Assessment and Management of Natural Resources
Within a defined geographic area, ecosystem health is often assessed by determining plant and animal habitat conditions. Habitat analysis is not only a useful descriptor of environmental health, but in terms of legal protection for threatened and endangered species, habitat analysis is a regulatory requirement. Habitat analysis defines the set of physical and biological conditions that exist in a specified location and the environmental factors required by an animal or plant population to survive and/or reproduce (e.g., a species natural history requirements). Models, field data collection and observation, and remote sensing information are commonly employed to determine habitat conditions. EVS and its predecessor divisions have been actively involved in aquatic and terrestrial habitat assessment and management for over 25 years. During the early 1970s, work on Lake Michigan focused on relating scenarios of energy development to potential impacts on aquatic habitat for native fish populations. Issues of energy and environment have been drivers for a number of habitat analyses including an analysis of kit fox populations in San Joaquin Valley of California, evaluating the effects of low head hydropower production on salmonid populations, and determining the impact of transmission and pipeline right-of-ways on threatened and endangered species. EVS staff have used remote sensing data combined with field data collection to delineate habitats for migratory song birds on Department of Defense installations. The results were used in the preparation of natural resource management plans. Recently, EVS ecologists have been assisting federal agencies in developing flow recommendations for hydropower production on the upper Colorado River. Protection of warm water habitats used by native fishes has been a key component of the flow analysis studies. As part of the habitat analysis, EVS staff used aerial videography to delineate backwater habitats and riparian vegetation along a 60 mile segment of the Green River below Flaming Gorge Dam. In 1998, The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in New Mexico requested that EVS assist BLM in the production of Riparian and Aquatic Habitat Management Plans for the Taos, Albuquerque, Farmington, and Las Cruces Field Offices. EVS and BLM staff analyzed three alternative management strategies within the context of a draft and final environmental impact statement (EIS). The first geographic information system database of riparian habitats on BLM-administered lands in New Mexico was made available to government agencies and the public as an element of the overall habitat analysis.
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