Using Science to Assess Environmental Vulnerabilities

USING SCIENCE TO ASSESS ENVIRONMENTAL VULNERABILITIES M. PATRICIA BRADLEY1* and ELIZABETH R. SMITH2 1

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Research and Development, Environmental Science Center, 701 Mapes Road, Ft. Meade, MD 20755 USA; 2U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, National Exposure Research Laboratory, Research Triangle Park, NC 22771 USA (* author for correspondence, phone: 410-305-2744, fax: 410-305-3095, e-mail: [email protected])

Abstract. Beginning in 1995, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA), Office of Research and Development has focused much of its ecological research in the Mid-Atlantic as part of the Mid-Atlantic Integrated Assessment (MAIA). The goal of MAIA is to improve the assessability of scientific information in environmental decision-making. Following the Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program (EMAP) whose goal is to guide monitoring that effectively reflects current ecosystem condition and trends, MAIA’s second, current, phase of research under the Regional Vulnerability Assessment (ReVA) program is designed to target risk management activities using available data and models. The papers presented here are from a conference held in May 2003 that presented results of research in this second phase of MAIA. The conference was organized into the following topics: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Assessing Current Impacts and Vulnerabilities Forecasting Environmental Condition and Vulnerabilities Developing Management Strategies to Optimize the Future, and Assessing and Responding to Environmental Vulnerability

Keywords: Environmental Forecasting, integrated assessment, MAIA, Mid-Atlantic, ReVA, Vulnerability

1. Overview of the Mid-Atlantic Integrated Assessment (MAIA) In 1995, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) Region 3 and the U.S. EPA Office of Research and Development (ORD) entered into a partnership known as the Mid-Atlantic Integrated Assessment (MAIA) (Bradley and Landy, 2000). As MAIA progressed it expanded to include partnerships with other federal agencies, state and local decision-makers, universities, and a wide variety of stakeholders. The MAIA partners have instituted a comprehensive program to transfer research, monitoring, and assessment innovations to decision-makers in the Mid-Atlantic Region (the Mid-Atlantic Region is shown in Figure 1). The wealth of data and information and the extensive network of stakeholders and partners have made the Mid-Atlantic Region the “proof of concept” for much of ORD’s ecological research. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment 94: 1–7, 2004. c
2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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Figure 1. The Mid-Atlantic Region (USEPA, 2003).

Monitoring and assessment programs such as the U.S. EPA’s Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program (EMAP) and the U.S. Forest Service Forest Health Monitoring (FHM) Program were integral parts of MAIA activities. Region-wide single-resource assessments were conducted for agroecosystems, estuaries, forests, streams, and landscapes (see Bradley and Landy, 2000 for examples of these assessments). Numerous states and several counties in the Mid-Atlantic have since adopted the EMAP approach of a probability-based sampling design with a suite of biological indicators.

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EMAP and other agency efforts in the region have demonstrated the value of long-term monitoring for status and trends. Using a combination of probability-based and targeting monitoring data, analyses have concluded that biological populations across the region are stressed and that cumulative impacts from these stresses are increasing. Five drivers of change are implicated in changing stressor distributions across the MidAtlantic Region: 1) land-use change, 2) resource extraction, 3) changes in pollution and pollutants, 4) spread of non-indigenous species, and 5) climate change (Jones et al., 1997; Boward et al., 1999; USEPA 1998a, 2000, and 2001). Assessment of risk associated with these stressors necessitates a regional approach that estimates current and future exposures. Development and demonstration of approaches to target risk management activities requires methods to synthesize available data and model results for assessing cumulative and aggregate effects, tools that facilitate multi-criteria decision-making, and partnerships with clients (Smith et al., 2002). REGIONAL VULNERABILITY ASSESSMENT ReVA is designed to develop and demonstrate approaches that address the latter phases of an integrated ecological risk assessment (USEPA, 1998b), following development of specific assessment questions (problem formulation) and building on available monitoring data (e.g., EMAP, FHM, etc). The focus is integrating and synthesizing information on the spatial patterns of multiple exposures to allow a comparison and prioritization of risks. ReVA will provide approaches and tools for this phase of the assessment process, but the final assessment of regional vulnerabilities is primarily the responsibility of regional decision-makers (Moss, 2002), including those in U.S. EPA regional offices, as well as state and local administrators. Vulnerability has multiple elements in its definition but is most simply represented by the probability that future condition will change in a negative direction. We see the ecosystem is a relatively stable configuration of a number of species in their environment that can resist and/or recover from the typical array of disturbances such as fire, flood, and drought. We assume ecosystem stability, resiliency, adaptability, and resistance when we extract resources, depend on it to purify wastes, or impose recreational impacts. However, these assumptions are no longer valid when the stresses imposed are outside the range that the system has adapted to.

