Browsing by Subject "Environmental indicators"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Development of Environmental Indicators for the U.S. Great Lakes Basin Using Remote Sensing Technology
    (University of Minnesota Duluth, 2006) Niemi, Gerald J; Johnston, Carol A; Wolter, Peter T.
    In 2001 we initiated a study of remote sensing technology to complement our development of environmental indicators for the U.S. Great Lakes coastal region. Our objectives were to: 1) quantify land use/land cover (LULC) and change for the U.S. portion of the Great Lakes basin between 1992 and 2001; 2) identify salient LULC change categories that are most likely to affect near-shore ecosystems; 3) recommend landscape indicators to guide managers toward long-term sustainable development; 4) develop methodologies to quantify SAV within near-shore areas of the Great Lakes; and 5) use historically low water levels in Lakes Michigan and Huron to produce a digital elevation model of recently exposed lake bed using radar interferometry to better model coastal wetland inundation events as lake water levels returns to normal. In addition, we completed four focused studies in the Great Lakes basin: 1) two studies to determine the degree of accuracy of Quiclcbird satellite imagery to identify specific vegetation types within a wetland; 2) an examination of 63 years (1940 to 2003) of land use change in a 100 km2 area in western Lake Erie; and 3) a study to test the use of Hyperion hyperspectral satellite imagery for mapping PhragmitesL an invasive plant species in the Great Lakes. All of the objectives were successfully completed, except objective 5 in which we had technical difficulties with the use of radar interferometry because of changes in ice and snow in the region. A total of six peer-reviewed publications have been completed and three additional publications are either in review or in preparation. The land use/land cover map produced for 1992 and 2001 will serve an extremely important baseline for future monitoring of change in the U.S. Great Lakes basin. A special issue of the Journal of Great Lakes Research is in preparation that summarizes additional work on this project. It is scheduled for publication in 2007.
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    Environmental Indicators for the US. Great Lakes Coastal Region
    (University of Minnesota Duluth, 2006) Niemi, Gerald J; Axler, Richard P; Brady, Valerie; Brazner, John; Brown, Terry; Ciborowski, Jan H; Danz, Nicholas P; Hanowski, JoAnn M; Hollenhorst, Thomas; Howe, Robert; Johnson, Lucinda B; Johnston, Carol A; Reavie, Euan D; Simcik, Matthew; Swackhamer, Deborah L.
    The goal of this research collaboration was to develop indicators that both estimate environmental condition and suggest plausible causes of ecosystem degradation in the coastal region of the U.S. Great Lakes. The collaboration consisted of 8 broad components, each of which generated different types of environmental responses and characteristics of the coastal region. These indicators included biotic communities of amphibians, birds, diatoms, fish, macroinvertebrates, and wetland plants as well as indicators of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (P AH) photo-induced toxicity and landscape characterization. These components are summarized below and discussed in more detailed in 5 separate reports (Section II). Stress gradients within the U.S. Great Lakes coastal region were defined from 207 variables (e.g., agriculture, atmospheric deposition, land use/land cover, human populations, point source pollution, and shoreline modification) from 19 different data sources that were publicly available for the coastal region. Biotic communities along these gradients were sampled with a stratified, random design among representative ecosystems within the coastal zone. To achieve the sampling across this massive area, the coastal region was subdivided into 2 major ecological provinces and further subdivided into 762 segment sheds. Stress gradients were defined for the major categories of human-induced disturbance in the coastal region and an overall stress index was calculated which represented a combination of all the stress gradients. Investigators of this collaboration have had extensive interactions with the Great Lakes community. For instance, the Lake Erie Lakewide Area Management Plan (LAMP) has adopted many of the stressor measures as integral indicators of the condition of watersheds tributary to Lake Erie. Furthermore, the conceptual approach and applications for development of a generalized stressor gradient have been incorporated into a document defining the tiered aquatic life criteria for defining biological integrity of the nation's waters. A total of 14 indicators of the U.S. Great Lakes coastal region are presented for potential application. Each indicator is summarized with respect to its use, methodology, spatial context, and diagnosis capability. In general, the results indicate that stress related to agricultural activity and human population density/development had the largest impacts on the biotic community indicators. In contrast, the photoinduced P AH indicator was primarily related to industrial activity in the U.S. Great Lakes, and over half of the sites sampled were potentially at risk of P AH toxicity to larval fish. One of the indicators developed for land use/land change was developed from Landsat imagery for the entire U.S. Great Lakes basin and for the period from 1992 to 2001. This indicator quantified the extensive conversions of both agricultural and forest land to residential area that has occurred during a short 9 year period. Considerable variation in the responses were manifest at different spatial scales and many at surprisingly large scales. Significant advances were made with respect to development of methods for identifying and testing environmental indicators. In addition, many indicators and concepts developed from this project are being incorporated into management plans and U.S. EPA methods documents.
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    Prioritized Monitoring for the Lake Superior Basin
    (University of Minnesota Duluth, 2009) Host, George E; Johnson, Lucinda B
    This project quantifies the gradient of environmental stressors within the Lake Superior basin at a fine spatial resolution, and uses this gradient to develop a monitoring framework that will support individual agency and ongoing binational cooperative monitoring efforts across the basin. Key elements of the project include development of high-resolution watersheds on U.S. and Canadian sides of the basin, summarization of the major point and non-point stressors within the watersheds, and creation of tools for scaling the watersheds and stressor summaries to accommodate the appropriate spatial scales for major environmental indicators. These data and tools allow identification of reference and ‘at-risk’ sites, and promote development of statistically defensible monitoring designs that will work within and across agency monitoring efforts.
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    Prioritized Monitoring for the Lake Superior Basin: Final Report
    (University of Minnesota Duluth, 2010) Host, George E; Hollenhorst, Thomas; Brown, Terry; Johnson, Lucinda B
    Given this overall goal, the specific objectives for this project were to: 1) create a scalable system of fine-resolution, hierarchically nested watersheds across the Lake Superior basin; 2) quantify the natural environmental and human disturbance gradients for fine-scale watersheds; 3) use these gradients to provide supporting data for intra- and cross-agency monitoring and sampling designs; 4) identify reference (least impacted) and degraded watersheds and coastal regions within the Lake Superior basin; 5) develop tools that allow users to scale data appropriate to their sample domain and response variables; 6) disseminate project outputs via an updated LSDSS website.