Citation:

Impact/Purpose:

The EPA region 5 is using a science based approach to developing a Rating Methodology to identify the ecological quality of geographic places within Region 5. The rating methodology consists of metrics which incorporate three well recognized ecologically important features or assessment endpoints: 1. relative heterogeneity of ecosystem and biological community types; 2. relative levels of stressors and proximities to relatively high quality biological communities; and 3. relative numbers and rarity of rare species or features. The CrEAM offers great promise as a regional screening level approach to identifying critical landscapes. The CrEAM, as presented, can be an appropriate regional tool for allocating internal EPA resources for site inspection activities, tracking general trends in the regional landscape condition, and reviewing grant proposals to the Agency. The CrEAM is also an appropriate framework to foster further communication and dialogue between other federal and state agencies on the use of regional and spatial data in environmental decision-making.

Description:

A GIS-based methodology has been developed to identify places of ecologcal quality across EPA Region 5 (Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin). Three criteria are being used to define areas as having high ecological quality. They are the possession of relatively high levels of: 1. ecological diversity; 2. self-sustainability; and 3. rare species or feature occurrences. A modified version of the National Land Cover Database (NLCD) that eliminates all developed lands is the base layer for the analysis and three sets of landscape level databases were compiled and integrated to produce three composite layers each of which will serve as an indicator for the corresponding criterion.

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