USGS National Wetlands Research Center: FY02NWRC Accomplishments

USGS National Wetlands Research Center
FY02 Accomplishments

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How Hurricane Mitch Affected the Biology and Ecology of Central America's Coast

Hurricane Mitch (25 October 5 November 1998) caused extensive damage to the coastal zones of Central America, including widespread loss and alteration of coastal forests, mangrove forests, productive estuaries, and shrimp mariculture farms. Because Central American countries rely extensively on their coastal natural resources, an evaluation of hurricane-related damage to these natural resources and an assessment of recovery potential was needed to provide essential information for the formulation of recovery priorities towards a sustainable coastal ecosystem and economy.

Partner/customers

National Park Service
University of Louisiana at Lafayette
Auburn University
University of Texas
Western Washington University
USAID, Honduras
USAID, Guatemala

Caribbean coast:

Because of a combination of high mortality, organic sediment collapse, and a lack of seed source, extensive mangrove forests in the Bay Island of Guanaja (Honduras) are not recovering from the damage caused by hurricane-force winds and flooding. If sediments can be shown to support live seedlings, immediate restoration is recommended.
Mangrove forests as far away as the Caribbean coast of Guatemala were also extensively damaged, and chronic impacts remain in the form of unstable shoreline sediments. No restoration is warranted until sediments stabilize.
Seagrasses adjacent to the mangrove forests suffered less important damage and appear to retain their ecological function. Seagrasses and other submersed aquatic plants within a large inland lake (Lake Izabal, Guatemala) also recorded some hurricane damage, but damage appears to be have been minimal.
Damage patterns within Caribbean coastal forests were used to calibrate a hurricane simulation model which can be used to predict vulnerability of such forests to future hurricanes.

Pacific coast:

Despite altered elevation and hydrology and sediment instability, mangrove forests around the Gulf of Fonseca area are slowly recovering from extensive sediment burial.
Native shrimp populations remain genetically altered and are distributed within genetically different populations due to hurricane-related releases of laboratory-raised stock from area shrimp ponds.
Additional chronic impacts remain in the south of the gulf in the form of poor water quality, in part a result of changed post-hurricane circulation patterns. This poor water quality is causing an important decline in the estuary's carrying capacity for the extent of sustainable shrimp mariculture activities.
Population characteristics of benthic invertebrates also suggest chronically poor water quality. Given this water quality, a model-driven integrative mangrove management tool has been developed to determine optimal proportions of mangrove forest area to shrimp mariculture area in the Gulf of Fonseca.

Products and Use

Study summaries were provided to USAID and are being served on the USGS Hurricane Mitch Program Web site: http://mitchnts1.cr.usgs.gov/index.html (no longer available online). Eight USGS Open File Reports are in press. Presentations were made to USAID. Vegetation maps of selected hurricane regions were provided to USAID.

All reports were submitted to headquarters in Reston, Virginia, for distribution to the USAID offices in the respective Central American countries (Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua). Summaries of each study, including objectives, approach, cooperating agencies, data, and products are available at the USGS Hurricane Mitch Web site. The reports will be used by USAID to support restoration and sustainable management initiatives within each target country. In addition, the habitat maps generated from photointerpretation of aerial imagery were submitted to each of five municipalities surrounding the Gulf of Fonseca (Honduras) to support the development of cadastral maps.

Programs

USGS Hurricane Mitch Program Activities B6 and B7.

Forest Ecosystem Restoration Guide Could Become a Classic

More than 80% of the forested wetlands in the Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley have been lost to clearing. The economic returns on much of the cleared land have been marginal at best but the economic and ecological values of reforesting bottomland hardwoods such as storage of floodwaters, water quality improvement, and provision of wildlife habitat are becoming increasingly appreciated by policy makers and landowners. Private and government land managers need clear and readily available guidance on how best to restore these forested wetlands.

Partners/customers

The partners include the US Geological Survey and the US Forest Service with assistance fron the US Fish and Wildlife Service, State agencies and several universities. Customers include any land owner or land manager in the Southeast interested in managing bottomland areas for timber products or wildlife habitat. Specific customers include the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the Bureau of Reclamation, the US Forest Service, the US Environmental Protection Agency, the US Army Corps of Engineers, State departments of fish and wildlife, environmental quality, and parks and recreation, nongovernment organizations such as The Nature Conservancy and Ducks Unlimited, and any land owner who has marginally productive agricultural land.

