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Research Abstract
Government Performance Results Act (GPRA) Goal #4
Annual Performance Measure #324
Significant Research Findings:
Landscape Metric-Stream Condition Indicators/Relationships
Tested in Western US
Scientific	The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) began the Environmental
Problem and	Monitoring and Assessment Program (EMAP) to move toward an improved
Policy Issues	environmental monitoring approach. EMAP is a research program that is used to
develop the tools necessary to monitor and assess the status and trends of
ecological systems. EMAP's goal is to develop the scientific understanding for
translating environmental monitoring data from multiple spatial and temporal
scales into assessments of ecological condition. The product from this research is a
U.S. EPA internal report entitled EMAP-West Metric Browser, which describes
the development of landscape metrics that were applied to the Western United
States. These metrics were developed to test stream condition indicators and to
help discover relationships between surface water data and landscape metrics.
The landscape monitoring and assessment approach involves the analysis of
spatially explicit patterns of biophysical features, including soils, topography,
climate, vegetation, land use, and drainage pathways. The research quantifies the
associations between those patterns and measures of environmental endpoints.
These endpoints include habitat and aquatic resource conditions, on areas ranging
in size from small watersheds (a few hundred hectares) to entire basins (several
million hectares). Landscape metrics that directly measure spatial patterns are used
as indicators which are in turn evaluated relative to their relationship (and
ultimately their ability to predict) ecological endpoints of interest such as forest
habitat and various aspects of aquatic resource conditions. This product includes
west-wide landscape metrics which will assist in understanding how landscape
conditions contribute to varying aquatic resource conditions across a vast area.
These metrics can be used as a first step in testing and demonstrating landscape
assessment methodologies on large areas of high importance.
This is the first step in the process to develop landscape ecological condition
indicators. When fully developed, these indicators will allow state, local and
federal agencies to easily and cost-effectively locate surface waters at risk of
impairment from nonpoint source pollution at very large scales.
The development and research was done in collaboration with the U.S. EPA
Regions 8, 9, and 10, the Office of Research and Development, National Health
and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory, Western Ecology Division, and
National Exposure Research Laboratory, Environmental Sciences Division,
Research
Approach
Results and
Impact
Research
Collaboration and
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Landscape Ecology Branch. The browser is described in the internal EPA report.
This data browser includes a description of the metric development process,
descriptions of the metrics, specifications for use of the software and the metrics
ready to download onto a CD.
Future Research Additional metrics and/or models will be added in the future and the report and
software will be cleared for external use.
Contacts for	Questions and inquiries can be directed to:
Additional
Information	Daniel T. Heggem
U.S. EPA, Office of Research and Development
National Exposure Research Laboratory
944 E. Harmon Ave.
Las Vegas, NV 89119
Phone: 702/798-2278
E-mail: heggem.daniel@epa.gov
Funding for this project was through the U.S. EPA's Office of Research and
Development, National Exposure Research Laboratory, and the work was
conducted by the Environmental Sciences Division and contract #68-D-00-267.

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