users formulate policy options and management decisions. The augmented DSS has a global scope, yet it addresses the needs of local resource managers. The work complements efforts to map and monitor coral reef communities in the U.S. territories by NOAA, NASA, and the USGS, and is a contribution to international efforts in ecological forecasting of coral reefs under changing environments, coral reef research, resource management, and conservation. Acknowledgement: Funding is provided by the NASA Ecological Forecasting application area and by NOAA NESDIS.

[Dynamic monitoring and analysis of ecological environment in Weinan City, Northwest China based on RSEI model].

PubMed

Song, Hui Min; Xue, Liang

2016-12-01

Based on the data of remote sensing images from Landsat in 1995 and 2015, this paper used the principal component analysis (PCA) method to determine the weights of four ecological indexes (greenness, dryness, wetness and heat), and then selected a evaluation model of remote sensing based ecological index (RSEI) to monitor and analyze the ecological environment quality of Weinan City from 1995 to 2015. The results showed that the mean values of RSEI in Weinan City increased from 0.489 to 0.556 during 1995-2015, which indicated the ecological environment qua-lity had been improved. The improved area of ecological quality was mainly distributed in the central area of Weinan City and its proportion was 49.6%. While the proportion of ecological environment degradation was 15.4%, and such areas were mainly distributed in some mine areas of Hancheng City and the southern Weinan (Weinan Section in North Qinling Mountains). The quality of ecolo-gical environment was greatly influenced by the urban planning and construction in the study area. Generally, the ecological condition of Weinan City had been improved, which benefited from the attention and investment of government.

RadMap

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

RadMap is an interactive desktop tool featuring a nationwide geographic information systems (GIS) map of long-term radiation monitoring locations across the United States with access to key information about the monitor and the area surrounding it.

Small unmanned aerial vehicles (micro-UAVs, drones) in plant ecology1

PubMed Central

Cruzan, Mitchell B.; Weinstein, Ben G.; Grasty, Monica R.; Kohrn, Brendan F.; Hendrickson, Elizabeth C.; Arredondo, Tina M.; Thompson, Pamela G.

2016-01-01

Premise of the study: Low-elevation surveys with small aerial drones (micro–unmanned aerial vehicles [UAVs]) may be used for a wide variety of applications in plant ecology, including mapping vegetation over small- to medium-sized regions. We provide an overview of methods and procedures for conducting surveys and illustrate some of these applications. Methods: Aerial images were obtained by flying a small drone along transects over the area of interest. Images were used to create a composite image (orthomosaic) and a digital surface model (DSM). Vegetation classification was conducted manually and using an automated routine. Coverage of an individual species was estimated from aerial images. Results: We created a vegetation map for the entire region from the orthomosaic and DSM, and mapped the density of one species. Comparison of our manual and automated habitat classification confirmed that our mapping methods were accurate. A species with high contrast to the background matrix allowed adequate estimate of its coverage. Discussion: The example surveys demonstrate that small aerial drones are capable of gathering large amounts of information on the distribution of vegetation and individual species with minimal impact to sensitive habitats. Low-elevation aerial surveys have potential for a wide range of applications in plant ecology. PMID:27672518

A methodology for eliciting, representing, and analysing stakeholder knowledge for decision making on complex socio-ecological systems: from cognitive maps to agent-based models.

PubMed

Elsawah, Sondoss; Guillaume, Joseph H A; Filatova, Tatiana; Rook, Josefine; Jakeman, Anthony J

2015-03-15

This paper aims to contribute to developing better ways for incorporating essential human elements in decision making processes for modelling of complex socio-ecological systems. It presents a step-wise methodology for integrating perceptions of stakeholders (qualitative) into formal simulation models (quantitative) with the ultimate goal of improving understanding and communication about decision making in complex socio-ecological systems. The methodology integrates cognitive mapping and agent based modelling. It cascades through a sequence of qualitative/soft and numerical methods comprising: (1) Interviews to elicit mental models; (2) Cognitive maps to represent and analyse individual and group mental models; (3) Time-sequence diagrams to chronologically structure the decision making process; (4) All-encompassing conceptual model of decision making, and (5) computational (in this case agent-based) Model. We apply the proposed methodology (labelled ICTAM) in a case study of viticulture irrigation in South Australia. Finally, we use strengths-weakness-opportunities-threats (SWOT) analysis to reflect on the methodology. Results show that the methodology leverages the use of cognitive mapping to capture the richness of decision making and mental models, and provides a combination of divergent and convergent analysis methods leading to the construction of an Agent Based Model. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The perceived impacts of monitoring activities on intergovernmental relationships: some lessons from the Ecological Monitoring Network and Water in Focus.

PubMed

de Kool, Dennis

2015-11-01

An increasing stream of monitoring activities is entering the public sector. This article analyzes the perceived impacts of monitoring activities on intergovernmental relationships. Our theoretical framework is based on three approaches to monitoring and intergovernmental relationships, namely, a rational, a political, and a cultural perspective. Our empirical insights are based on two Dutch case studies, namely, the Ecological Monitoring Network and the Water in Focus reports. The conclusion is that monitoring activities have an impact on intergovernmental relationships in terms of standardizing working processes and methods, formalizing information relationships, ritualizing activities, and developing shared concepts ("common grammar"). An important challenge is to deal with the politicization of intergovernmental relationships, because monitoring reports can also stimulate political discussions about funding, the design of the instrument, administrative burdens, and supervisory relationships.

Comparison and assessment of coarse resolution land cover maps for Northern Eurasia

Treesearch

Dirk Pflugmacher; Olga N. Krankina; Warren B. Cohen; Mark A. Friedl; Damien Sulla-Menashe; Robert E. Kennedy; Peder Nelson; Tatiana V. Loboda; Tobias Kuemmerle; Egor Dyukarev; Vladimir Elsadov; Viacheslav I. Kharuk

2011-01-01

Information on land cover at global and continental scales is critical for addressing a range of ecological, socioeconomic and policy questions. Global land cover maps have evolved rapidly in the last decade, but efforts to evaluate map uncertainties have been limited, especially in remote areas like Northern Eurasia. Northern Eurasia comprises a particularly diverse...

Mapping severe fire potential across the contiguous United States

Treesearch

Brett H. Davis

2016-01-01

The Fire Severity Mapping System (FIRESEV) project is an effort to provide critical information and tools to fire managers that enhance their ability to assess potential ecological effects of wildland fire. A major component of FIRESEV is the development of a Severe Fire Potential Map (SFPM), a geographic dataset covering the contiguous United States (CONUS) that...

Applicability of NASQAN data for ecosystem assessments on the Missouri River

USGS Publications Warehouse

Blevins, Dale W.; Fairchild, James

2001-01-01

The effectiveness of ecological restoration efforts on large developed rivers is often unknown because comprehensive ecological monitoring programs are often absent. Although Eulerian water-quality monitoring programs, such as the National Stream Quality Accounting Network (NASQAN) program, are more common, they are usually not designed for ecological assessment. Therefore, this paper addresses the value of NASQAN for ecological assessments on the Missouri River and identifies potential program additions and modifications to assess certain ecological changes in physical habitat, biological structure and function, and ecotoxicity. Five additional sites: The analysis of chlorophyll, mercury, ATP, potential endocrine disruptors, total trace elements, and selected total hydrophobic organics; and the hourly measurement of dissolved oxygen, turbidity, and temperature are recommended. Hourly measurements would require an entirely new operational aspect to NASQAN. However, the presence of data loggers and satellite transmitters in the gauging stations at all NASQAN sites substantially improves the feasibility of continuous water-quality monitoring. The use of semipermeable membrane devices (SPMDs) to monitor dissolved bioaccumulating organics and trace elements, identification and enumeration of zooplankton, and characterization of the bioavailability of organic matter are also recommended. The effect of biological processes on the conservative assumptions that are used in flux and source determinations of NASQAN constituents are also evaluated. Organic carbon, organic nitrogen, dissolved phosphate, and dissolved inorganic nitrogen are the NASQAN constituents most vulnerable to biological processes and thus violation of conservative assumptions.

Wyoming Basin Rapid Ecoregional Assessment

USGS Publications Warehouse

Carr, Natasha B.; Means, Robert E.

