Watershed Ecological Risk Assessment Guidance

Objective/Intended Use

The purpose of this EPA report is to provide suggestions and examples for making scientific information more relevant to the needs of watershed managers by using ERA principles to help structure ecological assessments of watersheds.

Abstract

Watersheds are frequently used to study and manage environmental resources because hydrologic boundaries define the flow of contaminants and other stressors. Ecological assessments of watersheds are complex because watersheds typically overlap multiple jurisdictional boundaries, are subjected to multiple environmental stressors, and have multiple stakeholders with diverse environmental and socioeconomic interests. Ecological risk assessment (ERA) is an approach that has successfully been used to increase the use of ecological science in decision making, by evaluating the likelihood that adverse ecological effects may result from exposure to one or more stressors, yet its application to watershed assessment is limited. This report supplements the Guidelines for Ecological Risk Assessmentby addressing issues commonly encountered when conducting watershed ecological assessments. Suggestions and examples to follow are provided based upon lessons learned from prior watershed ERAs. This report is of potential use to ecologists, hydrologists, watershed managers, risk assessors, landscape ecologists, and other scientists and managers seeking to increase the use of environmental assessment data in decision making. Each activity and phase of the watershed ERA process is explained sequentially in this report. Guidance on how to involve stakeholders to generate environmental management goals and objectives is provided. The processes for selecting assessment endpoints, developing conceptual models, and selecting the exposure and effects pathways to be analyzed are described. Suggestions for predicting how multiple sources and stressors affect assessment endpoints are also provided; these include using multivariate analyses to compare land use with biotic measurements. In addition, the report suggests how to estimate, describe, and communicate risk and how to evaluate management alternatives. Citation: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). (2008) Application of watershed ecological risk assessment methods to watershed management. National Center for Environmental Assessment, Washington, DC; EPA/600/R-06/037F. Available from National Technical Information Service, Springfield, VA, and online at http://www.epa.gov/ncea.

Project Status

Over a dozen products have been completed, a subset of which are listed below. Several other projects are underway and planned for completion by FY2005, including one project funded under goal 2 and described in record # 22513. Goal 8 planned products include:
Waquoit Bay assessment - journal article, Environmental Management; Suggestions for performing watershed assessments - EPA report;
Riparian corridor dimension analysis - journal article, Ecological Applications; Using watershed ERA for TMDLs - journal article, Environmental Management;
Moving from ERA to watershed ERA - journal article, Health & Ecological Assessment;
Book chapters on Middle Platte and Clinch assessment for ERA/ecological economics book.

Products EPA reports

-US EPA. 2000. Serveiss, V.B., J.P. Cox, J. Moses, B.L. Yeager. Report on the watershed ecological risk characterization workshop, EPA/600/R-99/111. Office of Research and Development, National Center for Environmental Assessment, Wash., DC.
- US EPA. 2000. Schubauer- Berigan, J. P., R.J.F. Bruins, V.B. Serveiss, J. Little, and D.L. Eskew. 2000. Gathering Information for Watershed Eco. Risk Assessments: A Review of Ten Watershed Assessments. EPA600/R-00/106. Cincinnati, OH.
-Middle Snake assessment- published in 2002; -Clinch and Powell Valley assessment - in NCEA clearance; Waquoit Bay assessment - final editing,
EPA internet training module
-Serveiss, V., S.B. Norton and D.J. Norton. 2000. Watershed Ecological Risk Assessment. The Watershed Academy, US EPA; on-line training module at http://www.epa.gov/owow/watershed/wacademy/acad2000/ecorisk

Journal articles and conference proceedings
-Serveiss, V.B., J. L. Diamond, R.E. Hylton and D. Gowan. 2001. Watershed ecological risk assessment: The Clinch and Powell valley experience. In D. Bosch, ed., Proceedings of the Integrated Decision-Making for Watershed Management Symposium: Processes & Tools. Held Jan. 7-9, Chevy Chase, MD. VWRRC P7. Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, Blacksburg, VA. Also, submitted to Journal of the American Water Resources Assoc.
- Serveiss, V.B. 2001. Communicating and characterizing ecological risk at the watershed scale. Conference Proceedings for International conference on diffuse pollution & watershed management. Institute for Urban Envionmental Risk Management. Milwaukee, WI.
-Serveiss, V.B. Watershed ecological risk assessment. Proceedings from the Water Environment Federation Technological Exposition & Conference (WEFTEC). Session on comparative risk assessment. Anaheim. CA., Oct. 14, 2000.
-Serveiss, V.B. 2002. Applying ecological risk principles to watershed assessment & management. Environmental Management.
-R.J.F. Bruins, M.T. Heberling, G.W. Suter II, V. Serveiss, O.H. Erekson, O.L. Loucks, R.S. Supalla, J.R. Kahn, S. Stewart. Accepted. A Proposed Framework for Place-Based Integration of Ecological Risk Assessment & Economics, & Three Case Studies. Proceedings from the U.S. Society for Ecological Economics (USSEE) inaugural meeting. Duluth, July 2001.
-Diamond, J.M., V.B. Serveiss. 2002. In review. Diagnosing causes of native fish & mussel species decline in the Clinch and Powell River watershed, VA., USA. Environmental Toxicology & Chemistry.
-Diamond, J.M., V.B. Serveiss. In review. Identifying sources of stress to native aquatic species using a watershed ecological risk assessment framework. Environmental Science & Technology.- Serveiss, V.B. 2002. Improving the use of environmental monitorning & assessment data in decision making by using watershed ecological risk assessment.