Evaluation of Land Condition Trend Analysis for Birds on a Kansas Military Training Site

/ Land condition trend analysis (LCTA) is a long-term monitoring program used on military training lands to identify ecological changes that result from training and management activities. We initiated LCTA at the Kansas Army National Guard Training Facility (KANGTF) in Saline County, Kansas, in March 1998. This paper evaluates the LCTA methodology for birds by comparing LCTA results with a modified methodology designed to place sampling transects in field-identified rather than satellite-identified land-cover types. In the satellite-identified land-cover types developed at the site, grassland habitats included a large component of woody vegetation, which resulted in poor resolution of bird assemblages associated with the different land-cover types. Using these cover classes, mixed grass prairie included five grass/forb (g/f) and 10 woody-dependent species; old-field included four g/f and four woody-dependent species; and riparian included one g/f and six woody-dependent species. LCTA sampling was too limited in the ecologically important riparian woodland habitat with the result that bird species were not adequately sampled there. In the alternate sampling strategy, we identified three land-cover classes (grassland, hedgerow, and riparian woodland) by field reconnaissance and increased sampling in the riparian woodland. Grassland included six g/f and three woody-dependent species; hedgerow included six g/f and 20 woody-dependent species, and riparian included two g/f and 19 woody-dependent species. The modifications greatly improved the resolution of bird assemblages associated with land-cover classes at the KANGTF. Use of the alternative sampling method should improve the ability to detect long-term trends in the bird communities.     

Detecting Changes in Natural Resources Using Land Condition Trend Analysis Data

The Land Condition Trend Analysis (LCTA) program is the US Army's standard for land inventory and monitoring, employing standardized methods of natural resources data collection, analyses, and reporting designed to meet multiple goals and objectives. Critical to using LCTA data in natural resources management decisions is the ability of the LCTA protocols to detect changes in natural resources. To quantify the ability of LCTA protocols to detect resource changes, power analysis techniques were used to estimate minimum detectable effect sizes (MDES) for selected primary and secondary management variables for three Army installations. MDES for a subset of primary variables were estimated using data from 27 installation LCTA programs. MDES for primary and secondary variables varied widely. However, LCTA programs implemented at larger installations with lower sampling intensities detected changes in installation resources as well as programs implemented at smaller more intensively sampled installations. As a national monitoring program that is implemented at individual installations, LCTA protocols provide relatively consistent monitoring data to detect changes in resources despite diverse resource characteristics and implementation constraints.     

监测数据的审核及结果的分析与判断

本文介绍了监测数据审核的意义,从监测结果的表达、报告的完整性,采要的准确性等方面阐述了监测数据审核的要点,提出了监测结果异常数据的几种较为简便,实用的判断方法。     

Policy-Oriented Integrated Analysis of Land-Use Change: An Analysis of Data Needs

Integrated analysis of land-use change in support of informed policy-making for sustainable land use at various spatial levels makes heavy requirements for quality data. This paper aims to structure the principal methodological and practical issues of data needs for this task. The data needs for local level analyses of land-use change are given special attention. The paper adopts an integrated economic–environmental modeling framework and suggests the main types of data needed. Four main data dimensions are distinguished: system of spatial reference, system of temporal reference, definitions, and data collection procedures (sources, collection instruments and techniques, recording and retrieval systems, data format, frequency of data collection). To evaluate the suitability of current data sets as well as to guide the collection of new ones, a scheme based on substantive and practical criteria is employed. The former include compatibility, consistency, and reliability of data, while the latter include availability, ease and cost of data collection/retrieval, and transferability of data. The evaluation indicates the broad gaps in current data sets along the four main data dimensions. Based on this evaluation, the paper suggests framework guidelines to address the main data issues identified. RID=" ID=" <SUP>1</SUP>CLAUDE: Coordinating Land Use and Land Cover Data and Analyses in Europe. European Commission Concerted Action project (DG-XII); DAPLARCH: Data Plan Development for Land Use and Land Cover Change Research. Program sponsored by IGBP-IHDP (LUCC and DIS). Street, Durham, North Carolina 27707, USA     

Quantifying the sources of ozone, fine particulate matter, and regional haze in the Southeastern United States