2013-01-01

The overall goal of the Wyoming Basin Rapid Ecoregional Assessment (REA) is to provide information that supports regional planning and analysis for the management of ecological resources. The REA provides an assessment of baseline ecological conditions, an evaluation of current risks from drivers of ecosystem change (including energy development, fire, and invasive species), and a predictive capacity for evaluating future risks (including climate change). Additionally, the REA may be used for identifying priority areas for conservation or restoration and for assessing cumulative effects of multiple land uses. The Wyoming Basin REA will address Management Questions developed by the Bureau of Land Management and other agency partners for 8 major biomes and 19 species or species assemblages. The maps developed for addressing Management Questions will be integrated into overall maps of landscape-level ecological values and risks. The maps can be used to address the goals of the REA at a number of levels: for individual species, species assemblages, aquatic and terrestrial systems, and for the entire ecoregion. This allows flexibility in how the products of the REA are compiled to inform planning and management actions across a broad range of spatial scales.

Framework for ecological monitoring on lands of Alaska National Wildlife Refuges and their partners

USGS Publications Warehouse

Woodward, Andrea; Beever, Erik A.

2010-01-01

National Wildlife Refuges in Alaska and throughout the U.S. have begun developing a spatially comprehensive monitoring program to inform management decisions, and to provide data to broader research projects. In an era of unprecedented rates of climate change, monitoring is essential to detecting, understanding, communicating and mitigating climate-change effects on refuge and other resources under the protection of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and requires monitoring results to address spatial scales broader than individual refuges. This document provides guidance for building a monitoring program for refuges in Alaska that meets refuge-specific management needs while also allowing synthesis and summary of ecological conditions at the ecoregional and statewide spatial scales.

Climate patterns as predictors of amphibians species richness and indicators of potential stress

USGS Publications Warehouse

Battaglin, W.; Hay, L.; McCabe, G.; Nanjappa, P.; Gallant, Alisa L.

2005-01-01

Amphibians occupy a range of habitats throughout the world, but species richness is greatest in regions with moist, warm climates. We modeled the statistical relations of anuran and urodele species richness with mean annual climate for the conterminous United States, and compared the strength of these relations at national and regional levels. Model variables were calculated for county and subcounty mapping units, and included 40-year (1960-1999) annual mean and mean annual climate statistics, mapping unit average elevation, mapping unit land area, and estimates of anuran and urodele species richness. Climate data were derived from more than 7,500 first-order and cooperative meteorological stations and were interpolated to the mapping units using multiple linear regression models. Anuran and urodele species richness were calculated from the United States Geological Survey's Amphibian Research and Monitoring Initiative (ARMI) National Atlas for Amphibian Distributions. The national multivariate linear regression (MLR) model of anuran species richness had an adjusted coefficient of determination (R2) value of 0.64 and the national MLR model for urodele species richness had an R2 value of 0.45. Stratifying the United States by coarse-resolution ecological regions provided models for anUrans that ranged in R2 values from 0.15 to 0.78. Regional models for urodeles had R2 values. ranging from 0.27 to 0.74. In general, regional models for anurans were more strongly influenced by temperature variables, whereas precipitation variables had a larger influence on urodele models.

Mapping invasive aquatic vegetation in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta using hyperspectral imagery.

PubMed

Underwood, E C; Mulitsch, M J; Greenberg, J A; Whiting, M L; Ustin, S L; Kefauver, S C

2006-10-01

The ecological and economic impacts associated with invasive species are of critical concern to land managers. The ability to map the extent and severity of invasions would be a valuable contribution to management decisions relating to control and monitoring efforts. We investigated the use of hyperspectral imagery for mapping invasive aquatic plant species in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in the Central Valley of California, at two spatial scales. Sixty-four flightlines of HyMap hyperspectral imagery were acquired over the study region covering an area of 2,139 km(2) and field work was conducted to acquire GPS locations of target invasive species. We used spectral mixture analysis to classify two target invasive species; Brazilian waterweed (Egeria densa), a submerged invasive, and water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes), a floating emergent invasive. At the relatively fine spatial scale for five sites within the Delta (average size 51 ha) average classification accuracies were 93% for Brazilian waterweed and 73% for water hyacinth. However, at the coarser, Delta-wide scale (177,000 ha) these accuracy results were 29% for Brazilian waterweed and 65% for water hyacinth. The difference in accuracy is likely accounted for by the broad range in water turbidity and tide heights encountered across the Delta. These findings illustrate that hyperspectral imagery is a promising tool for discriminating target invasive species within the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta waterways although more work is needed to develop classification tools that function under changing environmental conditions.

RadMap Installation Instructions

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

RadMap is an interactive desktop tool featuring a nationwide geographic information systems (GIS) map of long-term radiation monitoring locations across the United States with access to key information about the monitor and the area surrounding it.

Toward the application of ecological concepts in EU coastal water management.

PubMed

de Jonge, Victor N

2007-01-01

The EU Water Framework Directive demands the protection of the functioning and the structure of our aquatic ecosystems. The defined means to realize this goal are: (1) optimization of the habitat providing conditions and (2) optimizing the water quality. The effects of the measures on the structure and functioning of the aquatic ecosystems then has to be assessed and judged. The available tool to do this is 'monitoring'. The present monitoring activities in The Netherlands cover target monitoring and trend monitoring. This is insufficient to meet the requirements of the EU. It is, given the EU demands, the ongoing budget reductions in The Netherlands and an increasing flow of unused new ecological concepts and theories (e.g. new theoretical insights related to resource competition theory, intermediate disturbance hypothesis and tools to judge the system quality like ecological network analysis) suggested to reconsider the present monitoring tasks among governmental services (final responsibility for the program and logistic support) and the academia (data analyses, data interpretation and development of concepts suitable for ecosystem modelling and tools to judge the quality of our ecosystems). This will lead to intensified co-operation between both arena's and consequently increased exchange of knowledge and ideas. Suggestions are done to extend the Dutch monitoring by surveillance monitoring and to change the focus from 'station oriented' to 'area oriented' without changing the operational aspects and its costs. The extended data sets will allow proper calibration and validation of developed dynamic ecosystem models which is not possible now. The described 'cost-effective' change in the environmental monitoring will also let biological and ecological theories play the pivotal role they should play in future integrated environmental management.

Use of EMAP Freshwater and Marine Data in EPA Region 10

Treesearch

Gretchen A. Hayslip; C. Lorraine Edmond; Lillian G. Herger

2006-01-01

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) designed the Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program (EMAP) to provide tools to monitor and assess the condition of the nation’s ecological resources. Since 1993, EPA Region 10 has worked with the States in our region to demonstrate the application of the ecological indicators and statistical designs developed by EMAP...

A geographically-referenced multiple-resource data management system for the oak savannas of the Malpai Borderland Region

Treesearch

Hui Chen; Cody L. Stropki; Peter F. Ffolliott; Gerald J. Gottfried

2009-01-01

Twelve watersheds in the oak savannas on the eastern side of the Peloncillo Mountains in the Southwestern Borderlands Region of New Mexico are being monitored to document the ecological and hydrologic characteristics, and to determine the effects of burning treatments on this ecosystem. Ecological components monitored include tree overstories, loadings of fuel...

Long Term Ecological Monitoring Program on the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska: An FIA adjunct inventory

Treesearch

Bowser John M. Morton; Edward Berg; Dawn Magness; Todd Eskelin

2009-01-01

Kenai National Wildlife Refuge (KENWR) has a legislative mandate "to conserve fish and wildlife populations and habitats in their natural diversity". To improve our understanding of spatial and temporal variation at the landscape level, we are developing the Long Term Ecological Monitoring Program (LTEMP) to assess change in biota on the sample frame used by...

Southwest Ecological Restoration Institutes (SWERI) Biophysical Monitoring Workshop Report

Treesearch

Joseph Seidenberg; Judy Springer; Tessa Nicolet; Mike Battaglia; Christina Vothja

2009-01-01

On October 15-16, 2009, the Southwest Ecological Restoration Institutes (SWERI) hosted a workshop in which the participants would 1) build a common understanding of the types of monitoring that are occurring in forested ecosystems of the Southwest; 2) analyze and agree on an efficient, yet robust set of biophysical variables that can be used by land mangers and...

The Challenge of High-resolution Mapping of Very Shallow Coastal Areas: Case Study of the Lagoon of Venice, Italy

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Madricardo, F.; Foglini, F.; Kruss, A.; Bajo, M.; Campiani, E.; Ferrarin, C.; Fogarin, S.; Grande, V.; Janowski, L.; Keppel, E.; Leidi, E.; Lorenzetti, G.; Maicu, F.; Maselli, V.; Montereale Gavazzi, G.; Pellegrini, C.; Petrizzo, A.; Prampolini, M.; Remia, A.; Rizzetto, F.; Rovere, M.; Sarretta, A.; Sigovini, M.; Toso, C.; Zaggia, L.; Trincardi, F.

