Grouping Lakes for Water Quality Assessment and Monitoring: The Roles of Regionalization and Spatial Scale

Regionalization frameworks cluster geographic data to create contiguous regions of similar climate, geology and hydrology by delineating land into discrete regions, such as ecoregions or watersheds, often at several spatial scales. Although most regionalization schemes were not originally designed for aquatic ecosystem classification or management, they are often used for such purposes, with surprisingly few explicit tests of the relative ability of different regionalization frameworks to group lakes for water quality monitoring and assessment. We examined which of 11 different lake grouping schemes at two spatial scales best captures the maximum amount of variation in water quality among regions for total nutrients, water clarity, chlorophyll, overall trophic state, and alkalinity in 479 lakes in Michigan (USA). We conducted analyses on two data sets: one that included all lakes and one that included only minimally disturbed lakes. Using hierarchical linear models that partitioned total variance into within-region and among-region components, we found that ecological drainage units and 8-digit hydrologic units most consistently captured among-region heterogeneity at their respective spatial scales using all lakes (variation among lake groups = 3% to 50% and 12% to 52%, respectively). However, regionalization schemes capture less among-region variance for minimally disturbed lakes. Diagnostics of spatial autocorrelation provided insight into the relative performance of regionalization frameworks but also demonstrated that region size is only partly responsible for capturing variation among lakes. These results suggest that regionalization schemes can provide useful frameworks for lake water quality assessment and monitoring but that we must identify the appropriate spatial scale for the questions being asked, the type of management applied, and the metrics being assessed.     

An ecological planning model

In this article a model is proposed that could be used as a basis for ecological planning of natural resources. The role of people as part of the ecosystem is emphasized, and the various factors that should be considered in such planning are discussed. An understanding of ecological planning is dependent on the study of human activities in, and the nature of, natural ecosystems. It also depends on the fact that people are a part of nature, and as a result nature is of value to humans. Realizing the importance of this principle is a prerequisite to studying nature and also for an understanding of the various steps in the ecological planning approach. Realization of these values is often through a series of activities that may result in a negative environmental impact. Nature is described as an interacting group of natural features and processes. In this study both the features and processes are described as natural resources. The use of these natural resources obviously affects them, and if this use is to continue over a long period, both the activity and the resource must be understood if they are to be maintained in a productive state. In order to limit impact and maintain value, a planning aid called zoning is used to assist in the understanding of the processes involved.     

An early warning method of landscape ecological security in rapid urbanizing coastal areas and its application in Xiamen, China

Based on the Pressure-State-Response (P-S-R) approach, an index system for landscape ecological security (LES) was suggested using three dimensions, six factors, and three weights. The indicators in the system were divided into two groups: spatial interpolation (acquired by the remote sensing data) and non-spatial interpolation (acquired by consultation with experts). According to data of 2003 and 2006, coupled with current tendencies, the early warning method was classified into four categories: security and degradation, sub-security and slow degradation, sub-security and rapid degradation, and insecurity. Our research with early warning method finds three interesting phenomena: (1) mean value of LES in 2003 was 0.586, indicating medium security; while in 2006 it was 0.650, an upper medium security. The LES level within each districts of Xiamen in 2006 was better than the level in 2003. In terms of LES, the comprehensive condition within each district of Xiamen in 2006 was enhanced compared with 2003. Overall, there was improvement in 80.5% of areas from 2003 to 2006, showing promising signs of positive development. (2) The LES of Xiang’an District and Jimei District were in stages of high early warning given that the percentage of land in these districts that showed symptoms of insecurity and degradation was 41.03 and 34.89%, respectively. (3) On the whole, the areas that showed notable signs of insecurity and rapid landscape, and which can already be identified as early warning areas requiring immediate attention, correspond closely with the distribution of coastal industrial parks in these regions. In conclusion, the consequences of rapid industrialization and urbanization are far reaching and affect local and regional ecological security.