Assessing ecological risk in watersheds: A case study of problem formulation in the Big Darby Creek watershed, Ohio, USA

Cormier, Susan M.; Smith, Marc A.; Norton, Susan B.; Neiheisel, Tim

doi:10.1002/etc.5620190439

Cited by 44 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…The impacts of urbanisation are mainly related to the direct effects of point sources of pollution. However, many other pressures are generated by urban areas, such as canalization, untreated storm-water and altered hydrological regimes (Cormier et al, 2000), and these cause both hydro-morphological and biological impacts (Paul & Meyer, 2001;Stepenuck, Crunkilton & Wang, 2002;Roy et al, 2003;Wang & Kanehl, 2003). When comparing the impacts of different forms of land cover, some authors found agriculture to be the most damaging activity, while others found the strongest negative correlations with urban areas.…”

Section: Hierarchy Of Impacts: Urbanization Vs Agriculturementioning

confidence: 99%

Large‐scale relationships between basin and riparian land cover and the ecological status of European rivers

et al. 2010

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SUMMARY1 -The study of large-scale pressure-impact relationships involves questions of hierarchy and scales. Answers to these questions will help managers define priorities for action to achieve the 'good ecological status' required by the Water Framework Directive (WFD).The main objectives of our study were 1) to establish the relative impact of pressures that degrade ecological status, especially those caused by agriculture and urbanization, 2) to identify regional patterns in these pressure-impact relationships and 3) to evaluate the relative weight of the pressures acting at the basin and riparian corridor scales, and the possible buffering effect of riparian areas.2 -We developed large-scale models linking invertebrate indices of ecological quality to river basin and riparian land cover in France, Slovakia, Estonia and UK. Invertebrate indices, transformed to Ecological Quality Ratios (EQR), were taken from national monitoring networks. We based the models on Partial Least Squares (PLS) regressions at national and a hydro-ecoregion (HER) scales. The HERs provided a framework for grouping data in terms of natural river features and human activities.3 -The different national methods provided consistent results that indicated the hierarchy of pressures impacting river invertebrates at the European scale. The most salient result was that artificial land cover (e.g. urban and industrial sites) in the river basin represented the pressure with the most negative impact on invertebrate indices, in all countries and regions.Author-produced version of the final draft post-refeering, the original publication is available at Freshwater Biology, 55: 1465-1482. doi: 10.1111/j. 1365-2427.2010.02443.x 4 -The impact of agricultural land cover was more variable. Arable land had a smaller impact than urban areas, and it was even insignificant in some models. The impact of vineyards depended on the natural geographical context. The effect of pastures seemed to be related to the intensity of the livestock they carried. These results supported the concept of regional pathologies for river ecosystems, as land use and anthropogenic influences are closely linked to physical landscape features. The proportion of arable land in the river basin appeared to be a weak predictor of agricultural impacts by itself; the type of cultivation and intensity as well as the proximity to the river must be taken into account.5 -At the riparian corridor scale, the negative impact of artificial areas or arable land and the positive effects of forests and pastures were demonstrated in many regions. The protective effect of riparian forests against mixed agricultural and urban pressures was demonstrated in three regions in France. Riparian corridors appear to be manageable areas, and these results strongly support the idea of including their restoration in priority actions for achieving good ecological status.

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Section: Hierarchy Of Impacts: Urbanization Vs Agriculturementioning

confidence: 99%

Large‐scale relationships between basin and riparian land cover and the ecological status of European rivers

et al. 2010

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“…In 1998, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officially promulgated an "Ecological Risk Assessment Guide" [7], which symbolizes that the ecological risk assessment has reached a mature stage. After that, a series of studies were conducted by many researchers on impacts of the ecological risk assessment framework and chemical toxic on the ecological risk [8,9]. Many scholars were focusing on in-depth studies of regional ecological risk at different spatial scales, such as lakes [10], river delta [11,12], and watershed basin [9,13,14] and different land use/cover types [15][16][17][18].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evolution Characteristics of Landscape Ecological Risk Patterns in Coastal Zones in Zhejiang Province, China

