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Integrated Modeling for Environmental Assessment of Ecosystem Services
Citation:
Laniak, G. Integrated Modeling for Environmental Assessment of Ecosystem Services. FluidEarth, EPA/600/F/13/003, 2012.
Impact/Purpose:
A integrated environmental modelling fact sheet for CIEM, the Community for Integrated Environmental Modelling.
Description:
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency uses environmental models to inform rulemaking and policy decisions at multiple spatial and temporal scales. In this study, several sophisticated modeling technologies are seamlessly integrated to facilitate a baseline assessment of the regional-scale impacts of land use change, mercury deposition, and agriculturally-based nutrient loadings on two freshwater ecosystem services–water quality and fisheries resources. A stratified random sample of 50 headwater streams within the Albemarle-Pamlico Watershed (APW), North Carolina and Virginia (USA) is used to draw inferences about the target population of headwater streams across the APW region. Models representing watershed processes, surface water flow and quality, aquatic habitat, and fish population dynamics are integrated within FRAMES (Framework for Risk Analysis in Multimedia Environmental Systems) to perform a twenty-year baseline simulation in each sampled stream. Data for Environmental Modeling (D4EM) is used to collect and process all required model input data, and SuperMUSE (Super computer for Model Uncertainty and Sensitivity Evaluation) is utilized to manage a Monte Carlo-based uncertainty analysis. To evaluate model performance and accuracy, model predictions (water temperature, dissolved oxygen, fish density, and methylmercury concentration within fish tissue) are compared against available field data. Individual stream results are ‘rolled-up’ to characterize freshwater ecosystem services at the regional scale.
URLs/Downloads:
http://fluidearth.net/Integrated%20Environmental%20Modelling%20Case%20Studies/USEPA_Ecosystem_Assessment.pdf