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EVALUATING HABITAT VULNERABILITY TO HAZARDOUS AIR POLLUTANTS IN THE SOUTHEAST UNITED STATES
Citation:
MEHAFFEY, M. H., R. Tankersley, L. MILLER, AND E. R. SMITH. EVALUATING HABITAT VULNERABILITY TO HAZARDOUS AIR POLLUTANTS IN THE SOUTHEAST UNITED STATES. Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management. Allen Press, Inc., Lawrence, KS, 5(1):150-157, (2008).
Impact/Purpose:
Healthy Communities and Ecosystems - by providing ecosystem research and methods development at multiple scales, utilizing landscape ecology and associated techniques
Description:
Long term protection and maintenance of ecological communities and populations must consider the affect of atmospheric pollutants in addition to stressers that occur on the ground. We describe a technique for identifying species ranges and ecosystems across the landscape where there could be potential affects from air toxics releases. We modified the ranking equations from the Chemical Scoring and Ranking Assessment Model (SCRAM) to come up with a weighted relative toxicity value. The model combines toxicity rankings from SCRAM, chemical ambient air concentration data from the Assessment System for Population Exposure Nationwide (ASPEN) model, and species richness data from the Southeastern GAP (SE-GAP) project. The final output was a 30m pixel grid of potential vulnerability to HAPs exposure. We found that the model, in general, resulted in a halo affect around major urban areas with values decreasing with concentric distance from the urban center. However, those areas having high acreage of Federal, State and locally protected lands were also highlighted by the models added weight for species richness. Since the final toxicity maps were in a raster format the data can be aggregated into any number of assessment units for use by multiple levels of decision makers including Federal and State entities who want to compare relative toxicity exposures across a region and local groups who want to evaluate the vulnerability of lands under their management.