Gong

et al. 2017

Sustainability

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Analyzing evolution characteristics of landscape ecological risk patterns would help establish ecological risk early warning mechanism, reduce the ecological risk probability and promote coastal landscape pattern optimization. In this study, landscape pattern indices were first calculated by using multitemporal Landsat TM images acquired in years 1990, 2000 and 2010, then landscape ecological risk pattern evolution models and the spatiotemporal evolutions of ecological risk patterns of coastal zones in Zhejiang province, China were constructed and analyzed. The results demonstrate that (1) greater changes have taken place in landscape structures during the two decades, and (2) the areas of cropland, sea, woodland and water surface have decreased significantly, while the areas of built-up land, unused land and aquaculture land have increased. In 1990, coastal landscapes were mainly occupied by extremely low and low ecological risk areas. However, by 2010, the low ecological risk area apparently decreased compared to that in 1990, while extremely high and high ecological risk areas increased significantly, occupying spatial regions where originally the extremely low and low ecological risk zones located. Transition rates of ecological risk grades in the second ten years (2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010) were significantly lower than in the first ten years (1990)(1991)(1992)(1993)(1994)(1995)(1996)(1997)(1998)(1999)(2000). The result suggests that people who originally urged to accelerate coastal landscape exploitation and development have started to concern the ecological environment protection and to pursue a mode that economic development and ecological protection are synchronously conducted.

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“…These differences highlight the importance of stratifying predictions into ecologically meaningful categories, rather than assuming generalized flow-ecology relationships and applying them to entire communities. This level of biological detail is particularly important in contexts where natural-resource managers are tasked with conserving habitat for specific species or groups of species, e.g., rare, native, and/or environmentally sensitive [20,53,68,69]. In such cases, single-species flow-ecology relationships might be useful (e.g., to predict abundance or probability of occurrence of individual species of conservation concern), and could be incorporated into the DSS framework in Figure 1.…”

Section: Meeting the Information Needs Of Water-resource Managersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Putting Flow–Ecology Relationships into Practice: A Decision-Support System to Assess Fish Community Response to Water-Management Scenarios

Cartwright

Caldwell

Nebiker

et al. 2017

Water

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This paper presents a conceptual framework to operationalize flow-ecology relationships into decision-support systems of practical use to water-resource managers, who are commonly tasked with balancing multiple competing socioeconomic and environmental priorities. We illustrate this framework with a case study, whereby fish community responses to various water-management scenarios were predicted in a partially regulated river system at a local watershed scale. This case study simulates management scenarios based on interactive effects of dam operation protocols, withdrawals for municipal water supply, effluent discharges from wastewater treatment, and inter-basin water transfers. Modeled streamflow was integrated with flow-ecology relationships relating hydrologic departure from reference conditions to fish species richness, stratified by trophic, reproductive, and habitat characteristics. Adding a hypothetical new water-withdrawal site was predicted to increase the frequency of low-flow conditions with adverse effects for several fish groups. Imposition of new reservoir release requirements was predicted to enhance flow and fish species richness immediately downstream of the reservoir, but these effects were dissipated further downstream. The framework presented here can be used to translate flow-ecology relationships into evidence-based management by developing decision-support systems for conservation of riverine biodiversity while optimizing water availability for human use.

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Assessing ecological risk in watersheds: A case study of problem formulation in the Big Darby Creek watershed, Ohio, USA

Cited by 44 publications

References 40 publications

Large‐scale relationships between basin and riparian land cover and the ecological status of European rivers

Large‐scale relationships between basin and riparian land cover and the ecological status of European rivers

Evolution Characteristics of Landscape Ecological Risk Patterns in Coastal Zones in Zhejiang Province, China

Putting Flow–Ecology Relationships into Practice: A Decision-Support System to Assess Fish Community Response to Water-Management Scenarios

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