A detailed sensitivity analysis was conducted to quantify the contributions of various emission sources to ozone (O₃), fine particulate matter (PM_2.5), and regional haze in the Southeastern United States. O₃ and particulate matter (PM) levels were estimated using the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) modeling system and light extinction values were calculated from modeled PM concentrations. First, the base case was established using the emission projections for the year 2009. Then, in each model run, SO₂, primary carbon (PC), NH₃, NO_x or VOC emissions from a particular source category in a certain geographic area were reduced by 30% and the responses were determined by calculating the difference between the results of the reduced emission case and the base case.The sensitivity of summertime O₃ to VOC emissions is small in the Southeast and ground-level NO_x controls are generally more beneficial than elevated NO_x controls (per unit mass of emissions reduced). SO₂ emission reduction is the most beneficial control strategy in reducing summertime PM_2.5 levels and improving visibility in the Southeast and electric generating utilities are the single largest source of SO₂. Controlling PC emissions can be very effective locally, especially in winter. Reducing NH₃ emissions is an effective strategy to reduce wintertime ammonium nitrate (NO₃NH₄) levels and improve visibility; NO_x emissions reductions are not as effective. The results presented here will help the development of specific emission control strategies for future attainment of the National Ambient Air Quality Standards in the region.     

Integrating Environmental Restoration and Ecological Restoration: Long-Term Stewardship at the Department of Energy

With the ending of the Cold War, several federal agencies are reclaiming land through remediation and restoration and are considering potential future land uses that are compatible with current uses and local needs. Some sites are sufficiently contaminated that it is likely that the responsible federal agency will retain control over the land for the foreseeable future, providing them with a stewardship mission. This is particularly true of some of the larger Department of Energy (DOE) facilities contaminated during the production of nuclear weapons. The use of the term “restoration” is explored in this paper because the word means different things to the public, ecologists, and environmental managers responsible for contaminated sites, such as Superfund sites and the DOE facilities. While environmental restoration usually refers to remediation and removal of hazardous wastes, ecological restoration refers to the broader process of repairing damaged ecosystems and enhancing their productivity and/or biodiversity. The goals of the two types of restoration can be melded by considering environmental restoration as a special case of ecological restoration, one that involves risk reduction from hazardous wastes, and by broadening environmental restoration to include a more extensive problem-formulation phase (both temporal and spatial), which includes the goal of reestablishing a functioning ecosystem after remediation. Further, evaluating options for the desired post remediation result will inform managers and policy-makers concerning the feasibility and efficacy of environmental restoration itself.     

Toleration of Traffic by Vegetation: Life Form Conclusions and Summary Extracts from a Comprehensive Data Base

/ An exhaustive search of the literature for foot and vehicle traffic impacts on vegetation has yielded more than 400 citations, two thirds of which held sufficient detail to be usefully distilled into a personal-computer data base. A total of 1444 individual observations involving 737 species that were trampled are included. Compromises were made in the depth of entry detail and to allow comparability among data. Inconsistent, generally short-term, experimental practices disallowed formal statistical analyses. Within those constraints, graminoids emerged with the highest mean resistance and resilience among life-forms. Climbers and cactoids ranked lowest in these categories. The herbaceous, typically broader-leaved (forb) life-form appeared most likely to suffer immediate losses. Shrubs and trees had the longest-lasting decreases in diversity following traffic impact. All life-forms had sensitive species. The greatest general species and individual plant losses take place in the first few passes by feet, wheels, or tracks. Plant and soil damage increases with the amount of weight and power applied. Greater soil moisture and/or deeper overstory shading magnify those impacts. Additional precepts may become apparent to data-base users through increased ease in making comparisons.KEY WORDS: Vegetation; Trampling; Vehicles; Traffic; Resistance; Resilience; Data base     

Using Dynamic Modeling to Scope Environmental Problems and Build Consensus

/ This paper assesses the changing role of dynamic modeling for understanding and managing complex ecological economic systems. It discusses new modeling tools for problem scoping and consensus building among a broad range of stakeholders and describes four case studies in which dynamic modeling has been used to collect and organize data, synthesize knowledge, and build consensus about the management of complex systems. The case studies range from industrial systems (mining, smelting, and refining of iron and steel in the United States) to ecosystems (Louisiana coastal wetlands, and Fynbos ecosystems in South Africa) to linked ecological economic systems (Maryland's Patuxent River basin in the United States). They illustrate uses of dynamic modeling to include stakeholders in all stages of consensus building, ranging from initial problem scoping to model development. The resultant models are the first stage in a three-stage modeling process that includes research and management models as the later stages.KEY WORDS: Dynamic modeling; Scoping; Consensus building; Environmental management; Ecosystem management; Policy making; Graphical programming languages     