2017-12-01

Very shallow coastal environments are often highly urbanized with half of the world's population and 13 of the largest mega-cities located close to the coast. These environments undergo rapid morphological changes due to natural and anthropogenic pressure that will likely be enhanced in the near future by mean sea-level rise. Therefore, there is a strong need for high resolution seafloor mapping to monitor and protect shallow coastal areas. To date, only about 5% of their seafloor has been mapped: their shallowness has prevented so far the use of underwater acoustics to reveal their morphological features; their turbidity often hindered the efficient use of LIDAR technology, particularly in lagoons and estuaries. The recent technological development of multibeam echosounder systems, however, enables these instruments to achieve very high performances also in such shallow environments. In this work, we present the results of an extensive multibeam survey carried out in the Lagoon of Venice (Italy) in 2013. The Lagoon of Venice is the biggest lagoon in the Mediterranean Sea (surface area of about 550 km2, average depth of about 1 m) and it is a UNESCO World Cultural and Natural Heritage site together with the historical city of Venice which is currently endangered by relative sea-level rise. Major engineering works are ongoing at the lagoon inlets (MOSE project) to protect Venice from flood events. In the last century, the morphology and ecology of the lagoon changed dramatically: the extent of the salt marshes was reduced by 60% and some parts of the lagoon deepened by more than 1 m with a net sediment flux exiting from the inlets. To understand and monitor the future evolution of the Lagoon of Venice in view of the inlet modifications and mean sea-level rise, CNR-ISMAR within the project RITMARE (a National Research Programme funded by the Italian Ministry of University and Research) carried out an extensive survey, involving a team of more than 25 scientists, to collect high resolution (0.5 m) bathymetry of key study areas such as the tidal inlets and channels. Bathymetric and backscatter intensity data are now employed for geomorphologic studies, habitat mapping and modelling representing a paradigm of a broad multidisciplinary approach to monitor shallow coastal systems.

Slope, Scarp and Sea Cliff Instability Susceptibility Mapping for Planning Regulations in Almada County, Portugal

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Marques, Fernando; Queiroz, Sónia; Gouveia, Luís; Vasconcelos, Manuel

2017-12-01

In Portugal, the modifications introduced in 2008 and 2012 in the National Ecological Reserve law (REN) included the mandatory study of slope instability, including slopes, natural scarps, and sea cliffs, at municipal or regional scale, with the purpose of avoiding the use of hazardous zones with buildings and other structures. The law also indicates specific methods to perform these studies, with different approaches for slope instability, natural scarps and sea cliffs. The methods used to produce the maps required by REN law, with modifications and improvements to the law specified methods, were applied to the 71 km2 territory of Almada County, and included: 1) Slope instability mapping using the statistically based Information Value method validated with the landslide inventory using ROC curves, which provided an AAC=0.964, with the higher susceptibility zones which cover at least 80% of the landslides of the inventory to be included in REN map. The map was object of a generalization process to overcome the inconveniences of the use of a pixel based approach. 2) Natural scarp mapping including setback areas near the top, defined according to the law and setback areas near the toe defined by the application of the shadow angle calibrated with the major rockfalls which occurred in the study area; 3) Sea cliffs mapping including two levels of setback zones near the top, and one setback zone at the cliffs toe, which were based on systematic inventories of cliff failures occurred between 1947 and 2010 in a large scale regional littoral monitoring project. In the paper are described the methods used and the results obtained in this study, which correspond to the final maps of areas to include in REN. The results obtained in this study may be considered as an example of good practice of the municipal authorities in terms of solid, technical and scientifically supported regulation definitions, hazard prevention and safe and sustainable land use management.

Electrocorticographic language mapping in children by high-gamma synchronization during spontaneous conversation: comparison with conventional electrical cortical stimulation.

PubMed

Arya, Ravindra; Wilson, J Adam; Vannest, Jennifer; Byars, Anna W; Greiner, Hansel M; Buroker, Jason; Fujiwara, Hisako; Mangano, Francesco T; Holland, Katherine D; Horn, Paul S; Crone, Nathan E; Rose, Douglas F

2015-02-01

This study describes development of a novel language mapping approach using high-γ modulation in electrocorticograph (ECoG) during spontaneous conversation, and its comparison with electrical cortical stimulation (ECS) in childhood-onset drug-resistant epilepsy. Patients undergoing invasive pre-surgical monitoring and able to converse with the investigator were eligible. ECoG signals and synchronized audio were acquired during quiet baseline and during natural conversation between investigator and the patient. Using Signal Modeling for Real-time Identification and Event Detection (SIGFRIED) procedure, a statistical model for baseline high-γ (70-116 Hz) power, and a single score for each channel representing the probability that the power features in the experimental signal window belonged to the baseline model, were calculated. Electrodes with significant high-γ responses (HGS) were plotted on the 3D cortical model. Sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values (PPV, NPV), and classification accuracy were calculated compared to ECS. Seven patients were included (4 males, mean age 10.28 ± 4.07 years). Significant high-γ responses were observed in classic language areas in the left hemisphere plus in some homologous right hemispheric areas. Compared with clinical standard ECS mapping, the sensitivity and specificity of HGS mapping was 88.89% and 63.64%, respectively, and PPV and NPV were 35.29% and 96.25%, with an overall accuracy of 68.24%. HGS mapping was able to correctly determine all ECS+ sites in 6 of 7 patients and all false-sites (ECS+, HGS- for visual naming, n = 3) were attributable to only 1 patient. This study supports the feasibility of language mapping with ECoG HGS during spontaneous conversation, and its accuracy compared to traditional ECS. Given long-standing concerns about ecological validity of ECS mapping of cued language tasks, and difficulties encountered with its use in children, ECoG mapping of spontaneous language may provide a valid alternative for clinical use. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Assessment of Forest Conservation Value Using a Species Distribution Model and Object-based Image Analysis

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jin, Y.; Lee, D. K.; Jeong, S. G.

2015-12-01

The ecological and social values of forests have recently been highlighted. Assessments of the biodiversity of forests, as well as their other ecological values, play an important role in regional and national conservation planning. The preservation of habitats is linked to the protection of biodiversity. For mapping habitats, species distribution model (SDM) is used for predicting suitable habitat of significant species, and such distribution modeling is increasingly being used in conservation science. However, the pixel-based analysis does not contain contextual or topological information. In order to provide more accurate habitats predictions, a continuous field view that assumes the real world is required. Here we analyze and compare at different scales, habitats of the Yellow Marten's(Martes Flavigula), which is a top predator and also an umbrella species in South Korea. The object-scale, which is a group of pixels that have similar spatial and spectral characteristics, and pixel-scale were used for SDM. Our analysis using the SDM at different scales suggests that object-scale analysis provides a superior representation of continuous habitat, and thus will be useful in forest conservation planning as well as for species habitat monitoring.

Maize Cropping Systems Mapping Using RapidEye Observations in Agro-Ecological Landscapes in Kenya.

PubMed

Richard, Kyalo; Abdel-Rahman, Elfatih M; Subramanian, Sevgan; Nyasani, Johnson O; Thiel, Michael; Jozani, Hosein; Borgemeister, Christian; Landmann, Tobias

2017-11-03

Cropping systems information on explicit scales is an important but rarely available variable in many crops modeling routines and of utmost importance for understanding pests and disease propagation mechanisms in agro-ecological landscapes. In this study, high spatial and temporal resolution RapidEye bio-temporal data were utilized within a novel 2-step hierarchical random forest (RF) classification approach to map areas of mono- and mixed maize cropping systems. A small-scale maize farming site in Machakos County, Kenya was used as a study site. Within the study site, field data was collected during the satellite acquisition period on general land use/land cover (LULC) and the two cropping systems. Firstly, non-cropland areas were masked out from other land use/land cover using the LULC mapping result. Subsequently an optimized RF model was applied to the cropland layer to map the two cropping systems (2nd classification step). An overall accuracy of 93% was attained for the LULC classification, while the class accuracies (PA: producer's accuracy and UA: user's accuracy) for the two cropping systems were consistently above 85%. We concluded that explicit mapping of different cropping systems is feasible in complex and highly fragmented agro-ecological landscapes if high resolution and multi-temporal satellite data such as 5 m RapidEye data is employed. Further research is needed on the feasibility of using freely available 10-20 m Sentinel-2 data for wide-area assessment of cropping systems as an important variable in numerous crop productivity models.

Soil Salinity Mapping in Everglades National Park Using Remote Sensing Techniques

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Su, H.; Khadim, F. K.; Blankenship, J.; Sobhan, K.