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Thus, the vulnerability of an ecological system increases as the number, intensity, and frequency of stressors increases. Setting priorities and allocating resources remains one of the most difficult tasks facing decision makers. Decisions to implement risk management or risk reduction strategies may include evaluations of 1) current conditions, 2) risk of future harm, 3) feasibility of management options, and 4) value of the ecosystem at risk, all of which have different levels of importance for different issues. Regional vulnerability analysis approaches draw on many sources of data, explore many different assessment methods, and enable decision-makers to ask many different questions so that competing interests and concerns can be balanced. The ReVA-MAIA conference was organized around the themes of ReVA-supported research. Similar, relevant research conducted in other areas of the United States was also highlighted. ReVA is a national program that judiciously uses existing data and models, and considers multiple approaches to address environmental decision-making. As a first step at regional vulnerabilities, we need to determine where specifically conditions are good and bad, and to what extent cumulative effects have influenced current conditions. The opening plenary session and the session on “Assessing Current Impacts and Vulnerabilities” highlighted the need for a comprehensive view of the full set of outcomes related to environmental decisions (i.e., multi-resource, multi-stressor assessments) (William Klein’s [Director of Research for the American Planning Association], keynote speech) and the development of spatiallyexplicit models that use existing monitoring data to identify where ecosystems are likely impaired (see Brooks et al., 2004; Yuan, 2004; Weber, 2004). Linkages between environmental condition and resources of value or quality of life further illustrated how approaches under development within ReVA provide a better understanding of the costs and benefits of alternative environmental decisions (see Tankersley, 2004; Wainger and Price, 2004). When considering current and future risks, it’s important to both know current conditions and to forecast future exposures to identify where resources are vulnerable to changes in stressor distributions. The session entitled “Forecasting Environmental Condition and Vulnerabilities” focused on this aspect of vulnerability assessment research by highlighting research on where biological populations are at risk due to changes in habitat availability (see Lawler and Schumaker, 2004) and forecasting

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alternative scenarios of land-use change (see Kepner et al., 2004; Claggett et al., 2004) to inform decisions on future development. The use of supply and demand economic modeling to project changes in resource extraction (see Schaberg and Abt, 2004) illustrated another means of forecasting changes in pressures affecting environmental condition. Once estimates of current condition and future vulnerabilities are available, making use of this information is the next step in improving environmental decision-making. To further develop the application of these approaches, partnerships between the research community and actual decision-makers provide an opportunity to refine the ways risks are communicated (see Beratan et al., 2004). Examples of applied research will help refine the assessment approach and guide development of decision support applications. The fourth and final session of the conference, entitled “Assessing and Responding to Environmental Vulnerability”, was a panel discussion intended to identify areas where additional work is needed to ensure that the research results are made available to decision-makers in a way that effectively communicates where environmental vulnerabilities are and the true costs associated with alternative decisions. The panel consisted of a selection of decision-makers: a state agency representative, a U.S. EPA regional manager, a non-government conservation organization, a regional planner, and a university professor working with local decision-makers. Responses from the panel were consistently focused on the need for outreach and technology transfer, the need for marketing and demonstration of the use of new approaches, and the need to include more socio-economics to communicate the risk and to affect the drivers of change. Other research was highlighted through demonstration of decision-support tools and in poster presentations. These presentations demonstrated the use of statistical integration methods to boil down the huge quantity of environmental data available (see Locantore et al., 2004) into indices of condition and vulnerability, the use of weight of evidence of multiple models to address assessment uncertainty (see Jackson et al., 2004) and the use of innovative analyses to quantify environmental impacts (see Campbell et al., 2004; Tran et al., 2004). 2. Summary The scientific community is developing the scientific knowledge, methods, models, and tools to support a growing ethic of environmental stewardship.

