Monitoring Ecological Condition in the Western United States

This volume is the proceedings of a symposium held on April 6-8, 1999, in San Francisco, California, USA, and sponsored by the US Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program (EMAP). EMAP is the primary program of the EPA's Office of Research and Development to advance the science of statistically-based ecosystem monitoring; and establish baseline conditions and trends of the nation's natural resources. The first volume in this series of EMAP-sponsored symposium proceedings addressed "Monitoring Ecological Condition at Regional Scales" (1998). The current proceedings was the result of the "EMAP Symposium on Western Ecological Systems" (1999), and presaged the new EMAP Western Pilot Study, which will include one third of the contiguous United States. The information found in these proceedings on the state of monitoring science, and existing monitoring programs undertaken by Federal and State agencies, academic institutions, tribal governments, and environmental protection interest groups helped to establish a starting point for embarking on the EMAP Western Pilot. This volume represents scientific and management approaches, and the results of monitoring and assessment in the western US ecosystems. The chapter topics include regional assessments, approaches to database design, landscape considerations, water quality and land use, and focuses on watersheds, lakes and rivers, and marine coastal areas. Publication of these proceedings constitutes a sound starting point for the assessment of the ecological resources in the western US and should facilitate collaborative efforts in the development and application of sound approaches to monitoring and assessment of ecological resources in the US and abroad.

Table of Contents:
B. Introduction.- EMAP Overview: Objectives, Approaches, and Achievements.- C. Regional Assessments.- An Overview of EPA’s Regional Vulnerability Assessment (ReVA) Program.- Status of Aquatic Bioassessment in U.S. EPA Region IX.- An Integrated Ecosystem Assessment of the Interior Columbia Basin.- A Landscape Ecology Assessment of the Tensas River Basin.- D. Approaches to Database Design, Monitoring & Modeling.- Designing Environmental Databases for Statistical Analyses.- EMAP Design and River Reach File (RF3) as a Sample Frame in the Central Valley, California.- Monitoring Air Quality in Mountains: Designing an Effective Network.- Global Grids from Recursive Diamond Subdivisions of the Surface of an Octahedron or Icosahedron.- An Automated Technique for Delineating and Characterizing Valley-Bottom Settings.- Combining Accuracy Assessment of Land-Cover Maps with Environmental Monitoring Programs.- Mapping Patterns of Human Use and Potential Resource Conflicts on Public Lands.- Monitoring Ecosystems in the Sierra Nevada: The Conceptual Model Foundation.- E. Landscape Considerations.- Assessing and Monitoring the Health of Western Rangeland Watersheds.- Monitoring Australian Rangeland Sites Using Landscape Function Indicators and Ground- and Remote-Based Techniques.- A Landscape Approach for Detecting and Evaluating Change in a Semi-Arid Environment.- Application of Ecological Classification and Predictive Vegetation Modeling to Broad-Level Assessments of Ecosystem Health.- Montane Meadows as Indicators of Environmental Change.- F. Water Quality and Land Use.- Assessing Landscape Condition Relative to Water Resources in the Western United States: A Strategic Approach.- Relations of Habitat-Specific Algal Assemblages to Land Use and Water Chemistry in the WillametteBasin, Oregon.- Responses of Physical, Chemical, and Biological Indicators of Water Quality to a Gradient of Agricultural Land Use in the Yakima River Basin, Washington.- G. Watersheds, Lakes and Rivers.- A Knowledge-Based Approach to the Assessment of Watershed Condition.- Modeling Runoff Response to Land Cover and Rainfall Spatial Variability in Semi-Arid Watersheds.- Monitoring Inter-Annual Variability Reveals Sources of Mercury Contamination in Clear Lake, California.- Macroinvertebrate Assemblages on Woody Debris and their Relations with Environmental Variables in the Lower Sacramento and San Joaquin River Drainages, California.- Instream-Flow Needs for Anadromous Salmonids and Lamprey on the Pacific Coast, with Special Reference to the Pacific Southwest.- Characterizing Small Subbasins: A Case Study from Coastal Oregon.- H. Marine Coastal Areas.- Development of the Coastal Intensive Site Network (CISNet).- Spatial Extent of Sediment Toxicity in U.S. Estuaries and Marine Bays.- An Overview of Contaminant-Related Issues Identified by Monitoring in San Francisco Bay.- Assessment of Benthic Infaunal Condition on the Mainland Shelf of Southern California.- A Regional Survey of the Microbiological Water Quality Along the Shoreline of the Southern California Bight.