Science Impact

September 22, 2008

Managing Natural Resources

— USGS is working with MIT, BLM, USFWS, and the DOI Office of Collaborative Action and Dispute Resolution through the MIT-USGS Science Impact Collaborative (MUSIC) to develop tools and methods for more effective use of science in collaborative processes that bring diverse stakeholders together to solve resource management problems. In FY 2005, research focused on developing: 1) a negotiated rule making process for the designation of offshore wind farms given the new responsibilities of the Minerals Management Service under the National Energy Legislation, 2) a regional approach to the placement of coastal and offshore LNG facilities using a joint fact finding (collaborative) process, and 3) guidelines for incorporating joint fact finding and adaptive management in collaboration with BLM.

During FY 2006, the USGS will continue research through the MIT-USGS Science Impact Collaborative (MUSIC) on developing methods and tools for using science in collaborative processes to help solve resource management problems. New research efforts will focus on water allocation issues in Hawaii, mountaintop mining in West Virginia , sage grouse ecosystem restoration and development issues in Colorado and Nevada , the designation of multi-use trails in Saguaro National Park , development a collaborative process approach to NEPA, and new approaches to joint fact finding in the Tomales Bay watershed, CA.

Using Science in Developing and Applying Environmental Indicators in the Colorado Front Range

— The Colorado Front Range is a rapidly changing region where land use change, energy development, and public lands management policies overlap and sometimes conflict. In spite of considerable effort, barriers remain to the application of multi-disciplinary science by decision makers to human and environmental issues. The USGS worked with Colorado State University to understand why barriers exist and to guide development of regional natural resource and quality of life indicators to describe the state of the Colorado Front Range. The goal was to identify objective, credible, and non-partisan indicators to serve as an unbiased core around which regional environmental and quality-of-life policies can be debated and decisions made. A workshop on this topic was help in November 2004 including farmers, water providers, state and local government representatives, private companies and not-for-profit groups as well as scientists from state institutions and federal agencies, including the Departments of the Interior and Agriculture. The first-cut list of indicators is posted to: http://rockyweb.cr.usgs.gov/pulse/. A Fact Sheet (2005-3021), and a poster presented at a regional meeting of grassland managers are also available on the website. The 44 workshop participants agreed that indicators of condition are useful only if they pass a stringent set of scientifically rigorous tests, including relevancy, measurability, repeatability, understandability, and cost-effectiveness. A workshop report and proposed data assessment methods have been circulated to environmental decision-makers across the Front Range.

— The federal, state, and local agencies responsible for managing and monitoring aspects of the Lake Tahoe Basin in California and Nevada (the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board, Nevada Division of Environmental Protection, and Forest Service) have formed the collaborative Pathway 2007 Planning Process to define the desired future environmental and economic conditions for the Tahoe Basin and to create a 20-year plan to achieve these conditions. The USGS, funded in part through the Southern Nevada Public Lands Management Act, has been developing the Tahoe Decision Support System to aid decision-making as part of Pathway 2007. The USGS has developed population-growth and land-use-change models, as well as gathered insights, data, and models that will be necessary to fulfill the project’s larger long-term vision: to construct a fully-integrated and well-quantified decision support system software tool. The decision support system will be used in 2007 by the Pathway 2007 Planning Process to project outcomes of various management strategies, regulations, and project implementations (referred to as scenarios) and provide a means to consider multiple factors in the selection of the best management plan. In FY 2005, the USGS created a scenario reflecting current conditions and assuming no change to management strategies, then projected land-use and population under the scenario and analyzed what can be determined about the future condition of the Tahoe Basin given the projections and existing data and models. The USGS presented its findings to the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency’s Advisory Planning Committee and Governing Board, and summarized them in an article for the Journal of the Nevada Water Resources Association.

The USGS will continue to work with the collaborative Pathway 2007 Planning Process in the Lake Tahoe Basin in California and Nevada during FY 2006. The USGS is currently developing a set of scenario-generation software tools to translate user-defined scenarios into projected land-use extent and type, and projected population by segment (overnight visitor, seasonal resident, permanent resident, etc.) using the already developed land-use-change and population-growth models. The projections will be used during FY 2006 as inputs to water clarity and nutrient loading models under development by the Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board.

