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Imprint of the Past: Ecological History of New Bedford Harbor(AED)
Citation:
PESCH, C. G., R. A. VOYER, J. COPELAND, G. MORRISON, AND J. Lund. Imprint of the Past: Ecological History of New Bedford Harbor(AED). U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, EPA-901-R-01-003, 2001.
Impact/Purpose:
To gain a better understanding of ecological conditions in a watershed, it is important tolook at how past events affected current conditions. In highly impacted areas, theenvironmental problems are not simply the consequence of recent activities but may bethe accumulation of many decades or one or two centuries of impacts. For example, inNew Bedford the current conditions are a complex mix of impacts accumulated overmore than two centuries. By looking at these cumulative impacts, we can begin tounderstand what happened and why.
Description:
Recently, the U.S. Environmenttal Protection Agency (EPA) adopted a new approach to study and manage environmental problems. In the past, the agency's emphasis was on particular pollutants and their effects on individual species in air, land, and water. But the environment is not a series of compartments, it includes a series of interconnected aquatic and terrestrial habitats. A stress from human activity tha affects the imediate environment may also affedt an area downstream. Small impacts added over time or space my exert an additive effect. Therefore, EPA has adopted a more comprehensive approach by studying problems in the natural environment. The natural unit of study is the watershed, the area drained by a river system.