2017-12-01

The South Florida Everglades is a vast subtropical wetland with a globally unique hydrology and ecology, and it is designated as an International Biosphere Reserve and a Wetland of International Importance. Everglades National Park (ENP) is a hydro-ecologically enriched wetland with varying salinity contents, which is a concern for terrestrial ecosystem balance and sustainability. As such, in this study, time series soil salinity mapping was carried out for the ENP area. The mapping first entailed a maximum likelihood classification of seven land cover classes for the ENP area—namely mangrove forest, mangrove scrub, low-density forest, sawgrass, prairies and marshes, barren lands with woodland hammock and water—for the years 1996, 2000, 2006, 2010 and 2015. The classifications for 1996-2010 yielded accuracies of 82%-94%, and the 2015 classification was supported through ground truthing. Afterwards, electric conductivity (EC) tolerance thresholds for each vegetation class were established,which yielded soil salinity maps comprising four soil salinity classes—i.e., the non- (EC = 0 2 dS/m), low- (EC = 2 4 dS/m), moderate- (EC = 4 8 dS/m) and high-saline (EC = >8 dS/m) areas. The soil salinity maps visualized the spatial distribution of soil salinity with no significant temporal variations. The innovative approach of "land cover identification to salinity estimation" used in the study is pragmatic and application oriented, and the study upshots are also useful, considering the diversifying ecological context of the ENP area.

Identification of major and minor QTL for ecologically important morphological traits in three-spined sticklebacks (Gasterosteus aculeatus).

PubMed

Liu, Jun; Shikano, Takahito; Leinonen, Tuomas; Cano, José Manuel; Li, Meng-Hua; Merilä, Juha

2014-04-16

Quantitative trait locus (QTL) mapping studies of Pacific three-spined sticklebacks (Gasterosteus aculeatus) have uncovered several genomic regions controlling variability in different morphological traits, but QTL studies of Atlantic sticklebacks are lacking. We mapped QTL for 40 morphological traits, including body size, body shape, and body armor, in a F2 full-sib cross between northern European marine and freshwater three-spined sticklebacks. A total of 52 significant QTL were identified at the 5% genome-wide level. One major QTL explaining 74.4% of the total variance in lateral plate number was detected on LG4, whereas several major QTL for centroid size (a proxy for body size), and the lengths of two dorsal spines, pelvic spine, and pelvic girdle were mapped on LG21 with the explained variance ranging from 27.9% to 57.6%. Major QTL for landmark coordinates defining body shape variation also were identified on LG21, with each explaining ≥15% of variance in body shape. Multiple QTL for different traits mapped on LG21 overlapped each other, implying pleiotropy and/or tight linkage. Thus, apart from providing confirmatory data to support conclusions born out of earlier QTL studies of Pacific sticklebacks, this study also describes several novel QTL of both major and smaller effect for ecologically important traits. The finding that many major QTL mapped on LG21 suggests that this linkage group might be a hotspot for genetic determinants of ecologically important morphological traits in three-spined sticklebacks.

MAPPING BATHYMETRY AND BOTTOM TYPE IN A SHALLOW ESTUARY

EPA Science Inventory

Bathymetry and bottom type are important in characterizing estuaries and their ecology but hard to map, especially in shallow estuaries. Acoustic backscattering was used to remotely sense these properties in the shallow Slocums River Estuary of Massachusetts. Acoustic pulses were...

Quantifying and Mapping Habitat-Based Biodiversity Metrics Within an Ecosystem Services Framework

EPA Science Inventory

Ecosystem services have become a key issue of this century in resource management, conservation planning, human well-being, and environmental decision analysis. Mapping and quantifying ecosystem services have become strategic national interests for integrating ecology with econom...

Analysis on the application of background parameters on remote sensing classification

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Qiao, Y.

Drawing accurate crop cultivation acreage, dynamic monitoring of crops growing and yield forecast are some important applications of remote sensing to agriculture. During the 8th 5-Year Plan period, the task of yield estimation using remote sensing technology for the main crops in major production regions in China once was a subtopic to the national research task titled "Study on Application of Remote sensing Technology". In 21 century in a movement launched by Chinese Ministry of Agriculture to combine high technology to farming production, remote sensing has given full play to farm crops' growth monitoring and yield forecast. And later in 2001 Chinese Ministry of Agriculture entrusted the Northern China Center of Agricultural Remote Sensing to forecast yield of some main crops like wheat, maize and rice in rather short time to supply information for the government decision maker. Present paper is a report for this task. It describes the application of background parameters in image recognition, classification and mapping with focuses on plan of the geo-science's theory, ecological feature and its cartographical objects or scale, the study of phrenology for image optimal time for classification of the ground objects, the analysis of optimal waveband composition and the application of background data base to spatial information recognition ;The research based on the knowledge of background parameters is indispensable for improving the accuracy of image classification and mapping quality and won a secondary reward of tech-science achievement from Chinese Ministry of Agriculture. Keywords: Spatial image; Classification; Background parameter

Using long time series of Landsat data to monitor impervious surface dynamics: a case study in the Zhoushan Islands

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhang, Xiaoping; Pan, Delu; Chen, Jianyu; Zhan, Yuanzeng; Mao, Zhihua

2013-01-01

Islands are an important part of the marine ecosystem. Increasing impervious surfaces in the Zhoushan Islands due to new development and increased population have an ecological impact on the runoff and water quality. Based on time-series classification and the complement of vegetation fraction in urban regions, Landsat thematic mapper and other high-resolution satellite images were applied to monitor the dynamics of impervious surface area (ISA) in the Zhoushan Islands from 1986 to 2011. Landsat-derived ISA results were validated by the high-resolution Worldview-2 and aerial photographs. The validation shows that mean relative errors of these ISA maps are <15 %. The results reveal that the ISA in the Zhoushan Islands increased from 19.2 km2 in 1986 to 86.5 km2 in 2011, and the period from 2006 to 2011 had the fastest expansion rate of 5.59 km2 per year. The major land conversions to high densities of ISA were from the tidal zone and arable lands. The expansions of ISA were unevenly distributed and most of them were located along the periphery of these islands. Time-series maps revealed that ISA expansions happened continuously over the last 25 years. Our analysis indicated that the policy and the topography were the dominant factors controlling the spatial patterns of ISA and its expansions in the Zhoushan Islands. With continuous urbanization processes, the rapid ISA expansions may not be stopped in the near feature.

Water balance model for mean annual hydrogen and oxygen isotope distributions in surface waters of the contiguous United States

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bowen, Gabriel J.; Kennedy, Casey D.; Liu, Zhongfang; Stalker, Jeremy

2011-12-01

The stable H and O isotope composition of river and stream water records information on runoff sources and land-atmosphere water fluxes within the catchment and is a potentially powerful tool for network-based monitoring of ecohydrological systems. Process-based hydrological models, however, have thus far shown limited power to replicate observed large-scale variation in U.S. surface water isotope ratios. Here we develop a geographic information system-based model to predict long-term annual average surface water isotope ratios across the contiguous United States. We use elevation-explicit, gridded precipitation isotope maps as model input and data from a U.S. Geological Survey monitoring program for validation. We find that models incorporating monthly variation in precipitation-evapotranspiration (P-E) amounts account for the majority (>89%) of isotopic variation and have reduced regional bias relative to models that do not consider intra-annual P-E effects on catchment water balance. Residuals from the water balance model exhibit strong spatial patterning and correlations that suggest model residuals isolate additional hydrological signal. We use interpolated model residuals to generate optimized prediction maps for U.S. surface water δ2H and δ18O values. We show that the modeled surface water values represent a relatively accurate and unbiased proxy for drinking water isotope ratios across the United States, making these data products useful in ecological and criminal forensics applications that require estimates of the local environmental water isotope variation across large geographic regions.

Geologic map of Gunnison Gorge National Conservation Area, Delta and Montrose Counties, Colorado

USGS Publications Warehouse

Kellogg, Karl; Hansen, Wallace R.; Tucker, Karen S.; VanSistine, D. Paco

2004-01-01

This publication consists of a geologic map database and printed map sheet. The map sheet has a geologic map as the center piece, and accompanying text describes (1) the various geological units, (2) the uplift history of the region and how it relates to canyon downcutting, (3) the ecology of the gorge, and (4) human history. The map is intended to be used by the general public as well as scientists and goes hand-in-hand with a separate geological guide to Gunnison Gorge.

Snow Cover Mapping and Ice Avalanche Monitoring from the Satellite Data of the Sentinels

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wang, S.; Yang, B.; Zhou, Y.; Wang, F.; Zhang, R.; Zhao, Q.

