GC53B-01
Who Needs Environmental Monitoring?
Environmental monitoring is often criticized as being unscientific, too expensive, and wasteful. While some monitoring studies do suffer from these problems, there are also some highly successful long-term monitoring programs that have provided important scientific advances and crucial information for environmental policy. Here, we discuss the characteristics of effective monitoring programs, and contend that monitoring should be considered a fundamental component of environmental science and policy. We urge scientists who develop monitoring programs to plan in advance to insure high quality data, accessibility, and cost-effectiveness, and we urge government agencies and other funding institutions to make greater commitments to increasing the amount and long-term stability of funding for environmental monitoring programs.
GC53B-02
Ecological Indicators and Monitoring Systems are Needed to Track Changing Ecosystem Condition in the United States
Well-designed ecological indicators are important tools for tracking the cumulative effects of land management, disturbance patterns and climate on the biogeochemical condition of ecosystems. Indicators can be used to identify direct and indirect ecological responses to major stressors, to evaluate the effectiveness of management strategies and to understand potential changes in provision of ecological services. To contextualize the magnitude of contemporary ecological changes, long-term data sources are needed for indicator metrics. In the absence of ongoing, objective monitoring programs, public and private environmental decisions will not be adequately supported by scientifically sound baseline or trend information. In the State of the Nation's Ecosystems, the Heinz Center reports on 108 indicators selected to represent the most important components of major terrestrial and aquatic ecosystem types in the U.S. A central finding of this effort is the large number of gaps in available datasets to populate key ecological indicators. The 2008 edition of the report will have complete data for 42 indicators, partial data for 27 indicators and data gaps for 28 indicators (11 indicators require further development). The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the Heinz Center have produced major assessments of the status of environmental monitoring systems. The GAO report highlights eroding data-gathering capacity in the face of funding constraints and expanding information demands. The Heinz Center report maps out specific technical challenges in filling high-priority, national-scale data gaps and addresses barriers to integration and efficiency in the nation's overall monitoring system. This presentation will focus on crucial environmental monitoring needs for reporting on U.S. ecological indicators. Key concepts for effective monitoring systems will be presented including: (1) design to capture essential dynamics of ecosystems and to establish credible baselines; (2) ongoing programs characterized by appropriate sampling methodologies, transparent reporting and independent review; (3) plot and county level data-gathering embedded within regional and national frameworks to enable scaleable indicator reporting. Two case studies will focus on current data-gathering and needed improvements in monitoring for air quality and carbon storage.
GC53B-03 INVITED
Monitoring Requirements and Methods for Greenhouse Gas Management and Climate Change Detection
Climate change policy and management require monitoring data to support decision making. Availability of good data about past trends, and projections based on reasonable assumptions and models, can support debate about response options and avoid the pitfall of arguing about information quality. A hierarchical or multi-tier approach to environmental monitoring has been used efficiently for many decades, and can be linked with experiments and process modeling to improve natural resource assessments. Consideration of spatial and temporal scale can align data requirements with the information needed to facilitate separation of causal factors, e.g., factoring out natural effects from human-induced effects on the carbon cycle. Here we describe a 3-tier integrated monitoring hierarchy: intensive process-level monitoring, landscape-scale monitoring, and regional monitoring. Information at each tier may be used independently or integrated across tiers. Methods to integrate information include statistical techniques for diagnostic analysis, and ecosystem models for prognostic analysis. We illustrate the methods and results for each tier using data and analyses for the Pinelands Management Area of New Jersey, a reserved area of 360,000 ha. A cluster of flux towers and associated intensive-site measurements comprises the process monitoring. A network of biometric monitoring sites represents the landscape conditions, and forest inventory with remote sensing is used to characterize the region. This approach is capable of closing the regional carbon budget, i.e., accounting for all exchanges of carbon between the land, atmosphere, and ocean. It is also an excellent platform for monitoring the effects of climate change and factoring out different effects -- the system was designed to provide information about dangerous fire weather and identify needs to manage wildfire fuels. The New Jersey Pinelands site is part of a national network of multi-scale monitoring sites that can meet many of the emerging needs for greenhouse gas management and climate change detection.
GC53B-04 INVITED
Environmental Monitoring in the Northeast US: Foundation for Assessing the Impact of Our Changing Climate
Regional assessment of the impacts of climate change have proven to be a valuable tool for providing scientists, policymakers, private sector decision makers, not-for-profit organizations, and the general public with the best available science upon which to base informed choices concerning adaptation and mitigation strategies. Recent examples include a set of regional assessments that were undertaken as part of the US Global Climate Change Research Program in the late 1990s, and more recently four regional assessments that were performed by independent scientists working in collaboration with the Union of Concerned Scientists. The most recent of these the Northeast Climate Impacts Assessment (NECIA), relied upon environmental monitoring of key aspects of our climate system (e.g., temperature, precipitation, snow cover, streamflow, sea level rise, first leaf out dates, etc.) to track changes in the past and provide data sets for evaluating the regional performance of global and regional circulation model simulations. These types of environmental data sets also provide the basis for analyzing the impacts of climate change on society over the past several decades. http://www.northeastclimateimpacts.org/
GC53B-05 INVITED
Collaborative Observation and Research (CORE) Watersheds: new strategies for tracking the regional effects of climate change on complex systems
The past 30 years of environmental research have shown that our world is not made up of discrete components acting independently, but rather of a mosaic of complex relations among air, land, water, living resources, and human activities. Recent warming of the climate is having a significant effect on the functioning of those systems. A national imperative is developing to quickly establish local, regional, and national systems for anticipating environmental degradation from a changing climate and developing cost-effective adaptation or mitigation strategies. In these circumstances, the debate over research versus monitoring becomes moot—there is a clear need for the integrated application of both across a range of temporal and spatial scales. A national framework that effectively addresses the multiple scales and complex multi-disciplinary processes of climate change is being assembled largely from existing programs through collaboration among Federal, State, local, and NGO organizations. The result will be an observation and research network capable of interpreting complex environmental changes at a range of spatial and temporal scales, but at less cost than if the network were funded as an independent initiative. A pilot implementation of the collaborative framework in the Delaware River Basin yielded multi-scale assessments of carbon storage and flux, and the effects of forest fragmentation and soil calcium depletion on ecosystem function. A prototype of a national climate-effects observation and research network linking research watersheds, regional surveys, remote sensing, and ecosystem modeling is being initiated in the Yukon River Basin where carbon flux associated with permafrost thaw could accelerate global warming.