Incorporating Uncertainty into Mercury Mitigation Decisions in the Sacramento River Watershed

— Water quality regulatory agencies in the Sacramento River watershed have the difficult task of devising strategies for reducing mercury levels in fish. Elevated mercury levels in fish may ultimately result from the erosion of materials from local legacy gold and mercury mining operations, but other environmental factors may be important. For example, there is significant uncertainty about the importance of other mercury sources (including atmospheric deposition and geothermal inputs) and the influence of “hotspots,” areas that have localized environmental conditions that greatly promote the formation of the toxic organic form of mercury. Because of these significant uncertainties and the difficulty in finding and mitigating hotspots, choosing a watershed-scale strategy for reducing mercury levels in fish is very complicated and the possibility of failure is significant. In particular, decision-makers risk choosing an expensive mitigation strategy that has negligible impact on mercury levels in fish. USGS researchers, in collaboration with Stanford University, USEPA Region 9, California Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board staff, and the Sacramento County Regional Sanitation District, have developed a decision model that incorporates the various uncertainties in this complex water quality decision problem, allowing decision-makers to consider tradeoffs between the risks of not meeting various environmental targets and the significant strategy costs. This decision support approach has been described in a report to USEPA, “Incorporating Uncertainty into Mercury-Offset Decisions with a Probabilistic Network for National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System Permit Holders” (http://pubs.usgs.gov/ of/2004/1408/) and on the website, “Mercury and Decision Support in California” (http://geography.wr.usgs.gov/science/mercury/). This effort supports the USGS Geography Science Strategy goals of credible decision support (Goal 5) and information synthesis and knowledge creation (Goal 9).

Integrating Science with Resource Management through Collaborative Approaches and Adaptive Modeling Systems

— Federal land managers are called upon to make science-based decisions and to manage multiple resources under intense public scrutiny. The goal for resource managers is to optimize the management of multiple resources while minimizing negative impacts of any given decision. They also need an adaptive management framework to accommodate changing conditions. The USGS partnered with NPS, BLM, and USFS to develop a transportable collaborative modeling approach for adaptive management of ecosystems in Mesa Verde National Park (MEVE). This research addresses the following question: How do we more effectively link the appropriate USGS science with natural resource management decision making? The research strategy was to bring together collaborative problem-solving approaches with modular modeling tools applicable to multi-objective resource management needs in an adaptive management framework. Through efforts to couple the adaptive capabilities of the modular modeling system (MMS) with accepted principles of collaboration, the research is establishing a transportable methodology to link USGS science to the adaptive management needs of DOI land management agencies applicable across a wide range of ecosystems. This approach has been adopted for a newly developed BLM Partnership Series Course to be taught throughout the Western Interior entitled “Science in the Service of Stewardship.”

Integration of Sound Science and Adaptive Strategies in Sage Grouse Conservation Planning

Sage grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) populations have declined dramatically throughout their range across the western United States prompting the development of Conservation Strategy Plans by eleven western states and five federal agencies as well as several petitions to the US Fish and Wildlife Service to list the species as endangered. The Conservation Plans are state level compilations of the voluntary efforts being undertaken by local working groups of private and public landowners to mitigate the threats faced by sage grouse such as habitat destruction by cheat grass invasion, oil and gas development, and overgrazing, and increased predation, and disease.

The Conservation Plans are seen as “living” documents continuously evolving through a collective process of adaptive management. The Plans are unprecedented collaborations of local stakeholders across millions of acres of sagebrush and a bold new experiment in conservation.

A critical element in the implementation of these plans is the exchange of scientific and local knowledge within and between local working groups. The USGS is working with the Bi-State local working groups of Nevada and California to research the information exchange process and improve the integration of results from current USGS studies of sage grouse biology into the local working group implementation process. Our research has including working sessions with stakeholders, knowledge management experts, legal scholars, and social scientists and has led to the use of innovative geospatial technologies embedded into the online versions of the Conservation Plans. Continuously updated interactive maps become part of the plan documents reflecting the dynamic quality of adaptive management.

Integrating Science and Economics in South Florida DOI Land Acquisition/ Stewardship Decisions

— South Florida’s national parks and wildlife refuges are threatened by accelerated growth of the surrounding built environment which alters the natural hydrology and ecology, and introduces harmful levels of sediment, nutrients and toxins. DOI scientists and land managers are faced with major informational and financial challenges and conflicting stakeholder interests in their efforts to manage and protect resources to fulfill their stewardship responsibilities. The primary objective of this effort is to develop an ecosystem portfolio model (EPM) for DOI scientists and managers to use to develop and prioritize strategies to restore and preserve the ecological health of South Florida parks and refuges in the face of intense population growth and development pressures. The EPM, a spatial decision support tool, will integrate natural science and economic information in a portfolio framework to assist with land use planning, l and acquisition, and land management decisions. The economic portfolio framework will allow DOI resource managers and decision makers to consider multiple objectives, while considering the quality of the scientific and economic information supporting the decision. Ultimately, success will depend on well coordinated, collaborative, and integrated efforts among participating agencies and stakeholders to implement a reasonable balance between human needs and the needs of the ecosystem. The USGS Priority Ecosystem Science ( PES) program, the DOI Critical Ecosystem Studies Initiative (CESI), and the USGS Science Impact Program have contributed to this effort. This effort supports USGS Geography Science Strategy goals of understanding past, present, and future environmental consequences of land change to support better management criteria (Goal 3), improving the scientific basis for vulnerability and risk assessment (Goal 4), credible decision support (Goal 5), providing timely, intelligent access to new and archive USGS geographic data for decision support (Goal 8), and providing information synthesis and knowledge creation (Goal 9).