2018-04-01

In order to monitor ice avalanches efficiently under disaster emergency conditions, a snow cover mapping method based on the satellite data of the Sentinels is proposed, in which the coherence and backscattering coefficient image of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data (Sentinel-1) is combined with the atmospheric correction result of multispectral data (Sentinel-2). The coherence image of the Sentinel-1 data could be segmented by a certain threshold to map snow cover, with the water bodies extracted from the backscattering coefficient image and removed from the coherence segment result. A snow confidence map from Sentinel-2 was used to map the snow cover, in which the confidence values of the snow cover were relatively high. The method can make full use of the acquired SAR image and multispectral image under emergency conditions, and the application potential of Sentinel data in the field of snow cover mapping is exploited. The monitoring frequency can be ensured because the areas obscured by thick clouds are remedied in the monitoring results. The Kappa coefficient of the monitoring results is 0.946, and the data processing time is less than 2 h, which meet the requirements of disaster emergency monitoring.

Watershed Landscape Ecology: Interdisciplinary and Field-based Learning in the Northeast Creek Watershed, Mount Desert Island, Maine

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hall, S. R.; Anderson, J.; Rajakaruna, N.; Cass, D.

2014-12-01

At the College of the Atlantic, Bar Harbor, Maine, undergraduate students have the opportunity to design their own curriculum within a major of "Human Ecology." To enable students to have early research experiences, we developed a field-based interdisciplinary program for students to learn and practice field methods in a variety of disciplines, Earth Science, Botany, Chemistry, and Wildlife Biology at three specific field sites within a single watershed on Mt. Desert Island. As the Northeast Creek watershed was the site of previous water quality studies, this program of courses enabled continued monitoring of portions of the watershed. The program includes 4 new courses: Critical Zone 1, Critical Zone 2, Wildlife Biology, and Botany. In Critical Zone 1 students are introduced to general topics in Earth Science and learn to use ArcGIS to make basic maps. In Critical Zone 2, Wildlife Biology, and Botany, students are in the field every week using classic field tools and methods. All three of these courses use the same three general field areas: two with working farms at the middle and lower portion of the watershed and one uninhabited forested property in the higher relief headwaters of the watershed. Students collect daily surface water chemistry data at five stream sites within the watershed, complete basic geologic bedrock and geomorphic mapping, conduct wildlife surveys, botanical surveys, and monitor weather patterns at each of the main sites. Beyond the class data collected and synthesized, students also complete group independent study projects at focused field sites, some of which have turned into much larger research projects. This program is an opportunity for students and faculty with varied interests and expertise to work together to study a specific field locality over multiple years. We see this model as enhancing a number of positive education components: field-based learning, teamwork, problem solving, interdisciplinary discussion, multiple faculty interaction, student mentoring, and original research. In the future we see the possibility of welcoming even more interdisciplinary work including rigorous studies spanning the arts and humanities.

Transfer of European Approach to Groundwater Monitoring in China

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhou, Y.

2007-12-01

Major groundwater development in North China has been a key factor in the huge economic growth and the achievement of self sufficiency in food production. Groundwater accounts for more than 70 percent of urban water supply and provides important source of irrigation water during dry period. This has however caused continuous groundwater level decline and many associated problems: hundreds of thousands of dry wells, dry river beds, land subsidence, seawater intrusion and groundwater quality deterioration. Groundwater levels in the shallow unconfined aquifers have fallen 10m up to 50m, at an average rate of 1m/year. In the deep confined aquifers groundwater levels have commonly fallen 30m up to 90m, at an average rate of 3 to 5m/year. Furthermore, elevated nitrate concentrations have been found in shallow groundwater in large scale. Pesticides have been detected in vulnerable aquifers. Urgent actions are necessary for aquifer recovery and mitigating groundwater pollution. Groundwater quantity and quality monitoring plays a very important role in formulating cost-effective groundwater protection strategies. In 2000 European Union initiated a Water Framework Directive (2000/60/EC) to protect all waters in Europe. The objective is to achieve good water and ecological status by 2015 cross all member states. The Directive requires monitoring surface and groundwater in all river basins. A guidance document for monitoring was developed and published in 2003. Groundwater monitoring programs are distinguished into groundwater level monitoring and groundwater quality monitoring. Groundwater quality monitoring is further divided into surveillance monitoring and operational monitoring. The monitoring guidance specifies key principles for the design and operation of monitoring networks. A Sino-Dutch cooperation project was developed to transfer European approach to groundwater monitoring in China. The project aims at building a China Groundwater Information Centre. Case studies in 3 pilot areas have been conducted to build research capacities of the central and provincial groundwater information centers in providing groundwater information services to decision makers and public. Groundwater regime zoning and pollution risk maps were used to lay-out groundwater quantity and quality monitoring networks, respectively. Automatic groundwater recorders were installed in selected observation wells. ArcGIS based regional groundwater information systems were constructed and used to create groundwater regime zoning and pollution risk maps. Steady state groundwater models have been constructed and calibrated. Transient groundwater models are under calibration. Groundwater resources development scenarios were formulated. The model will be used to predict what will be consequences in next 20 years if current situation continues as business as usual. Possibilities of reducing groundwater abstraction and opportunities of artificially enhanced groundwater recharge will be analyzed. Combination of decreasing abstraction and increasing recharge may lead to a sustainable plan of future groundwater resources development.

A Novel and Cost-Effective Monitoring Approach for Outcomes in an Australian Biodiversity Conservation Incentive Program

PubMed Central

Lindenmayer, David B.; Zammit, Charles; Attwood, Simon J.; Burns, Emma; Shepherd, Claire L.; Kay, Geoff; Wood, Jeff

2012-01-01

We report on the design and implementation of ecological monitoring for an Australian biodiversity conservation incentive scheme – the Environmental Stewardship Program. The Program uses competitive auctions to contract individual land managers for up to 15 years to conserve matters of National Environmental Significance (with an initial priority on nationally threatened ecological communities). The ecological monitoring was explicitly aligned with the Program’s policy objective and desired outcomes and was applied to the Program’s initial Project which targeted the critically endangered White Box-Yellow Box-Blakely's Red Gum Grassy Woodland and Derived Native Grassland ecological community in south eastern Australia. These woodlands have been reduced to <3% of their original extent and persist mostly as small remnants of variable condition on private farmland. We established monitoring sites on 153 farms located over 172,232 sq km. On each farm we established a monitoring site within the woodland patch funded for management and, wherever possible, a matched control site. The monitoring has entailed gathering data on vegetation condition, reptiles and birds. We also gathered data on the costs of experimental design, site establishment, field survey, and data analysis. The costs of monitoring are approximately 8.5% of the Program’s investment in the first four years and hence are in broad accord with the general rule of thumb that 5–10% of a program’s funding should be invested in monitoring. Once initial monitoring and site benchmarking are completed we propose to implement a novel rotating sampling approach that will maintain scientific integrity while achieving an annual cost-efficiency of up to 23%. We discuss useful lessons relevant to other monitoring programs where there is a need to provide managers with reliable early evidence of program effectiveness and to demonstrate opportunities for cost-efficiencies. PMID:23236399

Fourth report on the Oak Ridge National Laboratory Biological Monitoring and Abatement Program for White Oak Creek Watershed and the Clinch River

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Loar, J.M.

1994-04-01

In response to a condition of the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit issued to Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) on April 1, 1986, a Biological Monitoring and Abatement Program (BMAP) was developed for White Oak Creek (WOC) and selected tributaries. BMAP currently consists of six major tasks that address both radiological and nonradiological contaminants in the aquatic and terrestrial environs on-site and the aquatic environs off-site. These tasks are (1) toxicity monitoring, (2) bioaccumulation monitoring of nonradiological contaminants in aquatic biota, (3) biological indicator studies, (4) instream ecological monitoring, (5) assessment of contaminants in the terrestrial environment, andmore » (6) radioecology of WOC and White Oak Lake. The ecological characterization of the WOC watershed will provide baseline data that can be used to document the ecological effects of the water pollution control program and the remedial action program. The long-term nature of BMAP ensures that the effectiveness of remedial measures will be properly evaluated.« less

Using JournalMap to improve discovery and visualization of rangeland scientific knowledge

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

Most of the ecological research conducted around the world is tied to specific places; however, that location information is locked up in the text and figures of scientific articles in myriad forms that are not easily searchable. While access to ecological literature has improved dramatically in the...

WATER QUALITY VULNERABILITY IN THE OZARKS USING LANDSCAPE ECOLOGY METRICS: UPPER WHITE RIVER BROWSER (V2.0)

EPA Science Inventory

The principal focus of this project is the mapping and interpretation of landscape scale (i.e., broad scale) ecological metrics among contributing watersheds of the Upper White River, and the development of geospatial models of water quality vulnerability for several suspected no...

