State Use of NRDA (why Florida is pretty awesome)

One of the oddities of state and federal government is the sheer number of regulatory authorities that go unused. For example, the Clean Water Act grants the EPA broad authority to protect the nation's waters. The EPA then actually delegates permitting for the CWA to the Corps of Engineers and state agencies (in many cases). As far as I can tell, many of the authorities embedded in the Clean Water Act are rarely or never invoked. As a result, a lot of bad stuff happens that would have been prevented if a more strict interpretation of the CWA were followed.

An even better example of this is the National Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) process. This is a program to force those who pollute to pay the costs necessary to restore what they have damaged by polluting. I'm actually completely clueless on what law this stems from, but it looks as if the federal efforts are lead by the Department of the Interior (or maybe the EPA?). However, in some capacity, states are able to use this legal structure to recoup the costs of restoring habitats from polluters.

Except they aren't doing that. At least, that's according to a paper I stumbled upon recently by J. Faass (2010; full cite below). In this report, Faass surveyed a bunch of state agencies and found that most (25 of 42 surveyed) rarely or never pursued NRDA compensation for impacts to natural resources. Why?

"When asked why they routinely forgo NRDA, some survey takers cited as major obstacles the cost, time, and resources needed...as well as the potential liability. Others cited a lack of manpower or political will." (Faass, pg 34)

This is fairly crazy (after all, this legal structure was important enough for elected officials to put into place, why would we assume it would be ignored). However, it isn't completely unexpected. There is a decreasing amount of resources devoted to state agencies and increasing number of responsibilities. In most state and federal cases, NRDA is a complicated, site-specific process (involving a lot of research and investigation and court appearances). According to conventional wisdom, it is a real pain.

However, what's interesting is just how easy this problem is to solve, and the fact that Florida has basically done it. Unlike every other state, Florida uses NRDA for every oil spill (or other spill) that occurs in coastal areas. Basically, they have a simple formula (and I do mean simple) that any of their field personnel can use in response to a reported spill. Plug in number, draw a polygon on a map, and bang dollar value is spit out. Hand the bill to the polluter and move on.

There are some problems (e.g., costs are fixed by law and have remained unchanged since 1993), however, the use of a known scheme and set of criteria circumvent a number of tricky legal and ethical problems, and make it a routine process.

The biggest criticism I see of the program from this article is that they haven't actually spent the money exclusively on restoration, and they haven't spent any at all since 2001. With federal NRDA cases that's a huge no-no (you must spend only on restoration in federal cases). The reason they haven't spent any of the money since 2001 is purely political:

"...interviewees noted that a legislative appropriation would be necessary to access the money...reluctance [to solict such an appropriation] is due in part to the fact that the balance of the fund has remained below $1 million...and to fears that once awareness of the money has been raised, it could conceivably by diverted to cover non-restoration-related expenditures." (Faass p 37)

Man, that totally sucks, but it is a problem seen in lots of agencies. Once it is realized this source of money exists, it will be exploited for something completely unrelated to its intended purpose.

Summary:

Florida uses a simple formula to assess NRDA damages, making them capable of recovering restoration money from a far greater proportion of the damaging spills that occur in coastal areas.

Faass, J. (2010). Florida's Approach to Natural Resource Damage Assessment: A Short, Sweet Model for States Seeking Compensation Ecological Restoration, 28 (1), 32-39 DOI: 10.3368/er.28.1.32

Notes for March 12th, 2010

• Feral pigs are becoming an increasingly severe problem further north. They used to extend into Oklahoma, but now they've been found across Kansas and Missouri. Getting rid of them is complicated: Letting hunters kill them might be effective, or it might just increase their numbers as outfitters begin actively bringing hogs into the state. As a result, hunting them is banned in many places (KS included) and hunts to eradicate them are done by government agencies. By the way, I would love to be one of the guys shooting these things from a helicopter.
• Conservation Maven, discussing a paper on delimiting the boundaries of invasive species. The lead author held a postdoc (or assistant prof position?) in one of my advisor's lab, which doesn't mean the paper doesn't sound really interesting in its own right. Of course, it's behind a closed door for some of us.
• Eigenworms. Pretty cool paper quantitatively describing the motion of a worm (C. elegans). Which is actually more interesting than you might think.
• An interesting discussion about the difficulty in controlling invasive species spread by the horticulture industry.
• This blog on the most absurd published papers deserves a special mention: National Center for Biotechnology Information, Rolling on the Floor Laughing. A few highlights.

A hierarchical framework for assessing environmental impacts of dam operation

The effects of impoundments are big one for people working in aquatic ecosystems. In Kansas, a large number of dams are still being built (and a lot more are in the discussion stages). So I am constantly trying to understand more about the effects of dams and the impacts they have on upstream and downstream aquatic ecosystems. I was recently forwarded the an article by Burke, Jorde and Buffington (2008; full cite below) entitled "Application of a hierarchical framework for assessing environmental impacts of dam operation: Changes in streamflow, bed mobility and recruitment of riparian trees in a western North American river."