GC53B-06
Monitoring the Environment using High-Spatial Resolution Remote Sensing: Contribution to Health Information Systems
Presence (density) of mosquitoes linked to Rift Valley Fever (RVF) epidemics in the Ferlo (Senegal) is evaluated by monitoring the environment from space. Using five SPOT-5 high-resolution images (~10m spatial resolution, on August 17th, 2006) a meridional transect of 290 x 60 km2 is analyzed for the first time. Four major ecozones are thus identified: Senegal River valley; sandy Ferlo; sandy-clayey Ferlo; and steppe/cultivated areas, from north to south, respectively. An integrated/multidisciplinary approach using remote-sensing leads to a composited Zones Potentially Occupied by Mosquitoes (or ZPOMs, with extrema). It is found that at the peak of the rainy season, the area occupied by ponds is of 12,817 ha ± 10% (i.e., ~ 0.8 % of the transect) with a mean ZPOM 17 times larger i.e.: 212,813 ha ± 10 % (or ~14 % of the transect). ZPOMs characteristics (minimum and maximum) at the ecozones levels with different hydrological mechanisms, are presented. Ponds and ZPOMs inter-annual variabilities and RVF risks, are subsequently highlighted by comparing statistics in the so-called Barkedji zone (sandy-clayey Ferlo with a hydrofossil riverbed), for the very humid year of 2003, and the near normal rainfall year of 2006. It is shown that at the end of August 2003/2006, ponds (ZPOMs) areas, were already ~22 (~5) times larger. The key roles played by isolated ponds for animals' exposure to RVF risks are thus identified. These results highlight the importance of monitoring the changing environment when linkages with public health exist. The ZPOM approach is to be adapted for other vector-borne diseases such as malaria, dengue fever, in different places of the world. Results are meant to be included into Health Information Systems (HIS) on an operational basis, in order to minimize socio-economical impacts from epidemics.
GC53B-07
The Significance of Forest Monitoring Programmes: the Finnish Perspective
Finland has been participating in the ICP Forests programme (the International Co-operative Programme on the Assessment and Monitoring of Air Pollution Effects on Forests) based on international agreements on the long- range transportation of air pollutants (LRTAP) and other associated monitoring programmes (e.g. Forest Focus, ICP Integrated Monitoring, ICP Vegetation) since 1985. The knowledge gained during the years has greatly increased our understanding of the overall condition of our forests and the factors affecting forest condition, the processes underlying forest ecosystem functioning, and the potential threats to our forests posed by human activities, both at home and abroad. The success of the monitoring activities in Finland is largely based on the experience gained during the early 1980's with our own national acidification project and, during the late 1980's and early 1990"s, in a number of regional monitoring projects. Finland's membership of the European Union (entry in 1996) has enabled us to further develop the infrastructure and coverage of both our extensive and intensive level networks. This broadening of our ecological understanding and development of international collaboration are now providing us with an invaluable basis for addressing the new monitoring challenges (biodiversity, climate change). The results gained in our monitoring activities clearly demonstrate the value of long-term monitoring programmes. The main results have been regularly reported both at the European (e.g. http://www.icp- forests.org/Reports.htm) and national level (e.g. http://www.metla.fi/julkaisut/workingpapers/2007/mwp045- en.htm). However, the datasets have not been intensively explored and exploited, and few of the important methodological and ecological findings have been published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. This has, understandably, not been the first priority of the international monitoring programmes. A number of the intensive forest monitoring plots in Finland have recently been included in LTER platforms, thus potentially increasing scientific collaboration between researchers across different governmental institutes and education bodies.
GC53B-08
Impact of Seasonal Shifts in Stream Flow on Long-Term Trends in Dissolved Organic Carbon
Long-term monitoring (20+ year) of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) concentrations and discharge in small headwater streams in south-central Ontario, Canada has revealed unexpected relationships between seasonal stream flow and trends in DOC concentration. In catchments containing wetlands, DOC concentrations are high (> 6 mg L-1), and there is a strong negative relationship between daily stream flow and DOC concentration, with annual DOC minima occurring at the height of spring snow melt. In contrast, DOC concentrations in upland- dominated catchments are low (< 4 mg L-1) and show relatively little intra- or inter-annual variation. Variations in the total amount of spring stream flow (March-April-May) correlate negatively with annual average DOC concentrations in wetland-influenced catchments. Similar to other parts of the world, significant increases in DOC concentration (1980 – 2001) have been observed at these small wetland-influenced catchments; however, for the most part, positive trends are driven by relatively high DOC concentrations in the latter years of record, which also had lower than average spring flow. These results highlight the importance of record length for determining trend magnitude and direction and the value of long-term monitoring records for identifying potentially subtle relationships between hydroclimatic shifts and water quality.