MyEnvironment | US Environmental Protection Agency

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

The MyEnvironment search application is designed to provide a cross-section of environmental information based on the users location. Environmental data is displayed at local community locations. EPA Environmental data displayed within maps and reports. Results include: Environmental Data, Enviromental Map, EPA Data, EPA Map, Air, Water, Land, Health, Pollution, Climate Change, Permits, Statistics, Superfund, Brownfields, Hazardous Waste, Toxic, Releases, Cleanups, Community, Ecological Conditions

MyEnvironment | Envirofacts | US EPA

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

2017-09-22

The MyEnvironment search application is designed to provide a cross-section of environmental information based on the users location. Environmental data is displayed at local community locations. EPA Environmental data displayed within maps and reports. Results include: Environmental Data, Enviromental Map, EPA Data, EPA Map, Air, Water, Land, Health, Pollution, Climate Change, Permits, Statistics, Superfund, Brownfields, Hazardous Waste, Toxic, Releases, Cleanups, Community, Ecological Conditions

Integration of Ausubelian Learning Theory and Educational Computing.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Heinze-Fry, Jane A.; And Others

1984-01-01

Examines possible benefits when Ausubelian learning approaches are integrated into computer-assisted instruction, presenting an example of this integration in a computer program dealing with introductory ecology concepts. The four program parts (tutorial, interactive concept mapping, simulations, and vee-mapping) are described. (JN)

Reconciling Biodiversity Conservation and Widespread Deployment of Renewable Energy Technologies in the UK

PubMed Central

Gove, Benedict; Williams, Leah J.; Beresford, Alison E.; Roddis, Philippa; Campbell, Colin; Teuten, Emma; Langston, Rowena H. W.; Bradbury, Richard B.

2016-01-01

Renewable energy will potentially make an important contribution towards the dual aims of meeting carbon emission reduction targets and future energy demand. However, some technologies have considerable potential to impact on the biodiversity of the environments in which they are placed. In this study, an assessment was undertaken of the realistic deployment potential of a range of renewable energy technologies in the UK, considering constraints imposed by biodiversity conservation priorities. We focused on those energy sources that have the potential to make important energy contributions but which might conflict with biodiversity conservation objectives. These included field-scale solar, bioenergy crops, wind energy (both onshore and offshore), wave and tidal stream energy. The spatially-explicit analysis considered the potential opportunity available for each technology, at various levels of ecological risk. The resultant maps highlight the energy resource available, physical and policy constraints to deployment, and ecological sensitivity (based on the distribution of protected areas and sensitive species). If the technologies are restricted to areas which currently appear not to have significant ecological constraints, the total potential energy output from these energy sources was estimated to be in the region of 5,547 TWh/yr. This would be sufficient to meet projected energy demand in the UK, and help to achieve carbon reduction targets. However, we highlight two important caveats. First, further ecological monitoring and surveillance is required to improve understanding of wildlife distributions and therefore potential impacts of utilising these energy sources. This is likely to reduce the total energy available, especially at sea. Second, some of the technologies under investigation are currently not deployed commercially. Consequently this potential energy will only be available if continued effort is put into developing these energy sources/technologies, to enable realisation of their full potential. PMID:27224050

Reconciling Biodiversity Conservation and Widespread Deployment of Renewable Energy Technologies in the UK.

PubMed

Gove, Benedict; Williams, Leah J; Beresford, Alison E; Roddis, Philippa; Campbell, Colin; Teuten, Emma; Langston, Rowena H W; Bradbury, Richard B

2016-01-01

Renewable energy will potentially make an important contribution towards the dual aims of meeting carbon emission reduction targets and future energy demand. However, some technologies have considerable potential to impact on the biodiversity of the environments in which they are placed. In this study, an assessment was undertaken of the realistic deployment potential of a range of renewable energy technologies in the UK, considering constraints imposed by biodiversity conservation priorities. We focused on those energy sources that have the potential to make important energy contributions but which might conflict with biodiversity conservation objectives. These included field-scale solar, bioenergy crops, wind energy (both onshore and offshore), wave and tidal stream energy. The spatially-explicit analysis considered the potential opportunity available for each technology, at various levels of ecological risk. The resultant maps highlight the energy resource available, physical and policy constraints to deployment, and ecological sensitivity (based on the distribution of protected areas and sensitive species). If the technologies are restricted to areas which currently appear not to have significant ecological constraints, the total potential energy output from these energy sources was estimated to be in the region of 5,547 TWh/yr. This would be sufficient to meet projected energy demand in the UK, and help to achieve carbon reduction targets. However, we highlight two important caveats. First, further ecological monitoring and surveillance is required to improve understanding of wildlife distributions and therefore potential impacts of utilising these energy sources. This is likely to reduce the total energy available, especially at sea. Second, some of the technologies under investigation are currently not deployed commercially. Consequently this potential energy will only be available if continued effort is put into developing these energy sources/technologies, to enable realisation of their full potential.

HUMAN AND ECOLOGICAL RISK ASSESSMENT: ASSOCIATIONS AMONG HUMAN HEALTH, ECOLOGICAL, AND ENVIRONMENTAL MONITORING

EPA Science Inventory

While all life is affected by the quality of the environment, environmental risk factors for human and wildlife health are typically assessed using independent processes that are dissimilar in scale and scope. However, the integrated analysis of human, ecological, and environmen...

HUMAN AND ECOLOGICAL RISK: CORRELATIONS AMONG HUMAN HEALTH, ECOLOGICAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL MONITORING DATA

EPA Science Inventory

While all life is affected by the quality of the environment, environmental risk factors for human and wildlife health are typically assessed using independent processes that are dissimilar in scale and scope. However, the integrated analysis of human, ecological, and environmen...

HUMAN AND ECOLOGICAL RISK ASSESSMENT: ASSOCIATIONS AMONG HUMAN HEALTH, ECOLOGICAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL MONITORING DATA

EPA Science Inventory

While all life is affected by the quality of the environment, environmental risk factors for human and wildlife health are typically assessed using independent processes that are dissimilar in scale and scope. However, the integrated analysis of human, ecological, and environmen...

HUMAN AND ECOLOGICAL RISK ASSESSMENT: ASSOCIATIONS AMONH HUMAN HEALTH, ECOLOGICAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL MONITORING DATA

EPA Science Inventory

While all life is affected by the quality of the environment, environmental risk factors for human and wildlife health are typically assessed using independent processes that are dissimilar in scale and scope. However, the integrated analysis of human, ecological, and environmen...

Monitoring the condition of natural resources in US national parks.

PubMed

Fancy, S G; Gross, J E; Carter, S L

2009-04-01

The National Park Service has developed a long-term ecological monitoring program for 32 ecoregional networks containing more than 270 parks with significant natural resources. The monitoring program assists park managers in developing a broad-based understanding of the status and trends of park resources as a basis for making decisions and working with other agencies and the public for the long-term protection of park ecosystems. We found that the basic steps involved in planning and designing a long-term ecological monitoring program were the same for a range of ecological systems including coral reefs, deserts, arctic tundra, prairie grasslands, caves, and tropical rainforests. These steps involve (1) clearly defining goals and objectives, (2) compiling and summarizing existing information, (3) developing conceptual models, (4) prioritizing and selecting indicators, (5) developing an overall sampling design, (6) developing monitoring protocols, and (7) establishing data management, analysis, and reporting procedures. The broad-based, scientifically sound information obtained through this systems-based monitoring program will have multiple applications for management decision-making, research, education, and promoting public understanding of park resources. When combined with an effective education program, monitoring results can contribute not only to park issues, but also to larger quality-of-life issues that affect surrounding communities and can contribute significantly to the environmental health of the nation.

Development of a Decision Support System for Monitoring, Reporting, Forecasting Ecological Conditions of the Appalachian Trail

Treesearch

Y. Wang; R. Nemani; F. Dieffenbach; K. Stolte; G. Holcomb

2010-01-01

This paper introduces a collaborative multi-agency effort to develop an Appalachian Trail (A.T.) MEGA-Transect Decision Support System (DSS) for monitoring, reporting and forecasting ecological conditions of the A.T. and the surrounding lands. The project is to improve decision-making on management of the A.T. by providing a coherent framework for data integration,...

Modeling and dynamic monitoring of ecosystem performance in the Yukon River Basin

USGS Publications Warehouse

Wylie, Bruce K.; Zhang, L.; Ji, Lei; Tieszen, Larry L.; Bliss, N.B.