The publication synthesizes volumes of research findings and years of practical experience into one document to provide guidance from the planning through planting and maintenance and on to the silvicultural techniques and management needed once the vegetation is established. Information is provide to assist the manager with tree species selection to match the site conditions and to provided the ecological results values that are desired.

Product and Use

Publication of "A Guide to Bottomland Hardwood Restoration" a soft bound book with 132 pages that include 14 chapters, 54 figures, 15 tables, and 5 appendices.

"A Guide to Bottomland Hardwood Restoration" is being used by land managers through the United States and in some foreign countries as an on-the-ground information source on what needs to be done to have a successful bottomland hardwood restoration project. It is also being used as a reference in restoration workshops taught by several groups and as a text in some university classrooms.

Programs

This publication was produced under the Ecosystem and the Biological Information programs in BRD.

External Endorsements

The review in the peer reviewed journal Ecological Restoration noted that the guide "is going to turn into the classic text in its subject area. ...its practical, nuts-n-bolts approach should make it perfect for land managers and land owners who are interested in restoring these forests." Requests for the guide have been received from throughout the United States and from several foreign countries (Canada, China, England, India, and South Africa). Numerous copies of the Guide have been requested for use in bottomland hardwood workshops being taught by several groups.

Adaptive Management and Restoration for Coastal Louisiana

Coastal wetlands in Louisiana are in a state of collapse and hundreds of millions of dollars are being spent through the Coastal Wetlands Planning, Protection and Restoration Act (CWPPRA) to restore, create, protect, and enhance the structure and function of these natural systems. Because there is significant uncertainty in conducting large-scale restoration, an adaptive management review was conducted on 18 restoration projects to address the basic questions: (1) Are the projects working as physically designed? (2) Is the wetland response as expected? (3) If the projects are not working as physically designed, why not, and can the project be modified to meet expectations?

Partners/customers

The project reviews were conducted by representatives of six federal agencies, four universities, and the State of Louisiana and the report products were developed for the CWPPRA Task Force represented by the US Army Corps of Engineers, US Environmental Protection Agency, US Fish and Wildlife Service, NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service, USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service and the Louisiana Governor's Office of Coastal Activities.

The USGS National Wetlands Research Center participated in chairing a methods review team, co-chairing a hydrologic restoration/marsh management review team, co-authoring 4 project review reports, and assembling spatial data and conducting analyses on 10 adaptive management project reviews. Improvements were identified for each of the reviewed projects and are too numerous to identify here, but they range from establishing well-defined goals as early as possible in the project development process and maintaining them throughout the projects evolution to ensuring that operation and maintenance plans incorporate plans for extreme weather events and additional contingency funding. In addition, the proposed Coastwide Reference Monitoring System developed by the USGS, Louisiana Department of Natural Resources (LDNR), and Louisiana State University was identified as a necessity to conduct ecosystem-level assessments of restoration effectiveness.

Products and Use

An executive summary and 17 project-specific adaptive management reports were completed and provided in hard-copy and electronically to the partners and customers. These documents were also made available on LDNR Web site at www.savelawetlands.org/site/adaptive.

The findings of the reports were presented at an Adaptive Management Workshop conducted on August 12-13, 2002. Participants at that meeting included all the partners and customers, private industry, academia, and the public who discussed the findings and compiled a list of programmatic action items. Steps are being taken by the CWPPRA Task Force to integrate the recommendations from the review into programmatic and project-specific operations.

Programs

Ecosystems/Application of Science Information to Management/Adaptive Management

External Endorsements

The CWPPRA Task Force in a public meeting on October 9, 2002 acknowledged the combined efforts of all of the participants in this effort and congratulated the effort. Comments from the public at this meeting, especially from the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana, were extremely complimentary and supported the importance of adaptive management in implementing large-scale coastal restoration efforts.

USGS Science Makes a Difference in the Lower Mississippi River Valley

Water quality and contaminant issues and fish/wildlife habitat losses have caused the 954-mile long Lower Mississippi River (LMR) and its four backwater areas to be identified as an ecosystem of special concern by the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and numerous river conservation organizations. Restoring the natural resources of the LMR can help stimulate the regional economy, without impacting existing navigation or flood control.

Partners/customers

USFWS; US Army Corps of Engineers; EPA: the Lower Mississippi River Conservation Committee (LMRCC) which is a multistate (AR, KY, LA, MO, MS, and TN), nonprofit organization of State and Federal interest, private contributors, and corporate sponsors; timber companies; and private land owners.

