Grantee Research Project Results

2000 Progress Report: Data Integration and Decision Support Core

EPA Grant Number: R825433C054
Subproject: this is subproject number 054 , established and managed by the Center Director under grant R825433
(EPA does not fund or establish subprojects; EPA awards and manages the overall grant for this center).
Center: UC Davis Center for Children's Environmental Health and Disease Prevention
Center Director: Van de Water, Judith
Title: Data Integration and Decision Support Core
Investigators: Quinn, James , Jassby, Alan D. , Mount, Jeff , Botsford, Louis , McCoy, Michael
Institution: University of California - Davis
EPA Project Officer: Packard, Benjamin H
Project Period: October 1, 1996 through September 30, 2000
Project Period Covered by this Report: October 1, 1999 through September 30, 2000
RFA: Exploratory Environmental Research Centers (1992) RFA Text |  Recipients Lists
Research Category: Center for Ecological Health Research , Targeted Research

Objective:

The Data Integration and Decision Support Core develops and maintains databases, mathematical and statistical analyses, and mechanisms to allow researchers and decision makers to visualize probable consequences of alternative mechanistic models and management alternatives.

Progress Summary:

Having state-of-the-art computational facilities and modeling expertise available to Center researchers is necessary to develop modeling techniques appropriate for multi-stress research. The Core staff also coordinates outreach activities and operates a World Wide Web site for the Center.

As the name implies, the Data Integration and Decision Support Core has two primary functions: 1) to organize and manage data in ways that support advanced analysis and visualization, and 2) to make research results readily accessible and usable to a wide variety of clients, including environmental and regulatory agencies, conservation organizations, private industry, and the interested public. The Core obtains and converts major external data sets that range from water quality to satellite images, builds GIS coverages, and develops hydrodynamic transport models for toxics and organisms. Risk analysis algorithms developed by the Core can be applied widely to data from all Center projects. The Core also maintains the Center's GIS lab, World Wide Web site and Internet Services. The Core's faculty are principally responsible for coordinating Center data integration technology with EPA and other collaborating agencies.

The Data Integration and Decision Support Core is a new facility developed by the Center. The Core's computer lab did not exist before the Center began. It was both the first environmental GIS facility on campus, and the first World Wide Web site. The availability of common-use computer facilities allows a talented group of graduate students, postdocs, and programmers to work together to integrate models and data sets from a variety of departments, disciplines, and collaborators into new synthetic analyses. A number of analyses that have already substantially impacted public policy, including the establishment of the "X2" salinity standard as the principal marker for environmentally adequate outflows through the Sacramento Delta, and spatially explicit population models for endangered fish population recovery, could not have occurred without this collaboration. The Core coordinates outreach to state, federal and international agencies and a variety of private and cooperative environmental organizations, including watershed councils, conservation groups, Cooperative Resource Management Planning initiatives, and natural resources industries. In particular, the Core has developed a number of cooperative research programs with EPA Region IX, supporting EPA activities required by the Clean Water Act and NAFTA.

The existence of a modeling and environmental GIS center attracts new programs to the university that might otherwise go elsewhere or not be started. For example, the California Rivers Assessment is a 4-year program housed in the Center, and co-sponsored by 28 agencies and organizations. It is primarily funded by the California Resources Agency and EPA Region IX to provide a statewide database, GIS, and clearing house for information about natural resources associated with California Rivers. To lay a foundation for data integration, the Center has worked with Region IX and state GIS specialists to substantially revise and update important EPA baseline databases for California, including the River Reach File system (the only nationwide GIS base layer for rivers and waterways), and many elements of the STORET water quality database system. The Core has also updated and mapped the databases used by EPA and the State Water Quality Control Board to report the status of impaired waterbodies (under the Clean Water Act), and has begun to work with Region IX to assess condition and strategies for recovery of California-Mexico border rivers (required under NAFTA).