2008-01-01

Central Alaska is ecologically sensitive and experiencing stress in response to marked regional warming. Resource managers would benefit from an improved ability to monitor ecosystem processes in response to climate change, fire, insect damage, and management policies and to predict responses to future climate scenarios. We have developed a method for analyzing ecosystem performance as represented by the growing season integral of normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), which is a measure of greenness that can be interpreted in terms of plant growth or photosynthetic activity (gross primary productivity). The approach illustrates the status and trends of ecosystem changes and separates the influences of climate and local site conditions from the influences of disturbances and land management.We emphasize the ability to quantify ecosystem processes, not simply changes in land cover, across the entire period of the remote sensing archive (Wylie and others, 2008). The method builds upon remotely sensed measures of vegetation greenness for each growing season. By itself, however, a time series of greenness often reflects annual climate variations in temperature and precipitation. Our method seeks to remove the influence of climate so that changes in underlying ecological conditions are identified and quantified. We define an "expected ecosystem performance" to represent the greenness response expected in a particular year given the climate of that year. We distinguish "performance anomalies" as cases where the ecosystem response is significantly different from the expected ecosystem performance. Maps of the performance anomalies (fig. 1) and trends in the anomalies give valuable information on the ecosystems for land managers and policy makers at a resolution of 1 km to 250 m.

Ecological Monitoring and Compliance Program 2006 Report

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

David C. Anderson; Paul D. Greger; Derek B. Hall

2007-03-01

The Ecological Monitoring and Compliance program (EMAC), funded through the U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration Nevada Site Office (NNSA/NSO), monitors the ecosystem of the Nevada Test Site (NTS) and ensures compliance with laws and regulations pertaining to NTS biota. This report summarizes the program's activities conducted by National Security Technologies LLC (NSTec) during the Calendar Year 2006. Program activities included: (a) biological surveys at proposed construction sites, (b) desert tortoise compliance, (c) ecosystem mapping and data management, (d) sensitive plant species monitoring, (e) sensitive and protected/regulated animal monitoring, (f) habitat monitoring, (g) habitat restoration monitoring, and (h)more » monitoring of the Nonproliferation Test and Evaluation Complex (NPTEC). Sensitive and protected/regulated species of the NTS include 44 plants, 1 mollusk, 2 reptiles, over 250 birds, and 26 mammals protected, managed, or considered sensitive as per state or federal regulations and natural resource agencies and organizations. The threatened desert tortoise (Gopherus agassizii) is the only species on the NTS protected under the Endangered Species Act. Biological surveys for the presence of sensitive and protected/regulated species and important biological resources on which they depend were conducted for 34 projects. A total of 342.1 hectares (ha) (845.37 acres [ac]) was surveyed for these projects. Sensitive and protected/regulated species and important biological resources found included: 2 inactive tortoise burrows, 2 western burrowing owls (Athene cunicularia hypugaea), several horses (Equus caballus), 2 active predator burrows, mature Joshua trees (Yucca brevifolia), yuccas and cacti; and also 1 bird nest (2 eggs), 1 barn owl (Tyto alba) and 2 great-horned owls (Bubo virginianus). NSTec provided a written summary report of all survey findings and mitigation recommendations, where applicable. All flagged burrows were avoided during construction activities. Twenty one of the 34 projects had sites within the distribution range of the threatened desert tortoise. NNSA/NSO must comply with the terms and conditions of a permit (called a Biological Opinion) from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) when conducting work in tortoise habitat. No tortoises were found in or displaced from project areas. No desert tortoises were accidentally injured or killed, nor were any captured or displaced from project sites. One desert tortoise was accidentally killed along a paved road. One site specific re-vegetation plan was submitted this year as required by the desert tortoise habitat re-vegetation plan approved in 2004. This year a total of 1.89 ha (4.69 ac) of tortoise habitat was disturbed. Re-vegetation of habitat at the Bren Tower burn was completed in the spring of 2006. In the summer of 2006, NSTec scientists prepared a Biological Assessment of the security activities that were being conducted at the Device Assembly Facility (DAF). NNSA requested a Biological Opinion from FWS in late 2006. Ecosystem mapping and data management in 2006 focused primarily on two tasks: (a) converting hardcopies of about 17 reports (EMAC annual reports and selected topical reports from 1996 to 2003) into electronic versions (Portable Document Format [PDF] files) to facilitate electronic document exchange, rapid retrieval, duplication, and printing, and (b) conducting an annual vegetation survey to determine wildland fire hazards on the NTS. Copies of the PDF documents were sent to DOE's Office of Scientific and Technical Information website in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and the DOE National Nuclear Security Administration Nevada Site Office (NNSA/NSO) Public Reading Facility.« less

Ecological Monitoring and Compliance Program 2006 Report

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

David C. Anderson; Paul D. Greger; Derek B. Hall

2007-03-01

The Ecological Monitoring and Compliance program (EMAC), funded through the U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration Nevada Site Office (NNSA/NSO), monitors the ecosystem of the Nevada Test Site (NTS) and ensures compliance with laws and regulations pertaining to NTS biota. This report summarizes the program's activities conducted by National Security Technologies LLC (NSTec) during the Calendar Year 2006. Program activities included: (a) biological surveys at proposed construction sites, (b) desert tortoise compliance, (c) ecosystem mapping and data management, (d) sensitive plant species monitoring, (e) sensitive and protected/regulated animal monitoring, (f) habitat monitoring, (g) habitat restoration monitoring, and (h)more » monitoring of the Nonproliferation Test and Evaluation Complex (NPTEC). Sensitive and protected/regulated species of the NTS include 44 plants, 1 mollusk, 2 reptiles, over 250 birds, and 26 mammals protected, managed, or considered sensitive as per state or federal regulations and natural resource agencies and organizations. The threatened desert tortoise (Gopherus agassizii) is the only species on the NTS protected under the Endangered Species Act. Biological surveys for the presence of sensitive and protected/regulated species and important biological resources on which they depend were conducted for 34 projects. A total of 342.1 hectares (ha) (845.37 acres [ac]) was surveyed for these projects. Sensitive and protected/regulated species and important biological resources found included: 2 inactive tortoise burrows, 2 western burrowing owls (Athene cunicularia hypugaea), several horses (Equus caballus), 2 active predator burrows, mature Joshua trees (Yucca brevifolia), yuccas and cacti; and also 1 bird nest (2 eggs), 1 barn owl (Tyto alba) and 2 great-horned owls (Bubo virginianus). NSTec provided a written summary report of all survey findings and mitigation recommendations, where applicable. All flagged burrows were avoided during construction activities. Twenty one of the 34 projects had sites within the distribution range of the threatened desert tortoise. NNSA/NSO must comply with the terms and conditions of a permit (called a Biological Opinion) from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) when conducting work in tortoise habitat. No tortoises were found in or displaced from project areas. No desert tortoises were accidentally injured or killed, nor were any captured or displaced from project sites. One desert tortoise was accidentally killed along a paved road. One site specific revegetation plan was submitted this year as required by the desert tortoise habitat revegetation plan approved in 2004. This year a total of 1.89 ha (4.69 ac) of tortoise habitat was disturbed. Revegetation of habitat at the Bren Tower burn was completed in the spring of 2006. In the summer of 2006, NSTec scientists prepared a Biological Assessment of the security activities that were being conducted at the Device Assembly Facility (DAF). NNSA requested a Biological Opinion from FWS in late 2006. Ecosystem mapping and data management in 2006 focused primarily on two tasks: (a) converting hardcopies of about 17 reports (EMAC annual reports and selected topical reports from 1996 to 2003) into electronic versions (Portable Document Format [PDF] files) to facilitate electronic document exchange, rapid retrieval, duplication, and printing, and (b) conducting an annual vegetation survey to determine wildland fire hazards on the NTS.« less

Multiple Scale Landscape Pattern Index Interpretation for the Persistent Monitoring of Land-Cover and Land-Use

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Spivey, Alvin J.

