EPA
STAR
Project: Development of a regional-scale model for the management of
multiple-stressors in the Lake Erie ecosystem
The objective of this research is to develop a regional-scale,
stressor-response model for the management of the Lake Erie ecosystem.
Stressors addressed will include effects of land use changes and Total
Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) targets for nutrients, habitat alteration,
and natural flow regime modification at the scale of individual
watersheds coupled with wholelake ecosystem effects of invasion of
exotic species and fisheries exploitation. Model predictions will focus
on effects of stressors on production and abundance of Lake Erie fish
populations as indicators of the health of the Lake Erie ecosystem and
will be incorporated into a multiobjective decision making tool for use
by Lake Erie water quality and fisheries managers along with other
resource planners.
CMAG
Project: Development of GIS
Tools for Integration of Coastal Fish Habitat Management
The goal of the project was to improve the preservation of essential
coastal fish habitat in the Lake Erie ecosystem by developing GIS
databases and models needed to integrate watershed and coastal zone
planning with the management of Lake Erie fisheries resources.
The project pursued this goal through three primary objectives:
- Construct a GIS-based habitat supply inventory for
the Lake Erie tributaries,
- Construct a habitat supply inventory for two fish
species to test the concept,
- Model the effect of upstream land-use changes and
effects of non-point source pollution on downstream and coastal zone
productivity.
Work on these objectives resulted in two main products:
- GIS database of tributary reaches feeding Lake Erie
identified by segment. Attributes will include: river segments,
related to NHD by reach code; length; stream order (Strahler method);
slope; sinuosity; and mean elevation. The geodata includes
valley-segment specific statistics for fish habitat attributes
(substrate, flow regime, and mean annual temperature), land use/land
cover characteristics, slope, mean elevation, length, and shape
ratio. We have provided the geodata in shapefile format, which is
compatible with ArcView 3.x and ArcGIS.
- A scientifically defensible protocol for linking
land-use changes and non-point source pollution to productivity of Lake
Erie coastal fish habitat. The protocol uses tools for
constructing habitat supply inventories from the tributary GIS database
and a database for habitat preferences of various fish species.
The protocol also provides guidance on using GIS map modeling tools to
analyze effects of land-use changes and/or non-point source pollution
effects on habitat supply.
Ecology
of West Nile
Virus in Cuyahoga County, Ohio
This project focuses on the
contribution of GIS and
spatial data analysis to the development of a comprehensive approach to
understanding the ecology of West Nile Virus (WNV) epidemiology in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. A
major outbreak of WNV in 2002 provided the
opportunity to test various hypotheses about the spread and persistence
of WNV
and related infectious diseases. The
resulting project takes advantage of the broad range of different
habitats
available for study in Cuyahoga County and draws on the close
interdisciplinary
collaboration of area ecologists, mapping specialists, molecular
biologists,
zoologists, infectious disease specialists, and mathematical modelers
from Case
Western Reserve University, University Hospitals of Cleveland, and The
Cleveland Museum of Natural History. Preliminary
results suggest that bird-mosquito
epizootics of WNV and
consequent risk of human infection are regulated by spatial and
temporal
heterogeneities in habitat, microclimate, vector competence, and
density of
human population. GIS
integration of land-use, census, vector
abundance, and clinical data facilitated the rapid assessment of
regional
transmission patterns and contributed to the design and performance of
county-wide WNV monitoring systems during the 2003 season.
|
