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THE US EPA'S REGIONAL VULNERABILITY ASSESSMENT PROGRAM: A RESEARCH STRATEGY FOR 2001-2006
Citation:
Smith, E R., R. V. O'Neill, J D. Wickham, K B. Jones, L. E. Jackson, V Kilaru, AND R J. Reuter. THE US EPA'S REGIONAL VULNERABILITY ASSESSMENT PROGRAM: A RESEARCH STRATEGY FOR 2001-2006. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, EPA/600/R-01/008 (NTIS PB2003-102734), 2003.
Impact/Purpose:
ReVA's program objectives are to:
Provide regional-scale, spatially explicit information on the extent and distribution of both stressors and sensitive resources.
Develop and evaluate techniques to integrate information on exposure and effects so that relative risk can be assessed and management actions can be prioritized.
Predict consequences of potential environmental changes under alternative future scenarios.
Effectively communicate economic and quality of life trade-offs associated with alternative environmental policies.
Develop techniques to prioritize areas for ecological restoration.
Identify information gaps and recommend actions to improve monitoring and focus research.
Description:
The goal of ORD's Regional Vulnerability Assessment (ReVA) Program is to develop all
approach to quantifying regional ecological vulnerabilities so that risk management activities can be targeted and prioritized. ReVA's focus is, to develop a set of methods that are applicable to the range of data available in regions (e.g., physiography, land use/cover change, change in climate, air pollution, non-indigenous species (NIS), the distribution and condition of resources, and others) and provide information to facilitate decision-making at the regional, watershed, and local scale, Information will be integrated to allow an assessment of the cumulative risks associated with multiple stressors on multiple resources, to identify the specific geographic areas of concern, and to evaluate the particular stressors that offer the greatest sources of vulnerability. The application of the tools developed by REVA should allow decision-makers to put environmental issues in perspective and will provide the spatial context necessasry to improve decision making at the watershed and community level. ReVA's pilot study is focusing on the.Mid-Atlantic, region as put of the Mid-Atlantic Integrated Assessment (MAIA) (a federal, stage and local partnership led by EPA Region 3). In future years, REVA will move to other regions of the US,
As we have learned through ORD's ten-year involvement with The MAIA, a comprehensive integrated regional assessment involves many steps and incorporates data and research that focus on understanding ecosystem processes at a variety of scales. As MAIA has evolved, five distinct iterative steps to improving environmental decision - making have emerged: 1) monitoring to establish states and trends, 2) association analysts to suggest probable cause where degradation is observed, 3). prioritization of the role of individual stressors as they affect cumulative impacts and risk of future: environmental degradation, 4) analysis of the trade-offs associated with future policy decisions, and 5) development of strategies to restore areas and reduce risk. The Environmental Monitoring and Assessment program (EMAP) is developing approaches to address steps one and two; REVA is developing approaches to address steps three and four. Approaches to address step 5 will be developed in a new research program that is under development.
Based on E" and other monitoring data, MAIA has identified 5 groups of stressors that are implicated in the, decline of ecological condition across the region. 1) land use change and population growth, 2) resource extraction, 3) pollution and pollutants, 4) non-indigenous invasive species, and 5) cumulative impacts from combinations of multiple stressors. Assessment of the risk associated with these stressors requires a regional approach that incorporates forecasts of anticipated distributions of these stressors. Similarly, evaluation of the potential impacts to regional resources requires analysis of the, sustainability of goods, services, and other benefits they provide. REVA will develop exposure models that estimate current and future distributions of the 4 stressor groups as they relate to endpoints such as native biodiversity, resource productivity, and clean drinking water, ReVa will assess risk associated with these individual stressors as well as their potential cumulative effects, REVA will quantify effects associated with land use change and illustrate trade-offs associated with alternative policy decisions through future scenarios analysis,