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LANDSCAPE SCIENCES OVERVIEW
Impact/Purpose:
(1)Facilitate the development of regional and national scale databases to be used in assessments of status and trends of and vulnerabilities to ecological resources
(2)Develop new remote sensing techniques and applications that use existing and new remote sensing data to detect and evaluate changes in site, watershed, and regional environmental conditions
(3)Develop models of exposures of ecological resources to a range of stressors
(4)Develop and demonstrate assessment techniques that evaluate status, trends, and vulnerability of ecological resources.
Description:
The primary aim of the Landscape Sciences Program (LSP) is to develop methodologies to evaluate the status, trends, and vulnerability of ecological resources (primarily water) at site, watershed, regional, and national scales, and to evaluate the major stressors and exposures to ecological resources associated with them. The program uses principles from the field of landscape ecology the study of structure, function, and change in heterogeneous land areas composed of interacting ecosystems - in the development and demonstration of new methodologies. It also relies heavily on the use of remote sensing data to evaluate the status and trends in landscape composition and pattern, and considerable investment is being made in the development of multi-scale, landscape data bases and remote sensing applications research. The program also supports EMAP, the Global Climate Change Research Program, and the Regional Vulnerability Assessment Program. It also supports the EPA Regional offices in understanding the impacts landscape changes at a variety of scales.
The LSP is focused on detecting spatial patterns of major stressors, including landscape pattern changes (driven by changes in land-use such as agriculture and urbanization), air deposition, climate change, and pesticides and toxic substances - anything that has a strong spatial component and is known or thought to harm ecosystems. A major focus of the program is to link stressors and ecosystem exposure to observed changes in ecological conditions, and to develop models that forecast how conditions in ecological resources might change under different patterns of stressors and exposures. The program differs from traditional programs in that it is attempting to build models that consider multiple stressors and exposures to ecological resources at regional scales, and socio-economic models to project internally consistent patterns of stressor and exposures (see ReVA). The program will demonstrate the application of these across the various regions of the US. (Keywords: Landscape ecology, regional assessments, landscape indicators, remote sensing, change detection, site assessments, superfund)