The USGS (BRD) developed a great variety of geographic information system (GIS) databases and a water quality model. The GIS databases included hydrology, land use, biological resources, physical structures, and others, to assist in the identification and prioritization of potential wetland habitat restoration within the 2.7 million-acre leveed LMR floodplain and four major backwaters over a six state area. USGS also assisted the States involved with conducting workshops on the initiative.

Product and Use

The LMRCC sponsored a series of state-by-state (TN, KY, and MO completed in FY02) Mississippi River Conservation Initiative workshops. At the workshops, representatives of several State and Federal agencies as well as the private sector were asked to assist in identification of aquatic resource habitat restoration opportunities along and adjacent to the LMR. The meetings resulted in a review of proposed projects based on the USGS provided database and modeling support, development of additional proposed restoration projects, development of strategies to implement restoration projects; and building broad-based partnerships. The list of restoration projects identified in FY02 and those to be identified in the States of AR, LA, and MS in FY03 will be used in the report to Congress required by Section 402 of the Water Resources Development Act of 2000 (P. L. 106-541).

Program

Ecosystems

External Endorsements

Governors from six states have endorsed the initiative.

      View Governors' statements:
            Arkansas Governor, Mike Huckabee
            Kentucky Governor, Paul E. Patton
            Louisiana Governor, Mike Foster
            Mississippi Governor, Ronnie Musgrove
            Missouri Governor, Bob Holden
            Tennessee Governor, Don Sundquist

Graphic : An example of a GIS product is found in plan1map.pdf

Filling the Biological Data Gaps: The Gap Analysis Project in Louisiana

Detailed efforts and studies are needed for long-term planning for biodiversity conservation in Louisiana. Consequently, the Louisiana Gap Analysis Project (LA-GAP) began in 1994 as a cooperative effort between the biology discipline of the USGS and State, Federal, and private natural resources groups in Louisiana. The major objectives of the project were to (1) produce geographic information system databases describing actual land cover type, terrestrial vertebrate species distributions, land stewardship, and land management status at a scale of 1:100,000, (2) identify land cover types and terrestrial vertebrate species that currently are not represented or are under-represented in areas managed for long-term maintenance of biodiversity, and (3) facilitate cooperative development and use of information so that institutions, agencies, and private land owners may be more effective stewards of Louisiana's natural resources.

Partners/customers

USGS/Mid-Continent Mapping Center, Rolla, MO
USGS/Louisiana Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, Baton Rouge, LA
The Nature Conservancy, Baton Rouge, LA
Louisiana Natural Heritage Program, Baton Rouge, LA
The National GAP Program, Boise, ID

The results of this project show that developing biodiversity conservation management strategies in Louisiana is limited by the fact that over 90% of the land is in private ownership. While information from this analysis is useful in identifying important areas to acquire as public lands (i.e., new refuges), it can also be used by managers to develop programs that encourage private landowners to promote biodiversity management on their own lands.

Products and Use

A CD-ROM of the final report and data for the Louisiana Gap Analysis Project (LA-GAP) was delivered in Spring 2002. The National GAP Program Office has released the official USGS publication on CD-ROM (see GAP homepage at http://www.gap.uidaho.edu/default.htm for availability).

A map of actual land cover as closely as possible to the alliance level.
A map of the predicted distribution 333 terrestrial vertebrates.
Documentation on the representation of natural land cover types and animal species in areas managed for the long-term maintenance of biodiversity.

Copies of the final CD-ROM were distributed from the National GAP Program to the State coordinators. Resource managers are using the data to understand where species occur and what habitat is available for them.

Programs

Status and Trends program element contributed to the development of the LA-GAP CD-ROM through the National GAP Program.

A Data Information Management System Helps Integrated Science in the Gulf of Mexico

More than 2 million people live in the Tampa Bay watershed, and the population continues to grow. Increased development demands more fresh water, creates greater air and water pollution, and results in continued human alterations in the bay and along its coast. Successful management of our nations coastal resources requires studies of how changes have affected coastal ecosystems in the past, and how these changes will continue to affect these resources in the future. A user-friendly system was needed to provide access to the volumes of information such studies will generate.

Partners/customers

Partners: Southwest Florida Water Management District, Gulf of Mexico Program, Tampa Bay Estuary Program, Florida Marine Research Institute, Florida Department of Environmental Protection, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, US Fish and Wildlife Service, US Environmental Protection Agency, Eckerd College, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, University of South Florida. Our customers include Federal, State, and local partners, policy makers, researchers, and the public.