Mapping land-cover land-use change (LCLUC) over regional and continental scales, and long time scales (years and decades), can be accomplished using thematically identified classification maps of a landscape---a LCLU class map. Observations of a landscape's LCLU class map pattern can indicate the most relevant process, like hydrologic or ecologic function, causing landscape scale environmental change. Quantified as Landscape Pattern Metrics (LPM), emergent landscape patterns act as Landscape Indicators (LI) when physically interpreted. The common mathematical approach to quantifying observed landscape scale pattern is to have LPM measure how connected a class exists within the landscape, through nonlinear local kernel operations of edges and gradients in class maps. Commonly applied kernel-based LPM that consistently reveal causal processes are Dominance, Contagion, and Fractal Dimension. These kernel-based LPM can be difficult to interpret. The emphasis on an image pixel's edge by gradient operations and dependence on an image pixel's existence according to classification accuracy limit the interpretation of LPM. For example, the Dominance and Contagion kernel-based LPM very similarly measure how connected a landscape is. Because of this, their reported edge measurements of connected pattern correlate strongly, making their results ambiguous. Additionally, each of these kernel-based LPM are unscalable when comparing class maps from separate imaging system sensor scenarios that change the image pixel's edge position (i.e. changes in landscape extent, changes in pixel size, changes in orientation, etc), and can only interpret landscape pattern as accurately as the LCLU map classification will allow. This dissertation discusses the reliability of common LPM in light of imaging system effects such as: algorithm classification likelihoods, LCLU classification accuracy due to random image sensor noise, and image scale. A description of an approach to generating well behaved LPM through a Fourier system analysis of the entire class map, or any subset of the class map (e.g. the watershed) is the focus of this work. The Fourier approach provides four improvements for LPM. First, the approach reduces any correlation between metrics by developing them within an independent (i.e. orthogonal) Fourier vector space; a Fourier vector space that includes relevant physically representative parameters ( i.e. between class Euclidean distance). Second, accounting for LCLU classification accuracy the LPM measurement precision and measurement accuracy are reported. Third, the mathematics of this approach makes it possible to compare image data captured at separate pixel resolutions or even from separate landscape scenes. Fourth, Fourier interpreted landscape pattern measurement can be a measure of the entire landscape shape, of individual landscape cover change, or as exchanges between class map subsets by operating on the entire class map, subset of class map, or separate subsets of class map[s] respectively. These LCLUC LPM are examined along the 1991-1992 and 2000-2001 records of National Land Cover Database Landsat data products. Those LPM results are used in a predictive fecal coliform model at the South Carolina watershed level in the context of past (validation study) change. Finally, the proposed LPM ability to be used as ecologically relevant environmental indicators is tested by correlating metrics with other, well known LI that consistently reveal causal processes in the literature.

Additive hazards regression and partial likelihood estimation for ecological monitoring data across space.

PubMed

Lin, Feng-Chang; Zhu, Jun

2012-01-01

We develop continuous-time models for the analysis of environmental or ecological monitoring data such that subjects are observed at multiple monitoring time points across space. Of particular interest are additive hazards regression models where the baseline hazard function can take on flexible forms. We consider time-varying covariates and take into account spatial dependence via autoregression in space and time. We develop statistical inference for the regression coefficients via partial likelihood. Asymptotic properties, including consistency and asymptotic normality, are established for parameter estimates under suitable regularity conditions. Feasible algorithms utilizing existing statistical software packages are developed for computation. We also consider a simpler additive hazards model with homogeneous baseline hazard and develop hypothesis testing for homogeneity. A simulation study demonstrates that the statistical inference using partial likelihood has sound finite-sample properties and offers a viable alternative to maximum likelihood estimation. For illustration, we analyze data from an ecological study that monitors bark beetle colonization of red pines in a plantation of Wisconsin.

Identifying and closing gaps in environmental monitoring by means of metadata, ecological regionalization and geostatistics using the UNESCO biosphere reserve Rhoen (Germany) as an example.

PubMed

Schröder, Winfried; Pesch, Roland; Schmidt, Gunther

2006-03-01

In Germany, environmental monitoring is intended to provide a holistic view of the environmental condition. To this end the monitoring operated by the federal states must use harmonized, resp., standardized methods. In addition, the monitoring sites should cover the ecoregions without any geographical gaps, the monitoring design should have no gaps in terms of ecologically relevant measurement parameters, and the sample data should be spatially without any gaps. This article outlines the extent to which the Rhoen Biosphere Reserve, occupying a part of the German federal states of Bavaria, Hesse and Thuringia, fulfills the listed requirements. The investigation considered collection, data banking and analysis of monitoring data and metadata, ecological regionalization and geostatistics. Metadata on the monitoring networks were collected by questionnaires and provided a complete inventory and description of the monitoring activities in the reserve and its surroundings. The analysis of these metadata reveals that most of the monitoring methods are harmonized across the boundaries of the three federal states the Rhoen is part of. The monitoring networks that measure precipitation, surface water levels, and groundwater quality are particularly overrepresented in the central ecoregions of the biosphere reserve. Soil monitoring sites are more equally distributed within the ecoregions of the Rhoen. The number of sites for the monitoring of air pollutants is not sufficient to draw spatially valid conclusions. To fill these spatial gaps, additional data on the annual average values of the concentrations of air pollutants from monitoring sites outside of the biosphere reserve had therefore been subject to geostatistical analysis and estimation. This yields valid information on the spatial patterns and temporal trends of air quality. The approach illustrated is applicable to similar cases, as, for example, the harmonization of international monitoring networks.

Rangeland monitoring reveals long-term plant responses to precipitation and grazing at the landscape scale

USGS Publications Warehouse

Munson, Seth M.; Duniway, Michael C.; Johanson, Jamin K.

2015-01-01

Managers of rangeland ecosystems require methods to track the condition of natural resources over large areas and long periods of time as they confront climate change and land use intensification. We demonstrate how rangeland monitoring results can be synthesized using ecological site concepts to understand how climate, site factors, and management actions affect long-term vegetation dynamics at the landscape-scale. Forty-six years of rangeland monitoring conducted by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) on the Colorado Plateau reveals variable responses of plant species cover to cool-season precipitation, land type (ecological site groups), and grazing intensity. Dominant C3 perennial grasses (Achnatherum hymenoides, Hesperostipa comata), which are essential to support wildlife and livestock on the Colorado Plateau, had responses to cool-season precipitation that were at least twice as large as the dominant C4 perennial grass (Pleuraphis jamesii) and woody vegetation. However, these C3 perennial grass responses to precipitation were reduced by nearly one-third on grassland ecological sites with fine- rather than coarse-textured soils, and there were no detectable C3 perennial grass responses to precipitation on ecological sites dominated by a dense-growing shrub, Coleogyne ramosissima. Heavy grazing intensity further reduced the responses of C3 perennial grasses to cool-season precipitation on ecological sites with coarse-textured soils and surprisingly reduced the responses of shrubs as well. By using ecological site groups to assess rangeland condition, we were able to improve our understanding of the long-term relationships between vegetation change and climate, land use, and site characteristics, which has important implications for developing landscape-scale monitoring strategies.

Mapping social-ecological vulnerability to inform local decision making.

PubMed

Thiault, Lauric; Marshall, Paul; Gelcich, Stefan; Collin, Antoine; Chlous, Frédérique; Claudet, Joachim

2018-04-01

An overarching challenge of natural resource management and biodiversity conservation is that relationships between people and nature are difficult to integrate into tools that can effectively guide decision making. Social-ecological vulnerability offers a valuable framework for identifying and understanding important social-ecological linkages, and the implications of dependencies and other feedback loops in the system. Unfortunately, its implementation at local scales has hitherto been limited due at least in part to the lack of operational tools for spatial representation of social-ecological vulnerability. We developed a method to map social-ecological vulnerability based on information on human-nature dependencies and ecosystem services at local scales. We applied our method to the small-scale fishery of Moorea, French Polynesia, by combining spatially explicit indicators of exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity of both the resource (i.e., vulnerability of reef fish assemblages to fishing) and resource users (i.e., vulnerability of fishing households to the loss of fishing opportunity). Our results revealed that both social and ecological vulnerabilities varied considerably through space and highlighted areas where sources of vulnerability were high for both social and ecological subsystems (i.e., social-ecological vulnerability hotspots) and thus of high priority for management intervention. Our approach can be used to inform decisions about where biodiversity conservation strategies are likely to be more effective and how social impacts from policy decisions can be minimized. It provides a new perspective on human-nature linkages that can help guide sustainability management at local scales; delivers insights distinct from those provided by emphasis on a single vulnerability component (e.g., exposure); and demonstrates the feasibility and value of operationalizing the social-ecological vulnerability framework for policy, planning, and participatory management decisions. © 2017 Society for Conservation Biology.

Mapping invasive weeds using airborne hyperspectral imagery

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

Invasive plant species present a serious problem to the natural environment and have adverse ecological and economic impacts on both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems they invade. This article provides a brief overview on the use of remote sensing for mapping invasive plant species in both terrestr...

Mapping watershed integrity for the conterminous United States..

EPA Science Inventory

Watershed integrity is the capacity of a watershed to support and maintain the full range of ecological processes and functions essential to sustainability. We evaluated and mapped an Index of Watershed Integrity (IWI) for 2.6 million watersheds in the conterminous US using firs...