You are here:
EPA APPROACH TO EVALUATION OF INDICATORS FOR ECOLOGICAL RISK ASSESSMENT
Citation:
Fisher, W S. EPA APPROACH TO EVALUATION OF INDICATORS FOR ECOLOGICAL RISK ASSESSMENT. Presented at Control Biological Systems DARPA Meeting, San Diego, CA, August 03 - 05, 1998.
Impact/Purpose:
Presentation
Description:
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Research and Development (ORD) is continuing research efforts initiated by the Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program (EMAP) on ecological indicator development. An ORD Ecological Indicators Working Group has been formed to develop and ORD research strategy, provide a liason with client and user groups and provide a process to evaluate and track ecological indicators. Ecological indicators may be defined by their purpose (status, trend, prediction, stressor diagnosis), type (physical, chemical, biological), resource (streams, estuaries, etc.), scale (national, regional, local) and monitoring design (local intensive, subsampled survey, landscape). Since many indicators may exist to address a given assessment endpoint, the Working Group has generated a process to consistently evaluate their relative strengths and weaknesses. The Ecological Indicators Evaluation Guidelines provides a template of 15 issues to examine indicators in relation to conceptual soundness, implementation, response variability, and interpretation/utility. These guidelines are presented in a quasi-sequential order to bring efficiency to indicator development. The guidelines will be applied to indicators in a peer review format that will either endorse technically acceptable indicators or provide research direction for improvements.