The Tampa Bay Pilot Study is an integrated science effort by the USGS that combines the expertise of Federal, State, and local partners to address some of the most pressing societal and ecological problems of the Tampa Bay estuary. Efficient information and data distribution require the development of a database information management system (DIMS) for scientists and the public.

Products and Use

The DIMS has been integrated into the project Web site at http://gulfsci.usgs.gov . It includes a Web-enabled data and information clearinghouse to store and retrieve products related to the Tampa Bay Pilot Study, a Web-based geographic information system (GIS) to allow viewing, querying, and analysis of geographic information associated with Tampa Bays estuaries, and an interactive calendar to assist research partners in coordinating field activities and collection of metadata.

The DIMS is used by project partners to store information and retrieve data and information related to the Tampa Bay Pilot Study. It provides access to spatial data, reports, presentations, photos, and related project information. Web site managers inform us that the public uses the site as a means of keeping up with project developments.

Programs

Integrated Science Program

Illustrations/Graphics

Three USGS Open File Reports describing the work are attached:
tampa_ims.pdf: Tampa Bay Integrated Science Pilot Study Interactive Mapping System (IMS)
tampa_dims.pdf: Tampa Bay Integrated Science Pilot Study Data Information Management System (DIMS)
tampa_dl.pdf: Tampa Bay Integrated Science Pilot Study Digital Library

Biological Information Management and Delivery

Biological Information Management and Delivery is performed at the USGS National Wetlands Research Center (NWRC) by a cadre of information professionals tasked with metadata training, discipline-wide telecommunication coordination, database creation and management, network and security management, publishing including Web site development and management, and education and outreach. Significant accomplishments include:

Seven NBII Biological Profile Metadata workshops were conducted by NWRC, three at the request of the Center of Biological Informatics (Denver) for Environment Canada, US Forest Service, and USGS Western Ecological Research Center. The remaining four workshops were conducted for NWRC projects (Galveston Bay Wetlands Project, NWRC training program, and the Water Resource Division's Austin Office).
Serviced National Biological Information Infrastructure node for spatial metadata
Coordinated all Biological Resources Disciplines telecommunications for animal radio telemetry including technical guidance on proper equipment to operate with new narrow-band frequencies; produced 65 radio frequency authorization packages for new frequency assignments; and maintained discipline-wide subset database of government master files containing radio frequencies used throughout North America (US, Canada, Mexico) as well as frequencies in other countries
Provided security for classified National Technical Means data facility through an Automated Information System security plan; hardware and software updates; equipment sanitization; and provision of an encrypted telephone
Helped ensure data security by serving on USGS Computer Security Instant Response Team
Improved workflow efficiency by providing wireless connectivity to conference room, laboratories, and special science facilities such as greenhouses
Disseminated information to public and other scientists by developing a Web-enabled database with images and information on the coastal prairie, a threatened ecosystem
Disseminated information to public and other scientists on coastal wetlands by development of a Web-enabled image database
Developing a Web-enabled pilot file management system for scientific data that will allow authorized public access while allowing Principal Investigators to work on data and control access
Improved workflow efficiency by developing automated Information Desktop forms
Performed editing, graphic development, quality/assurance-quality/control for 400 editorial and 200 graphic products including journal articles, technical and management reports, maps, Web pages, and news releases
Published 12 USGS series reports; and edited for USGS headquarters two USGS safety manuals: Occupational Safety and Health Program Requirements Handbook and Environmental Safety Handbook
Promoted best practices of scientific publishing and technology at several meetings including those of the Society for Technical Communication and the National Association of Government Communicators
Helped develop publishing policy through serving on the USGS Publishing Issues Group, Report Templates Subcommittee, Series Definition Subcommittee, and the Directors Publishing Visioning Team
Received Award of Excellence from Society for Technical Communication for Atlas of Rare Endemic Vascular Plants of the Arctic
Designed, edited, and Web-published the Louisiana Coastal Wetlands Conservation Task Force 2000 Evaluation Report to Congress
Disseminated wetland information to the public and other scientists through outreach and educational programs, reaching 8500 individuals on-site through tours, workshops, and meetings; and 20,000 through classroom visits and special events such as Earth Day, GIS Day, Festivals Acadiens, and Acadiana Migratory Bird Day.

Return to NWRC Accomplishments

USGS National Wetlands Research Center FY02 Accomplishments

How Hurricane Mitch Affected the Biology and Ecology of Central America's Coast

USGS National Wetlands Research Center
FY02 Accomplishments