Effective outreach requires both electronic and human elements. Core personnel have made several innovations in providing easier public access to databases and maps through the Center's Web server. It also develops curricula and methodologies to "train the trainers" to use Center and other governmentally funded information resources to help in local, regional, and national environmental problem solving. The current clientele includes University Extension and Cooperative Extension specialists and outreach experts from Resource Conservation Districts. The Core also provides opportunities for agency scientists, analysts, and planners to take "mini-sabbaticals" to work cooperatively with Center scientists.

Core faculty members serve on numerous agency and interagency advisory boards and committees, ranging from the science advisory for interagency research in the San Francisco Bay and Sacramento Delta through several endangered species recovery planning committees, to national data and metadata standards committees. In each of these cases, we were invited to serve on these committees in part to help convert Center research findings into public policy.

The emphasis of the Core is on processes at the organization levels of populations, communities, and ecosystems, and reaches into analyses at the level of entire regional landscapes. Processes examined at the individual level (e.g. the effects of rice field runoff on the development of striped bass larvae) provide inputs into population level models. Conversely, tissue-level biomarker data provide tests of exposure predicted by regional-scale transport models.

The Core's methodological innovations are also widely applicable outside the Center's geographical regions. The hydrodynamic models have been adapted for use in several coastal rivers and the Salton Sea in Southern California. The time-series models of extinction risk have been applied to endangered fish species in the Gulf of California, and the biodiversity analyses are widely used throughout the National Park Service in the U.S. and UNESCO Man and the Biosphere (MAB) Reserves in North America, Central Europe, and Latin America.

Supplemental Keywords:

RFA, Ecosystem Protection/Environmental Exposure & Risk, Scientific Discipline, INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION, Water, ECOSYSTEMS, Economic, Social, & Behavioral Science Research Program, Aquatic Ecosystem, Environmental Statistics, Aquatic Ecosystems & Estuarine Research, Fate & Transport, Terrestrial Ecosystems, Aquatic Ecosystem Restoration, Watersheds, computing technology, Monitoring/Modeling, Environmental Microbiology, Biochemistry, Ecology and Ecosystems, watershed management, decision support systems, computer models, multiple stressors, aquatic modeling, data analysis, ecological impact, restoration strategies, data collection, ecosystem assessment, analytical models, watershed restoration, ecological models, watershed influences, hydrology, computer simulation modeling, data management, ambient particle properties, material transport, aquatic, fate and transport, ecosystem stress, environmental stress, sediment transport, hydrological transport model, integrated watershed model, ecology assessment models, ecological research, alternative mechanistic models, contaminant transport models, transport modeling, aquatic ecosystems, modeling, computer science, watershed sustainablility

Progress and Final Reports:

Original Abstract

1997

1998

1999

Final

Main Center Abstract and Reports:

R825433    UC Davis Center for Children's Environmental Health and Disease Prevention