Essentially the authors are starting from the direct effects of an impoundment and extrapolating out what the effects would be on downstream channel morphology and flow, and subsequently downstream biota. In this case, this hierarchy has been laid out in general terms in a previous paper (Jorde et al. 2008). Basically first order stuff is what causes the second order stuff, and the third order stuff is caused by the first and second order stuff, and so on, and so on.

In this study, the first order stuff is the hydrology, the second order stuff is "channel hydraulics" and bed mobility, and the third order stuff is the recruitment of cottonwood trees. Channel hydraulics seems to be referring to the depth and discharge of the streams being investigated. The entire study is of the Kootenai River (a trib of the Columbia River), which includes two dams: The Corra Linn Dam (built in the 1930s on a naturally occurring lake) and the Libby Dam (finished in 1974). Both dams are ostensibly dual purpose: hydropower and flood control. In addition, there were lots of levees constructed along the reach.

Basically the authors compared 3 time periods: Before all the dams, before the Libby Dam, and After the Libby Dam. Apparently the Libby Dam is the subject of some controversy, which is why it is getting such special attention.

Let's start with the first order effects. They are actually pretty dramatic, but then again, this is why the dams were built. These are the effects we expected when humans built the dam.

This if Figure 6 from the Burke et al. paper. What we're looking at is the difference between the discharge pre-Libby and post-Libby (the other dam doesn't seem to have as much of an effect as the Libby dam). See the big negative values for the spring? That's the spring snowmelt being intercepted by the dam. The big positive values? That's when they are releasing that snowmelt (in the winter!). Considering the importance of hydrology to all kinds of ecosystem properties in streams, that's a big impact.

Now, what does that mean for the second-order effects? Well, I'm not going to sample the figures of this (which are huge and beautiful but take some time to process), but what changes a lot is the water velocity and the wetted width. Instead of periods of extremely high velocity followed by periods of extremely low velocity, you get prolonged periods of more moderate velocity. This is especially true in the first 80-100 km downstream of the dam, where the stream is still relatively steep.

As for third order effects: Well, the authors use cottonwood recruitment as their parameter, which is an interesting choice. I have never really thought of cottonwood trees as a particularly good indicator species, but maybe they used it because the data is available. And boy, the data seems to be available. Basically, for a cottonwood seedling to become established, there have to be:

1. High flows to clear out some barren ground so the seeds have somewhere to establish.
2. Slowly lowering water levels so enough soil moisture is retained to promote growth in the seedling.
3. Flows that rise only to within a particular band above baseflow
4. A minimum number of flood events to prevent mortality through the year.

Sound complicated? Actually, not really does it? Regardless, all that data is either known or can be calculated. In fact, it was calculated as part of the second order effects. So all the authors had to do was model this to create estimates of the 'potential' for cottonwood recruitment.

What they found is post-Libby, there isn't much recruitment occurring at all, and even pre-Libby but post-Corra Linn, recruitment was probably pretty rare. By contrast, the historic conditions probably had a very high potential for recruitment. Oddly enough, this was particularly true for dry years. Mechanistically, the model is being a little confused at this, because you need wet years to scour out open patches. Still, this model is basically suggesting recruitment isn't happening much at all post-Libby. A fair amount of empirical work seems to back up this result.

There's a lot more detail here that I won't go into. The whole goal of this paper seems to be to point out how to mechanistically link the known, 1st order effects of an impoundment to the downstream biotic responses. I think this is actually pretty successful, although I'd like to see it used on more interesting biotic response variables than just cottonwood recruitment (diversity indices spring to mind as a potential example). One thing that is really needed for such studies, however, is good historical discharge data. The USGS maintains several hundred gaging stations all over the country, but they've been continually forced to shut those down as budgets are cut.

This is an approach that I think is useful for a variety of other research as well (i.e., agricultural activities, etc.) just because it starts at the basic, well-understood mechanistic level and works up.

To Summarize:

The authors document the first, second, and third order effects of dam construction on the Kootenai River. They demonstrate a strong effect of two dams on the hydrology, channel morphology and hydraulics, and the recruitment of cottonwood trees in the downstream reaches. This approach could be a useful framework for investigating other effects of impoundments when primary impacts are known.

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Jorde, K., Burke, M., Scheidt, N., Wlcker, C., King, S., Borden, C. 2008. Reservoir operations, physical processes, and ecosystem losses. In: Habersack, H., Piegay, H., Rinaldi, M. (Eds.), Gravel-Bed Rivers VI: From Process Understanding to River Restoration. Elsevier, pp. 607-636.