Using Decision Analysis to Choose Phosphorus Targets for Lake Erie

Lake Erie water quality has improved dramatically since the degraded conditions of the 1960s. Additional gains could be made, but at the expense of further investment and reductions in fishery productivity. In facing such cross-jurisdictional issues, natural resource managers in Canada and the United States must grapple with conflicting objectives and important uncertainties, while considering the priorities of the public that live in the basin. The techniques and tools of decision analysis have been used successfully to deal with such decision problems in a range of environmental settings, but infrequently in the Great Lakes. The objective of this paper is to illustrate how such techniques might be brought to bear on an important, real decision currently facing Lake Erie resource managers and stakeholders: the choice of new phosphorus loading targets for the lake. The heart of our approach is a systematic elicitation of stakeholder preferences and an investigation of the degree to which different phosphorus-loading policies might satisfy ecosystem objectives. Results show that there are potential benefits to changing the historical policy of reducing phosphorus loads in Lake Erie.     

Geographic Analysis of Forest Health Indicators Using Spatial Scan Statistics

Geographically explicit analysis tools are needed to assess forest health indicators that are measured over large regions. Spatial scan statistics can be used to detect spatial or spatiotemporal clusters of forests representing hotspots of extreme indicator values. This paper demonstrates the approach through analyses of forest fragmentation indicators in the southeastern United States and insect and pathogen indicators in the Pacific Northwest United States. The scan statistic detected four spatial clusters of fragmented forest including a hotspot in the Piedmont and Coastal Plain region. Three recurring clusters of insect and pathogen occurrence were found in the Pacific Northwest. Spatial scan statistics are a powerful new tool that can be used to identify potential forest health problems.     

Volunteer Environmental Monitoring and the Role of the Universities: The Case of Citizens' Environment Watch

Universities can provide a stable home for launching collaborative community research projects. Citizens' Environment Watch (CEW), an environmental monitoring initiative based at the University of Toronto, has made significant contributions to environmental education and stewardship in Ontario, Canada. Following dramatic cuts in provincial monitoring programs, citizens and youth have used chemical parameters and biological indicators to gauge water and air quality, and to identify areas requiring remediation and pollution prevention efforts. The relationship of Citizens' Environment Watch to government agencies, funders and other grassroots environmental groups has evolved over the past 5 years as CEW attempts to remain effective without taking on the investigative and enforcement roles to support the regulatory enforcement that has been largely abandoned by government. We explore the challenges inherent in developing and maintaining a volunteer organization that carries out rigorous and useful scientific work and we outline the ability of a university to help overcome these critical challenges. Finally, we present lessons learned for the benefit of other citizen and youth monitoring projects.     

Building Consensus in Environmental Impact Assessment Through Multicriteria Modeling and Sensitivity Analysis

Multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) increasingly is being applied in environmental impact assessment (EIA). In this article, two MCDA techniques, stochastic analytic hierarchy process and compromise programming, are combined to ascertain the environmental impacts of and to rank two alternative sites for Mexico City’s new airport. Extensive sensitivity analyses were performed to determine the probability of changes in rank ordering given uncertainty in the hierarchy structure, decision criteria weights, and decision criteria performances. Results demonstrate that sensitivity analysis is fundamental for attaining consensus among members of interdisciplinary teams and for settling debates in controversial projects. It was concluded that sensitivity analysis is critical for achieving a transparent and technically defensible MCDA implementation in controversial EIA.     

电子产品的环境应力筛选与环境试验简析

从若干方面对比分析了环境应力筛选与环境试验的主要区别，澄清了实际工作中存在的一些模糊认识。     

Evaluation of the Fire Simulation Processes of the National Fire Management System's Initial Attack Analysis Processor

The fire simulation processes of the National Fire Management System's (NFMAS) Initial Attack Analysis (IAA) processor were evaluated by conducting two types of sensitivity analysis: one based on a hypothetical set of data to assess IAA's outputs under a wide range of fire input values, and the other using an actual Stanislaus National Forest database to test IAA's validity with a real set of data. The results revealed that IAA's outputs (projected annual number of fires and area burned) were most sensitive, in descending order, to the input values of the fire spread rate, the productivity rates of the suppression forces, and the initial attack time, for all fuel models tested. In contrast, IAA's outputs were extremely insensitive to variations in the fire size at discovery. Changes are necessary in the ways IAA incorporates the fire size at discovery to facilitate the comparison among various fire detection options. The program's “escaped fire situation” analysis was found inadequate, because the projected annual frequencies and final sizes of the simulated escaped fire events produced unacceptable results with the Stanislaus National Forest database. Assigning final sizes to simulated escaped fires according to the fire intensity level in which they are historically expected to occur provides a consistent way of calculation of the projected annual area burned and the consequent cost plus net value change (C + NVC).     