Subprojects under this Center: (EPA does not fund or establish subprojects; EPA awards and manages the overall grant for this center).
R825433C001 Potential for Long-Term Degradation of Wetland Water Quality Due to Natural Discharge of Polluted Groundwater
R825433C002 Sacramento River Watershed
R825433C003 Endocrine Disruption in Fish and Birds
R825433C004 Biomarkers of Exposure and Deleterious Effect: A Laboratory and Field Investigation
R825433C005 Fish Developmental Toxicity/Recruitment
R825433C006 Resolving Multiple Stressors by Biochemical Indicator Patterns and their Linkages to Adverse Effects on Benthic Invertebrate Patterns
R825433C007 Environmental Chemistry of Bioavailability in Sediments and Water Column
R825433C008 Reproduction of Birds and mammals in a terrestrial-aquatic interface
R825433C009 Modeling Ecosystems Under Combined Stress
R825433C010 Mercury Uptake by Fish
R825433C011 Clear Lake Watershed
R825433C012 The Role of Fishes as Transporters of Mercury
R825433C013 Wetlands Restoration
R825433C014 Wildlife Bioaccumulation and Effects
R825433C015 Microbiology of Mercury Methylation in Sediments
R825433C016 Hg and Fe Biogeochemistry
R825433C017 Water Motions and Material Transport
R825433C018 Economic Impacts of Multiple Stresses
R825433C019 The History of Anthropogenic Effects
R825433C020 Wetland Restoration
R825433C021 Sierra Nevada Watershed Project
R825433C022 Regional Transport of Air Pollutants and Exposure of Sierra Nevada Forests to Ozone
R825433C023 Biomarkers of Ozone Damage to Sierra Nevada Vegetation
R825433C024 Effects of Air Pollution on Water Quality: Emission of MTBE and Other Pollutants From Motorized Watercraft
R825433C025 Regional Movement of Toxics
R825433C026 Effect of Photochemical Reactions in Fog Drops and Aerosol Particles on the Fate of Atmospheric Chemicals in the Central Valley
R825433C027 Source Load Modeling for Sediment in Mountainous Watersheds
R825433C028 Stress of Increased Sediment Loading on Lake and Stream Function
R825433C029 Watershed Response to Natural and Anthropogenic Stress: Lake Tahoe Nutrient Budget
R825433C030 Mercury Distribution and Cycling in Sierra Nevada Waterbodies
R825433C031 Pre-contact Forest Structure
R825433C032 Identification and distribution of pest complexes in relation to late seral/old growth forest structure in the Lake Tahoe watershed
R825433C033 Subalpine Marsh Plant Communities as Early Indicators of Ecosystem Stress
R825433C034 Regional Hydrogeology and Contaminant Transport in a Sierra Nevada Ecosystem
R825433C035 Border Rivers Watershed
R825433C036 Toxicity Studies
R825433C037 Watershed Assessment
R825433C038 Microbiological Processes in Sediments
R825433C039 Analytical and Biomarkers Core
R825433C040 Organic Analysis
R825433C041 Inorganic Analysis
R825433C042 Immunoassay and Serum Markers
R825433C043 Sensitive Biomarkers to Detect Biochemical Changes Indicating Multiple Stresses Including Chemically Induced Stresses
R825433C044 Molecular, Cellular and Animal Biomarkers of Exposure and Effect
R825433C045 Microbial Community Assays
R825433C046 Cumulative and Integrative Biochemical Indicators
R825433C047 Mercury and Iron Biogeochemistry
R825433C048 Transport and Fate Core
R825433C049 Role of Hydrogeologic Processes in Alpine Ecosystem Health
R825433C050 Regional Hydrologic Modeling With Emphasis on Watershed-Scale Environmental Stresses
R825433C051 Development of Pollutant Fate and Transport Models for Use in Terrestrial Ecosystem Exposure Assessment
R825433C052 Pesticide Transport in Subsurface and Surface Water Systems
R825433C053 Currents in Clear Lake
R825433C054 Data Integration and Decision Support Core
R825433C055 Spatial Patterns and Biodiversity
R825433C056 Modeling Transport in Aquatic Systems
R825433C057 Spatial and Temporal Trends in Water Quality
R825433C058 Time Series Analysis and Modeling Ecological Risk
R825433C059 WWW/Outreach
R825433C060 Economic Effects of Multiple Stresses
R825433C061 Effects of Nutrients on Algal Growth
R825433C062 Nutrient Loading
R825433C063 Subalpine Wetlands as Early Indicators of Ecosystem Stress
R825433C064 Chlorinated Hydrocarbons
R825433C065 Sierra Ozone Studies
R825433C066 Assessment of Multiple Stresses on Soil Microbial Communities
R825433C067 Terrestrial - Agriculture
R825433C069 Molecular Epidemiology Core
R825433C070 Serum Markers of Environmental Stress
R825433C071 Development of Sensitive Biomarkers Based on Chemically Induced Changes in Expressions of Oncogenes
R825433C072 Molecular Monitoring of Microbial Populations
R825433C073 Aquatic - Rivers and Estuaries
R825433C074 Border Rivers - Toxicity Studies