Burke, M., Jorde, K., & Buffington, J. (2009). Application of a hierarchical framework for assessing environmental impacts of dam operation: Changes in streamflow, bed mobility and recruitment of riparian trees in a western North American river Journal of Environmental Management, 90 DOI: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2008.07.022

Notes for March 11th, 2010

• Apparently snorkeling in the Mediterranean doesn't affect the fish or algal community. Yay!
• Despite what the box and advertising suggests: Exposing your children to TV at an early age is not a positive. Of course, this is what tends to happen at home-run day-care providers, so I'm not sure what you can do if that is your only available option. Also, when the whole family is sick, a "movie day" is borderline essential for mental stability (of the parent). I have only anecdotal evidence for this though.
• Speaking of extinction events. Laelaps discusses a much more recent extinction event, the one that took out most of the large mammals. Needless to say, we know a lot more about this one.
• I'm trying out a new site design. I didn't like how long the columns were in the old one (1 narrow column that seemed to go on forever). So this template 'stretches' the posts horizontally. Let me know if anyone thinks good or ill of the new look.

Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Organic Carbon (The Big Three)

I'm a stoichiometry kind of guy (even if I've been relatively unsuccessful lately), and stoichiometry seems to revolve around N, P and C. And really, mostly just N&P. As a result, I've been thinking a lot about how the terrestrial and upstream watershed affects the N, P, and C in receiving waters. So, for instance, if you change the proportion of wetlands, how is the ratio of these nutrients going to change? In this vein, I wrote a paper (still in review) that looks at the relationships between watershed characteristics and dissolved, inorganic N&P in streams (in Michigan and Wisconsin). Sounds like fun right? Yes.

In that context, I was surprised to stumble upon a paper recently that I hadn't previously been aware of that seemed to look at something very similar. I'm referring to Saunders, McClain and Llerena (2006) "The biogeochemistry of dissolved nitrogen, phosphorus, and organic carbon along terrestrial-aquatic flowpaths of a montane headwater catchment in the Peruvian Amazon." I was specifically intrigued by the reference to sampling nutrients along transects. So I hit up my sources for subscription-only publications, and I soon had my hand on the paper.

The paper isn't at all what I was expecting, although it was incredibly interesting. I was expecting longitudinal transects along stream networks. Instead, the authors investigated transects from the upland down to the stream (see Fig 1 from the paper below).

Although this isn't what I was expecting, this is really interesting. Basically, the authors measured the nutrient concentrations in groundwater as it moved from these upland areas down into the stream. There's a lot of interesting data in here, but big-picture, what they found is that nitrogen tends to be high in the upland areas (both organic and inorganic) and then decreases as it moves down into the stream. By contrast, phosphorus is low in the upland areas, but much higher in the stream.

This seems to support a general trend observed in the tropics: In-stream inorganic nitrogen is really low, and fairly constant. Based on this study, it appears that this is driven by the fact that as soil/groundwater is passing through the riparian and hyporheic zones, all the inorganic nitrogen is being stripped out. That's an oft-repeated story (my first encounter was Pusch et al. 1998; pdf), but it is interesting that this seemed to be generally true for the organic nitrogen as well.

I also find it interesting that P behaved in almost the exact opposite way. I actually have a hard time reconciling this. If water coming in to these riparian areas is low in P and high in N, then I would anticipate the biota holding onto that P, since they are presumably P-limited. The opposite seems to be the case, with N being stripped out of the water and P actually increasing. This might indicate that a big part of this story is abiotic (i.e., stuff is sorbing to surfaces in the riparian areas).

Also interesting is the fact that nutrients were just really different in the terrestrial and aquatic areas. Money quote from the authors:

Spatial trends in nutrient stoichiometry highlighted a clear divergence in the nutrient composition of terrestrial and aquatic hydrologic compartments along the Wara transects.

- Saunders et al. p 2559

I have a few quibbles with the paper. The nutrient concentrations are given in graphical form, but nutrient ratios are not provided. Also, the authors froze their DOC samples! I found that freezing could change the DOC concentration slightly (it changes the absorbance a lot), but I don't know the mechanism by which that happens. As a result, I never freeze DOC samples. Without knowing the mechanism, it is pretty difficult to really know how big of a problem this is. I've seen a lot of other authors do this though, so maybe I'm missing some methodological papers that investigated this.

Summary:

Great paper, easy to read and well-written. Documents the pretty dramatic differences in nutrient composition that can occur over a relatively short lateral gradient.

Pusch, M., D. Fiebig, I. Brettar, H. Eisenmann, B.K. Ellis, L.A. Kaplan, M.A. Lock, M.W. Naegeli, and W. Traunspurger. 1998. The role of micro-organisms in the ecological connectivity of running waters. Freshwater Biology 40:453-495.