Synthetic Analysis for Extracting Information on Soil Salinity Using Remote Sensing and GIS: A Case Study of Yanggao Basin in China

/ This paper reports the experience of extracting information on the salinity of soil and offers a method of synthetic analysis. The experimental areas for analysis are located in Yanggao Basin, Shanxi Province, China. The types of soil are mainly meadow soil and salinized meadow soil. The method of synthetic analysis of salinity uses a geographic information system (GIS) as a tool, building a basic saltwater analysis model of saline soil and adjusting the result with expert experience after computer processing. The method of feature extraction has been used for remotely sensed data. An optimum combination of features has been determined and, after comparing several combinations in the Yanggao region, an improved result has been obtained after Kauth-Thomas (K-T) transformation. For precise quantitative analysis of the salinization, not only Thematic Mapper (TM) remote sensing data, but also two forms of non-remote-sensing data are needed: depth of groundwater and mineralization rate of groundwater according to the theory of genesis of soil. For the analysis of synthetic compounded multisources, a generalized Bayes classification is used after overlay, matching, and related coefficients have been determined. On the premise that various information sources are independent, global membership functions with probability are used to combine various pieces of information in order to apply them directly to the pixels and classifications of soil salinity. The experiment indicates that this analytical method is sound because of the increased speed of processing and its simplicity and improved precision of classification of salinity. Finally, it is necessary to examine and adjust the factors using expert intelligence. The experiment shows that synthetic analysis using the geographic information system can raise the precision of quantitative analysis of salinity, which has advantages for environmental monitoring and management.KEY WORDS: Salinity; Remote sensing; Thematic Mapper; Geographic information system; Classification     

Risk-Based Analysis of Environmental Monitoring Data: Application to Heavy Metals in North Carolina Surface Waters

The state of North Carolina's Department of Environment and Natural Resources (NCDENR) conducts routine water quality monitoring throughout the state to assess the health of aquatic systems. The current study reports the results of a retrospective (1990–2000) ecological risk assessment of six heavy metals (arsenic, cadmium, copper, lead, mercury, and zinc) in 17 North Carolina basins that was conducted to estimate the risk of heavy metal toxicity to freshwater organisms and assess the sufficiency of NCDENR's monitoring data to identify water-quality-related ecological threats. Acute and chronic ecotoxicological thresholds (ETs) were calculated for each metal based upon the 10th percentile of species sensitivity distributions and were normalized for water hardness. Statewide probabilities (expressed as percentages) of a random sample exceeding acute or chronic ETs among the six metals ranged from 0.01% to 12.19% and 0.76% to 21.21%, respectively, with copper having the highest and arsenic and mercury the lowest risk. Basin-specific probabilities varied significantly depending upon water hardness and presumably watershed development. Although the majority of specific sites where data were collected were at low risk for metal toxicity, some specific sites had a high probability of toxic events associated with one or more metals. Analytical detection limits for metals were frequently higher than estimated chronic ET, limiting the ability to assess the risk of chronic toxicity in soft-water basins. Results suggest risk-based criteria may be useful for assessing and validating the sufficiency of monitoring programs and prioritizing management goals.     

基于因子分析和聚类分析的江苏十三市环境保护评价研究

本文根据工业废水排放量、工业二氧化硫排放量、工业烟尘排放量、工业废水排放达标率、工业固体废物综合利用率5个指标的统计数据,运用因子分析和聚类分析,对江苏13个市的环境保护状况进行评价,并将其分成5个不同的类别,第1类是苏州,第2类是南京,第3类包括无锡、南通、常州,第4类包括徐州、扬州、泰州、淮安、宿迁,第5类包括盐城、镇江、连云港,然后进一步对各类城市在污染强度和污染控制方面的特征进行分析。最后,分别对每类地区的环境保护提出对策建议。     

我国能源消费与环境质量变化的关联分析

本文对我国1990-2004年能源消费与环境质量的变化态势以及二者之间关系的实证分析结果表明：我国能源消费与整体环境质量变化和局部环境质量有着高度的相关性；环境质量的改善不能仅依靠环境保护来实现，还应考虑能源消费的发展变化和影响。     

乡镇企业环境问题的经济学分析及环境保护手段的选择

乡镇企业的发展一方面给我国农村劳动力提供了大量的就业机会,加快了我国的城市化进程,为我国的经济做出了重要的贡献;另一方面,由于生产要素、利益驱动等众多因素的影响,乡镇企业给资源和环境造成了巨大的耗竭和破坏。本文主要从经济学的角度来探究乡镇企业发展带来的环境问题的根源,进而选择一套适合我国乡镇企业特点的环境保护手段。