Identifying Ecological Indicators: An Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program

Bromberg, Steven M.

doi:10.1080/10473289.1990.10466748

Cited by 12 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…In the forthcoming United States reports, to be published in the context of the Environmental Assessment and Monitoring Program (EMAP) (Anonymous 1990a, Bromberg 1990, Hunsaker and others 1990, Kutz and Linthurst 1990, the focus is on ecosystems of different spatial scale. The grossest level comprises major types of resources, such as inland surface waters, wetlands, and forests.…”

Section: Overview Of the Selected Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ecosystem approaches to environmental quality assessment

Nip

Haes

1995

Environmental Management

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/ Environmental quality assessment has to focus more on the quality of whole ecosystems, instead of focusing on the direct effects of a specific stressor, because of a more integrated environmental policy approach. Yet, how can the ecosystem quality be measured? Partly this is a normative question, a question of what is considered good and bad. At the same time, it is a scientific question, dealing with the problem of how the state of a system as complex as an ecosystem could be measured. Measuring all abiotic and biotic components, not to mention their many relationships, is not feasible. In this article we review several approaches dealing with this scientific question, Three approaches are distinguished; they differ in type of variable set and ecosystem model used. As a result of this, the information about the state of the ecosystem differs: ultimate breadth, comprising information about the whole ecosystem, is at the expense of detail, while ultimate detail is at the expense of breadth. We discuss whether the resultant quality assessments differ in character and are therefore suitable to answer different policy questions.How can the state of an ecosystem be described for environmental quality assessment? Just measuring all abiotic and biotic components, not to mention their many relationships, is not feasible. Several studies deal with this problem. They produce statements on environmental quality at an ecosystem level, i.e., ecosystem quality. These studies have been carried out for a variety of ecosystem types on different spatial scales and from different normative points of view. They have in common that the environment is regarded as a system of interrelated abiotic and biotic COmponents, rather than as a collection of individual components. For instance, the fauna species composition is regarded as a response to vegetation structure and abiotic habitat factors. For this reason, they are designated here as ecosystem approaches. In spite of this common character of the studies, different sets of variables and different types of ecosystem models are used to describe the state of the ecosystem. This re- view article investigates whether the variation in the ecosystem approaches in environmental quality assessment requires different kinds of ecological knowledge and data and whether the resultant quality assessments differ in character and are therefore suitable for different policy situations. The need for environmental quality assessment at an ecosystem level has been grown over the years. Initially, environmental quality assessment was oriented towards specific stressors and their direct environmental effects. Either load variables and concentrations of pollutants (e.g., Brown and others 1972) or biotic indicators for pollutants (e.g., Cairns 1974) were measured. The assessment focused on the question of whether a particular environmental problem was decreasing or increasing in severity. This approach was in line with the general strategy then followed in environmental policy making, in which ...

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Section: Overview Of the Selected Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ecosystem approaches to environmental quality assessment

Nip

Haes

1995

Environmental Management

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“…In environmental management, it is important not to use personal viewpoints as criteria to rank threats as a basis for action, but to try to develop and use more general and objective approaches. There is a growing awareness that much better individual indicators of environmental health are necessary because they alone could provide a rational structure for decision‐making in the environmental sciences (Bromberg 1990; OECD 1991). An index (an aggregated measure) is generally distinguished from an indicator (a single variable), and an ecosystem (a single instance, like a lake) from an ecosystem type (the summation of several or many ecosystems).…”

Section: Target Variables For Lake Managementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Management criteria for lake ecosystems applied to case studies of changes in nutrient loading and climate change

et al. 2003

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The aim of this paper is twofold: to present and discuss practically useful management criteria from different perspectives of lake management (fishery, recreation, conservation, monitoring of water quality and use of water for irrigation and drinking), and to put these criteria into the context of a holistic lake ecosystem model, LakeWeb, which accounts for production, biomasses, predation and abiotic/biotic feedbacks related to nine key functional groups of organisms constituting the lake ecosystem. These are phytoplankton, benthic algae, macrophytes, bacterioplankton, herbivorous zooplankton, predatory zooplankton, zoobenthos, prey fish and predatory fish. The LakeWeb model also includes a mass‐balance model for phosphorus and calculates bio‐uptake and retention of phosphorus in these groups of organisms. It also includes submodels for the depth of the photic zone and lake temperature. The LakeWeb model is driven by few and readily accessible driving variables and it has been extensively tested and shown to capture fundamental lake foodweb interactions very well, which should lend credibility to the scenarios discussed in this paper regarding the conditions in Lake Batorino, Belarus. The LakeWeb model offers a tool to address important, often very complex, scientific problems in a realistic manner. The first scenario describes the changes after 1990 when there was a drastic reduction in the use of fertilizers in agriculture because of political changes and the corresponding changes in lake characteristics and foodweb structures utilizing the given management criteria. The second scenario describes, for comparative purposes, the probable alterations in the lake foodweb related to global climatic changes; in this case, warming and increased temperature variations. This study indicates that there are several similarities between eutrophication and increases in temperatures, which are discussed in this paper along with the mechanistic reasons related to such changes by using a set of general management criteria.

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“…The monitoring of eco-environmental quality is mainly dependent upon means such as humanistic statistics and ground observations to obtain ground-surface environmental information in the initial stage of research [13,14]. With the development of remote sensing technology, scholars have gradually begun to obtain surface information from satellite images [15][16][17][18].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluation of Eco-Environmental Quality in Qaidam Basin Based on the Ecological Index (MRSEI) and GEE

2021

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As the population has increased and the economy has developed in the Qaidam Basin, the demand for food and energy in the basin has increased, and the contradiction between economic development and ecological protection is gradually becoming prominent. In this study, the eco-environmental quality of the Qaidam Basin from 1986 to 2019 was evaluated and analyzed based on the Modified Remote Sensing Ecological Index (MRSEI) retrieved by the Google Earth Engine (GEE) and meteorological and socioeconomic auxiliary data. The results show that (1) the Qaidam Basin had a lower overall level of eco-environmental quality, with higher eco-environmental quality in the southeastern part of the basin and lower eco-environmental quality in the central and northwestern parts of the basin. (2) During the period of 1986 to 2019, the eco-environmental quality of the Qaidam Basin started to reverse in 2003; it decreased first and then increased, and the overall performance showed an upward trend over the past 34 years. The most obvious changes were in the northwestern, northeastern, southwestern and central parts of the basin. The eco-environmental quality continued to decline in the northwestern and rise in the northeastern and southwestern regions, and in the central part, it decreased first and then plateaued. (3) The eco-environmental quality of the Qaidam Basin was affected by both natural and human factors. From 1986 to 2019, the “warm and wet” climate in the basin promoted the growth of vegetation. Furthermore, the optimization of industrial structures alleviated the pressure of agriculture and livestock and jointly improved the ecological environment in the Qaidam Basin.

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Identifying Ecological Indicators: An Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program

Cited by 12 publications

References 0 publications

Ecosystem approaches to environmental quality assessment

Ecosystem approaches to environmental quality assessment

Management criteria for lake ecosystems applied to case studies of changes in nutrient loading and climate change

Evaluation of Eco-Environmental Quality in Qaidam Basin Based on the Ecological Index (MRSEI) and GEE

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