Saunders, T., McClain, M., & Llerena, C. (2006). The biogeochemistry of dissolved nitrogen, phosphorus, and organic carbon along terrestrial-aquatic flowpaths of a montane headwater catchment in the Peruvian Amazon Hydrological Processes, 20 (12), 2549-2562 DOI: 10.1002/hyp.6215

Notes for March 10th, 2010

• Parasites are awesome. Here's a neat article explaining how goldenrod reacts to the parasitism of a Gall Fly.
• More discussion about the 'impact theory' regarding the dinosaur extinction. Here's my thing: Nobody agrees on what would constitute compelling evidence. There's certainly little debate that some object hit the earth at about the same time as the dinosaurs went extinct. However, there also seems to be some evidence that dinos were already on the decline (although it was more than just dinosaurs that went extinct, so that evidence is not exactly compelling), and there were certainly other big, big things happening at the time. Considering the number of other massive impact craters we know of that didn't result in mass extinctions, I'm just still very skeptical that this is the best explanation.
• Vaccinating kids reduces the transmission of a disease community wide. Which, if you have children, is no surprise at all.
• White-nose syndrome is a big problem for bats. A big problem. The Smithsonian is trying to breed bats in captivity to insure higher survival. Long-term, I'm not sure how viable such a strategy is, and short term, things don't seem to be going well.
• A very educational explanation of primate origins.

Landscape approaches for the study of aquatic ecosystems

Well, I'm trying to read a paper a day (this can be really hard with 2 kids and a job that doesn't encourage it), and today I randomly pulled up this paper: Johnson and Host "Recent developments in landscape approaches for the study of aquatic ecosystems" (full cite below).

Let's just say that there's a lot here.

Basically, this paper is part of a big-time retrospective done by J-NABS in celebration of their25th anniversary (they are all open source, so by all means download away). I'm a big fan of NABS, and I love the journal. Virtually every article in this special issue holds some real interest to me. This Johnson and Host paper might be among the most relevant, because I am currently working on a Catchment Stoichiometry special issue for Freshwater Bio (whether or not it is successful or not is unfortunately still up in the air).

Regardless, this paper has a ton of great information. Essentially, the authors are reviewing the landscape approaches used in aquatic ecology and updating some of the more recent reviews on terrestrial aquatic linkages (with a particular emphasis on J-NABS contributions).

There's so much here that I don't really know how to summarize it for easy digestion. The authors really focus in on watershed scale studies (i.e., how do watershed properties affect the aquatic properties), and of course those kinds of studies have exploded in the last 15-20 years as both recognition of this level of biological organization has expanded and the tools available to do the research have become widely available. Aerial photography, combined with fairly sophisticated computer software (i.e., ESRI's ArcGIS software) have become available to many, many researchers. As a result, many many phenomena have been investigated with varying levels of success (e.g., species distributions and diversity, water chemistry, water velocity and temperature, habitat distribution, etc.).

Unfortunately, there are still some real challenges. Practically speaking, not a lot of people are speaking the same language in this field yet. Even within this paper, I was occasionally confused by changing terms, or at least terms that seemed to be very similar (catchment vs. watershed is explained; habitat versus reach I must have missed). More theoretically, there is a lot of difficulty in trying to figure out the most appropriate scale for investigating some phenomena, and sometimes as a result, the mechanistic connections between observed relationships is not always clear (in some cases it is just plain confusing).

Most or many of the landscape studies done on aquatic ecosystems are attempting to determine the extent or effects of various anthropogenic stressors. However, the authors point out that anthropogenic disturbance itself is definitely confounding our ability to distinguish what is happening. Some impacts may have lag times, others may so homogenize the landscape that important relationship cannot be seen. The authors also stress that future research will need to integrate landscape/catchment level data with local data (i.e., point source samples) better, because an abundance of local data is becoming available. Being able to manage and analyze these huge, integrated datasets seems like a formidable problem (perhaps one that Morpho can assist with?).

Maybe the biggest take-home message on the future of landscape studies of aquatic ecosystems is summarized here:

We need: 1) robust statistical and sampling techniques to discrim- inate among multiple stressors (e.g., climate and land use) and among anthropogenic and natural stressors, 2) mechanistic and empirical models linked to multi- sensor systems, 3) cross-sensor integration to expand the temporal and spatial density of data collection, and, 4) sustained communication between researchers and managers to ensure rapid deployment of mitigation and adaptation strategies.

Seems pretty simple, but very difficult.

Summary:

Overall a great paper that provides a wealth of information on how and what has been done with regards to landscape studies in aquatic ecosystems. I would deem this paper essential for anyone doing work on aquatic-terrestrial linkages.

Johnson, L.B. and G.E. Host (2010). Recent developments in landscape approaches for the study of aquatic ecosystems Journal of the North American Benthological Society, 29 (1), 41-66 : 10.1899/09-030.1