Environmental health indicators Caroline Wicks March 17, 2006 Cooperative Oxford Laboratory

Ecological indicators summary Hershner et al A practical concept of aquatic ecosystem health. –What is ecosystem health? How can it be used to develop indicators? –Literature review of concepts of health –Metrics approach to cut down on amount of data needed –Valuation of health –Conclusions Ecosystem health is anthropocentric Assessed health of given system should reflect capacity to provide desired services “Health” should incorporate understanding that services are not uniformly nor consistently valued.

Guidelines for indicator selection Hershner et al. Continued –Developing indicators A focus on the capacity of system to service human interests Practical Underlying metric should have a reasonable cost:information ratio Base metric on parameters already on management list Identifying threshold of indicator is more important than highly resolved response along gradient (theory only).

Guidelines for indicator selection Wardop et al Developing and communicating a taxonomy of Ecological Indicators: A Case Study from the Mid-Atlantic. In press. –There is lack of indicators that are at a spatial and temporal scale that are relevant to managers. –Framework elements Spatial and/or temporal scale of issue being addressed Specific questions to be answered –Snapshot of current state –ID of causative factors –Communication to the public –Future – estimating trajectory of condition or assessing vulnerability –Evaluate the effectiveness of management actions Context of the question (Reference site)

Evaluation of CBP’s Indicators Hershner et al Assessment of Chesapeake Bay Program Selection and Use of Indicators. In press. –Evaluated 82 indicators based on five functions: Condition, Evaluate, Diagnostic, Communicate and Future Condition – has explicit reference condition or some other means of characterizing status Evaluation – has a clear relationship to a management objective or action Diagnostic – based on an equivocal dose-response relationship such that only one set of circumstances could produce the same indicator value Communication – is simplified, easy to interpret, and clearly linked to program goals and objectives Future – forecasts future conditions based on current information, based on statistical correlation, based on a cause and effect linkage

Where should CBP go from here? Diagnostic indicators –A diagnostic indicator requires careful integration of management objectives, ecological understanding, and monitoring design –Only Chl a and Secchi depth are diagnostic indicators –What are the steps towards getting CBP to use diagnostic indicators? Future indicators –No indicator was developed explicitly for predicting future conditions. Rather, current indicators show trends, which forecasting is based on. –EcoCheck already moving in this direction Spatial and temporal scales –Low resolution time scales: mostly annual, very few that are seasonal –Low resolution spatial scales: on an estuary or river scale, not local