ERDC TN-EMRRP-EM-10, Ecological Forecasting Tools and Planning of Ecosystem Restoration Projects

PURPOSE: A wide variety of ecological forecasting tools are used to support the project planning process within the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE). These tools range from relatively simple empirical relations describing the expected habitat preferences of species (or guilds of species) to complex, dynamic models of water movement, sediment, and other material fluxes to behavior-based models of individual organisms (agent-based models) and spatially-explicit tool(s) that address habitat and landscape mosaics (e.g., Guisan and Zimmermann 2000). Models or tools from across this spectrum have played important roles at various points in the planning process within the USACE, but district level planners have faced major challenges in finding and applying suitable ecological forecasting tools, especially for smaller (e.g., Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) Section 1135) projects which may be funded by less than $100,000 ($5 million maximum) and which are allowed only one or two years for completion (ER-1105-2100). Thus, the choice of a specific tool in many planning applications has been based on factors (i.e., project size, funding, duration) not directly related to a formal, technical evaluation of tool capability or suitability.

[1]  Guiming Wang,et al.  Signal extraction from long-term ecological data using Bayesian and non-Bayesian state-space models , 2009, Ecol. Informatics.

[2]  Antoine Guisan,et al.  Predictive habitat distribution models in ecology , 2000 .

[3]  J. L. Reid,et al.  New Models for Ecosystem Dynamics and Restoration , 2009 .

[4]  David A. Moser.  The Use of Risk Analysis by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers , 1996 .

[5]  Alison H. Purcell,et al.  Long-Term Variability in Bioassessments: A Twenty-Year Study from Two Northern California Streams , 2009, Environmental management.

[6]  R. Smith,et al.  Efficacy of the hydrogeomorphic model (HGM): A case study from western Tennessee , 2009 .

[7]  Brian Dennis,et al.  Bayesian methods for hierarchical models: are ecologists making a Faustian bargain? , 2009, Ecological applications : a publication of the Ecological Society of America.

[8]  L. Brennan.  REGIONAL TESTS OF A MOUNTAIN QUAIL HABITAT MODEL , 1991 .

[9]  Aaron M. Ellison,et al.  AN INTRODUCTION TO BAYESIAN INFERENCE FOR ECOLOGICAL RESEARCH AND ENVIRONMENTAL , 1996 .

[10]  Donald E. Weller,et al.  Landscape indicators of wetland condition in the Nanticoke River watershed, Maryland and Delaware, USA , 2007, Wetlands.

[11]  Bioassessment tools in novel habitats: an evaluation of indices and sampling methods in low-gradient streams in California , 2010, Environmental monitoring and assessment.

[12]  Steven I. Gordon,et al.  The Planktonic Index of Biotic Integrity (P-IBI): An approach for assessing lake ecosystem health , 2009 .

[13]  Ord,et al.  Guidelines for Ecological Risk Assessment , 2014 .

[14]  John Hains,et al.  The Ecosystem Concept and Linking Models of Physical-Chemical Processes to Ecological Responses: Introduction and Annotated Bibliography , 2007 .

[15]  Gary J. Roloff,et al.  Evaluating confidence intervals for habitat suitability models , 1996 .

[16]  Jesper Møller,et al.  Hierarchical spatial point process analysis for a plant community with high biodiversity , 2009, Environmental and Ecological Statistics.

[17]  Mary E. Kentula,et al.  Assessment of wetlands in the Upper Juniata watershed in Pennsylvania, USA using the hydrogeomorphic approach , 2007, Wetlands.

[18]  Robert J. Robel,et al.  RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN HABITAT SUITABILITY INDEX VALUES AND GROUND COUNTS OF BEAVER COLONIES IN KANSAS , 1993 .

[19]  Kerrie Mengersen,et al.  Elicitation by design in ecology: using expert opinion to inform priors for Bayesian statistical models. , 2009, Ecology.

[20]  V. Rich.  Personal communication , 1989, Nature.

[21]  R. N. Malik,et al.  Assessment of an index of biological integrity (IBI) to quantify the quality of two tributaries of river Chenab, Sialkot, Pakistan , 2009, Hydrobiologia.

[22]  M. Brinson.  A Hydrogeomorphic Classification for Wetlands , 1993 .

[23]  P. Mumby,et al.  Modelling the dynamics of coral reef macroalgae using a Bayesian belief network approach , 2009 .

[24]  R. Brooks,et al.  Comparison of Hydrology of Wetlands in Pennsylvania and Oregon (USA) as an Indicator of Transferability of Hydrogeomorphic (HGM) Functional Models Between Regions , 2002, Environmental management.

[25]  François Bousquet,et al.  Multi-agent simulations and ecosystem management: a review , 2004 .

[26]  Daniel P. Loucks,et al.  Forecasting 3-D fish movement behavior using a Eulerian-Lagrangian-agent method (ELAM) , 2006 .

[27]  N. Prat,et al.  A comparison of rapid bioassessment protocols used in 2 regions with Mediterranean climates, the Iberian Peninsula and South Africa , 2006, Journal of the North American Benthological Society.

[28]  R. Luce,et al.  What common ground exists for descriptive, prescriptive, and normative utility theories? , 1994 .

[29]  C. Stow,et al.  Nutrient criteria for lakes, ponds, and reservoirs: a Bayesian TREED model approach. , 2009 .

[30]  J. Karr.  Assessment of Biotic Integrity Using Fish Communities , 1981 .

[31]  Rebecca A. Efroymson,et al.  Improving Conceptual Model Development: Avoiding Underperformance Due to Project Uncertainties , 2010 .

[32]  E. Conrad Lamon,et al.  Lake classification to enhance prediction of eutrophication endpoints in Finnish lakes , 2008, Environ. Model. Softw..

[33]  Kiona Ogle,et al.  Hierarchical bayesian statistics: merging experimental and modeling approaches in ecology. , 2009, Ecological applications : a publication of the Ecological Society of America.

[34]  A. Hahs,et al.  A dispersal-constrained habitat suitability model for predicting invasion of alpine vegetation. , 2008, Ecological applications : a publication of the Ecological Society of America.

[35]  T. Sutton,et al.  Suitability Modeling of Lake Sturgeon Habitat in Five Northern Lake Michigan Tributaries: Implications for Population Rehabilitation , 2009 .

[36]  S. Carpenter,et al.  Ecological forecasts: an emerging imperative. , 2001, Science.

[37]  Juscelino Almeida Dias,et al.  A stochastic method for robustness analysis in sorting problems , 2009, Eur. J. Oper. Res..