Guidelines to Assessing - EPA Archives

1 Guidelines to Assessing Regional Vulnerabilities R E S E A R C H A N D D E V E L O P M E N T EPA/600/R-08/xxx April 2008 Guidelines to Assessing Regional Vulnerabilities by Elizabeth R. Smith1, Megan H. Mehaffey1, Robert V. O Neill2, Timothy G. Wade1, J. Vasu Kilaru1, and Liem T. Tran3 Environmental Protection Agency Office of Research and Development National Exposure Laboratory Research Triangle Park, NC 2TN and Associates Oak Ridge, TN 3 University of Tennessee Knoxville, TN Notice: Although this work was reviewed by EPA and approved for publication, it may not necessarily reflect official Agency policy. Mention of trade names and commercial products does not constitute endorsement or recommendation for use.

2 Environmental Protection Agency Office of Research and Development Washington, DC 20460 073cmb08 ii Notice The Environmental Protection Agency ( EPA), through its Office of Research and Development (ORD), funded and managed parts of the research described here under contract EP-D-06-072 with TN and Associates, Inc. It has not yet been subjected to the Agency s peer and administrative review and has not yet been approved for publication as an EPA document. Final Draft iii Final Draft iv Acknowledgments Many people contributed to the Regional Vulnerability Assessment methods development described in this report. Specifically, we would like to acknowledge the following: Rochelle Araujo, EPA, National Exposure Research Laboratory Tim Johnson, EPA, National Risk Management Research Laboratory K.

3 Bruce Jones, Geological Survey Rick Linthurst, EPA, Office of Research and Development Peter McKinnis, Waratah Corporation Michael O Connell, Waratah Corporation Roger Tankersley, Tennessee Valley Authority Paul Wagner, EPA, National Exposure Research Laboratory Lisa Wainger, University of Maryland Dennis Yankee, Tennessee Valley Authority Preferred Citation: Smith, , Mehaffey, , O Neill, , Wade, , Kilaru, , and Tran, 2008. Guidelines to Assessing Regional Draft vFinal Draft vi Executive Summary Environmental decision-makers today are faced with declining budgets, lack of problem-focused monitoring data, and issues that range from subtle and slow (such as changes in species composition) to conspicuous and immediate ( , catastrophic events).

4 At the same time, there is greater recognition that environmental decisions that are made today are likely to impact human well-being in the future. Thus, there is a growing desire to evaluate potential decisions with regard to their future implications. Further, in attempting to reach a decision, an environmental decision-maker can quickly become overwhelmed by the huge amounts of disparate types of data and information that are available on resources, conditions, and stressors within a region. The EPA s Regional Vulnerability Assessment (ReVA) program was designed to deal with these problems: ReVA methodology establishes a platform that can help environmental decision-makers target limited resources and enable proactive decision-making.

5 ReVA has a broad spatial perspective, uses existing data, and applies an integrated approach to assessment; it can incorporate large, disparate sources of available spatial data on resources, environmental conditions, and stressors, and then visually express these conditions (or combinations of these conditions) in map form. ReVA methods also allow users to prepare what if scenarios; these scenarios permit inspection of likely future changes in environmental vulnerabilities, given user-determined inputs on anticipated regional changes in factors such as population growth, economic conditions, land use, transportation infrastructure, etc. ReVA can improve the environmental decision-making process by permitting more realistic inputs for environmental decision-making and by expressing results of multiple factors at a regional spatial scale.

6 Since 1998, much of the research effort within the ReVA program has focused on the mechanics of how data and model results can be integrated into meaningful indices designed to address specific assessment questions posed by environmental decision-makers. The approach developed by the ReVA program allows decision-makers to evaluate current conditions and vulnerabilities through the use of indices. This approach allows an evaluation of net change, so that the user can visualize how both positive and negative changes affect future conditions and vulnerabilities. ReVA s approach as presented in these Guidelines includes the following steps: Acquisition of spatially explicit data Data processing Metric selection and integration Development/selection of spatially explicit models Creation of alternative scenarios Synthesis Results communication Final Draft viiFinal Draft viii Table of Contents Executive List of Figures.

7 Xi List Abbreviations and Section 1 - Introduction and Why Look at the Broad Scale? .. 1 Vulnerability versus 2 The Need for an Integrated Approach .. 2 Section 2 - Data Used in Types of Spatial 5 Data Inputs for ReVA .. 5 National Data 5 Regional Data Sources .. 8 Local Data Sources .. 9 Data Quality Considerations .. 9 Section 3 - Data Processing in ReVA ..11 Database Management .. 11 Reporting Units .. 11 Data Reapportionment .. 12 Missing Data .. 14 Metric Selection and Preparation for 16 Section 4 - Spatially Explicit Models ..21 Why Models? .. 21 Types of Models .. 21 Empirical 21 Process Models .. 22 Examples of Spatial Models Used in 22 Nitrate and Sulfate Deposition Modeling .. 22 Mercury Deposition 22 Invasive Species Modeling.

8 23 Nitrate in Ground Water 24 Forecasting Drivers of Change .. 24 Land-Use Change Models as a Component of ReVA .. 25 Models that Use Land Cover/Land Use as Input .. 27 Resource Extraction .. 27 Pollutants/Changes in Water 28 Spread of Invasive Non-Indigenous Species .. 28 Models that Do Not Include Land Use/Land Cover as Input .. 28 Final Draft ixSection 5 - Creating Alternative Future Building Alternative Scenarios for Analyzing Future Trends .. 31 Scale Considerations in Projective and Prospective 31 Spatial 32 Temporal Scale .. 32 Anticipating Responses to Policies .. 32 Using Other Spatial or Monitoring Data to Spatialize 33 Section 6 - Available Information and Data Preparation .. 35 Methods for Integrating Variables.

9 36 Simple Sum and PCA Sum .. 36 Best and Worst Quintiles .. 37 State Space 38 Criticality Analysis .. 38 Overlay Method .. 38 Stressor-Resource 39 Moving to Smaller Scales .. 39 Uncertainty in ReVA 40 Section 7 - Results Audience and Assessment 41 Visualization .. 42 References ..59 Final Draft x List of Figures Figure 1. Schematic depicting differences in the spatial (X axis) and temporal (Y axis) scales of ecosystem responses to various types of 2 Figure 2. Schematic of steps in the ReVA approach. ReVA s Environmental Decision Toolkit (EDT) is used for synthesis, scenario analysis and communication of results by visual 3 Figure 3. Example of simple apportionment of data by area-weighting.

10 Hydrologic Unit Code 1 (HUC 1) contains 20% of the population designated by the shaded area, while HUC 2 contains 80% of the population. The boundary between HUC 1 and HUC 2 is represented by the dashed 13 Figure 4. Example of apportioning population data for small reporting units (represented by squares) for an urban area (shaded area) that occurs in two HUCs. Values shown in the counties represent percentage of the urban area s population; thus, they sum to 14 Figure 5. Graph (hypothetical X and Y axes) showing measured data (solid circles), an interpolated point, and an extrapolated 15 Figure 6. Graphic depicting 2000 distribution of Giant Salvinia (Salvinia molesta) and estimated 2020 distribution using the Genetic Algorithm for Rule-set Prediction (GARP) 23 Figure 7.