Contacts:
Richard Bernknopf, rbern@usgs.gov,
Paul Hearn, phearn@usgs,
Bill Labiosa, Western Geographic Science Center, blabiosa@usgs.gov

New Technologies for Communication during Disasters: How ordinary citizens have used USGS scientific information on the Internet

—An increase in hurricane frequency and intensity in the past few years has combined with increased building activity along our coasts to dramatically alter citizens’ vulnerability to extreme storms. The 2005 hurricane season, which involved massive evacuations of citizens from Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas, and unprecedented destruction of homes and businesses, highlighted how people and social groups communicate before, during, and following extreme storm events. The original scientific purpose of storm surge information produced by the USGS was to document and analyze coastal change. As this information has increasingly been made available in near real time over the Internet, it has been used by a broad range of public stakeholders to understand how extreme storms impact coastal communities, to characterize and model risk from storm surge, and to aid first responders. These public stakeholders include federal agencies such as FEMA and the US Army Corps of Engineers, and first responders from state and local governments.

The intense hurricane activity of the 2004 and 2005 seasons brought new audiences of ordinary citizens to the maps, photographs, and topographic data that are posted to the USGS websites. This research project documents and analyzes the use of USGS information by the general public in the 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons. The research will be of interest to all public agencies that make geospatial data available on the Internet with the purpose of reducing vulnerability to natural hazards.

Communication is an important focus of hazard studies, and is directly related to how USGS information is used in hazard prevention, response, and mitigation. Communication during and following a disaster takes on characteristics different from ‘normal times’ (Mileti and O’Brien 1992). In disasters, more reliance is placed on informal and unconventional channels. A study of the 2004 hurricane season in the Caribbean demonstrated that local organization and awareness working from below is just as important for public safety as high-tech warnings from above (Walter 2005).

What happens when changes in technology allow locals to use high-tech tools that give them direct access to scientific data? The past two hurricane seasons provide a contrast. The 2004 hurricane season was characterized by passive use of USGS Internet information by the general public. People visited the USGS website and followed up with emails to scientists principally to determine the scope of damage to their properties. Because of changes in communication technologies, the 2005 hurricane season was dramatically different. USGS information was used actively by citizens to create new shared information resources and communities. The research documents and analyzes how citizens used USGS information and other geospatial data to communicate information about extreme storms using map blogs, wikis and map hacks. These new tools, enabled by the publication of open mapping languages such as Google’s Keyhole Markup Language (KML, a form of XML), allowed people to build geographically enabled websites. These websites became a community resource where people could actively post information or get information about missing persons and pets, alternative housing, and damage to neighborhoods. First responders made extensive use of these new technologies as an underpinning for more traditional forms of information. The question that this research seeks to answer is how is scientific information used by local citizens during extreme storms and how do new technologies impact the use of these forms of information?

By demonstrating the extent of local citizen use of USGS information, this research will contribute to new methods for displaying information and new ways to support communities and help them reduce vulnerability. The research will allow us to tailor existing dissemination methods to encourage such community involvement. These methods will be valuable for USGS and other public agencies that publish hazard information.

This project differs from traditional research projects at the USGS because it incorporates social science with physical science and employs qualitative methodologies (interviews, questionnaires, etc.)

This project has support from USGS Coastal and Marine Geology Program. Additional partnerships are being sought from other federal agencies and the academic community. The research will benefit from the technical expertise of USGS scientists at the Center for Coastal and Watershed Studies, Saint Petersburg, Florida.

Mileti, D. S., and P. W. O'Brien. 1992. Warnings during disaster: Normalizing communicated risk. Social Problems 39: 40-57.

Walter, J., ed. 2005. World Disasters Report: Focus on information in disasters. Geneva: International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

Carl D. Shapiro, Ph.D.
U.S. Geological Survey
516 National Center
Reston, VA 20192
(703) 648-4446 (Voice)
cshapiro@usgs.gov

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Managing Natural Resources

BIOLOGY || GEOGRAPHY || GEOLOGY || WATER
About USGS || Science Topics || Maps, Products & Publications || Partnerships || Education || Newsroom || Jobs