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Information and assessment approaches must be made available to decision-makers at every scale. The papers in this volume represent some of the latest advancements in making these things accessible in the MidAtlantic Region and elsewhere. Acknowledgements We would like to acknowledge the planning committee for the ReVAMAIA Conference including U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) participants Jeffrey Frithsen, Joseph Williams, John Paul, Elise Striz, and Ronald Landy, as well as Jennifer Newland of the Canaan Valley Institute, Peter Claggett of the U.S. Geological Survey, and most importantly, Sarah Voorhees of Perot Systems Government Services (PSGS). In addition we acknowledge the very capable assistance of the team from PSGS who helped put these proceedings together, in particular Jennifer Ghiloni and Marla Laubisch. This paper is contribution number AED-03-114, of the U.S. EPA National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory’s Atlantic Ecology Division. The research described in this paper has been funded wholly or in part by the U.S. EPA under contract number ISE00029 (COMMITS) with Perot Systems Government Services. It has been subjected to Agency review and approved for publication. References Boward, D., Kazyak, P., Stranko, S., Hurd, M. and Prochaska, A.: 1999, ‘From the Mountains to the Sea: The State of Maryland’s Freshwater Streams’, EPA/903/R-99/023, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Research and Development, Washington, DC, USA. Beratan, K.K., Kabala, S.J., Loveless, S.M., Martin, P.J.S. and Spyke, N.P.: 2004, 'Sustainability Indicators as a Communicative Tool: Building Bridges in Pennsylvania', Environ. Monit. Assess. This issue, in press. Bradley, M.P. and Landy, R.B.: 2000, ‘The Mid-Atlantic Integrated Assessment (MAIA)’, Environ. Monit. Assess. 63, 1–13, 2000. Brooks, R.P., Wardrop, D.H. and Bishop, J.A.: 2004, ‘Assessing Wetland Condition on a Watershed Basis in the Mid-Atlantic Region Using Synoptic Land-Cover Maps,’ Environ. Monit. Assess. This issue, in press. Campbell, D., Meisch, M., DeMoss, T., Pomponio J. and Bradley M.P.: 2004, ‘Keeping the Books for Environmental Systems: An Emergy Analysis of West Virginia,’ Environ. Monit. Assess. 94, 217-230. Claggett, P.R., Jantz, C.A., Goetz, S.J. and Bisland C.: 2004 ‘Assessing Development Pressure in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed: An Evaluation of Two Land-use Change Models’, Environ. Monit. Assess. 94, 129-146.

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Jackson, L.E., Bird, S.L., Mathehy, R.W., O'Neill, R.V., White, D., Boesch, K.C. and Koviach J.L.: 2004, ‘A Regional Approach to Projecting Land-Use Change and Resulting Ecological Vulnerability’, Environ. Monit. Assess. 94, 231-248 Jones, B.K., Riitters, K.H., Wickham, J.D., Tankersley, R.D. Jr., O’Neill, R.V., Chaloud, D.J., Smith, E.R. and Neale, A.C.: 1997, ‘An Ecological Assessment of the United States Mid-Atlantic Region: A Landscape Atlas,’ EPA/600/R-97/130, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Research and Development, Washington, DC, USA. Kepner, W.G., Semmens, D.J., Bassett, S.D., Mouat, D.A. and Goodrich, D.C.: 2004, ‘Scenario Analysis for the San Pedro River, Analyzing Hydrological Consequences of a Future Environment’, Environ. Monit. Assess. 94, 115-127. Lawler J.J. and Schumaker, N.H.: 2004, ‘Evaluating Habitat as a Surrogate for Population Viability Using a Spatially Explicit Population Model’, Environ. Monit. Assess. 94, 85-100. Locantore, N.W., Tran, L.T., O'Neill, R.V., MCKinnis, P.W., Smith, E.R. and O'Connell, M.: 2004, ‘An Overview of Data Integration Methods for Regional Assessment’, Environ. Monit. Assess. 94, 249-261. Moss, D.A.: 2002, When all else fails – Government as the ultimate risk manager, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, USA. Ridgley, M.A. and Rijsberman, F.R.: 1992, ‘Multicriteria evaluation in a policy analysis of a Rhine estuary’, Water Resour. Bull. 28, 1095–1110. Saaty, T.L. and Vargas, L.G.: 1982, The logic of priorities: applications in business, energy, health and transportation, Kluwer-Nijhoff Publishing, Boston, MA, USA. Smith, E.R., O’Neill, R.V., Wickham, J.D., Jones, K.B., Jackson, L.E., Kilaru J.V. and Reuter, R.: 2002, ‘The U.S. EPA’s Regional Vulnerability Assessment Program: a Research Strategy for 2001–2006’, EPA/600/R-01/008, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Research and Development, Research Triangle Park, NC, USA. USEPA: 1998a, ‘Condition of the Mid-Atlantic Estuaries’, EPA/600/R-98/147. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Research and Development, Washington, DC, USA. USEPA: 1998b, ‘Guidelines for Ecological Risk Assessment’, EPA/630/R-95/002F, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Research and Development, Washington, DC, USA. USEPA: 2001, ‘What is the State of the Environment in the Mid-Atlantic Region?’, EPA/903/ F-01/003, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 3, Philadelphia, PA, USA. USEPA: 2003, ‘Mid-Atlantic Integrated Assessment (MAIA) Estuaries 1997–98: Summary Report’, EPA/620/R-02/003, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Research and Development, Atlantic Ecology Division, Narrangasett, RI, USA; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Research and Development, Region 3, Philadelphia, PA, USA.