Restoration Eco Exam #2

chapters 4-6

biological parameter

important in maintaining a balanced ecological community

social parameter

of obvious vale to, and observable by, shareholders or predictive of a measure that is

useful parameters

sensitive, timely, diagnostic, measurable, cost effective, integrative

integrative parameter

summarizes info from many unmeasured indicators

cost effective parameter

inexpensive to measure, providing the max amount of info per resources required

measurable parameter

capable of being operationally defined and measured, using a standard procedure with documented performance and low measurement error

diagnostic parameter

helps explain the particular factor causing the problem

timely parameter

provides info quickly enough to initiate corrective action before extensive problems have occured

sensitive parameter

sensitive to stressors without an all-or-none response to extreme or natural variability

economic policies

influence the behavior of people working in their own self-interest to improve their welfare

To use economic policies to achieve environmental ams, governing bodies must ___

create financial incentives, create disincentives, or remove ‘perverse’ incentives

Disincentive example

governments can charge taxes for each unit of an appropriated service

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per cubic meter of timber cut or water diverted

User fees, hunting and fishing licences, entrance fees

NGO Examples

international, national, community-based orgs

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scopes differ so actions differ → may or may not be doing restoration themselves

regionally focused organizations often support individuals to do restoration on their own → more often directly involved

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black hawk rehabilitation project, tallgrass prairie center, ducks unlimited, wwf

resilience ethos

situation awareness and management of keystone vulnerabilities

situation awareness and management of keystone vulnerabilities lead to ___

adaptive capacity

legal mechanisms

constitutional → vague and broad

regulatory → i.e. Clean Water Act (by elected officials)

administrative policy → defines the regulatory, i.e. what’s a US water body (not by elected officials)

private law → not by elected officials, but juries

data management alternative monitoring data sources

citizen science, stakeholders, “experts”

aridity

the ratio of a region’s annual evapotranspiration to its annual precipitation

Incentive examples

direct payments, subsidies, and tax reductions

Case Study J - Namaqualand Restoration Initiative

things to remember

* Western coastal region of southern Africa


* harsh environment


* Biodiversity hotspot
* harsh climate, high biodiversity, and diamond mining → reasons for challenge of restoration
* Issue: 90 years of mining
* native vegetation unable to reestablish due to sandy and salty substrate left on surface
* high winds made substrate unstable and formed migrating dunes
* 1st approach:
* reduce wind erosion → stabilize former mined areas with cereal crops, saltbrush, and straw
* Unsuccessful
* invasive species
* important to find a wave to disrupt wind erosion
* created windbreaks to allow seeds and organic matter to settle
* created the NRI, an initiative of the CEPF, which proposed to 1. further refine those techniques that appeared promising so that they could be broadly and cost-effectively implemented, 2. build the professional capacity of the local community to undertake the restoration work, and 3. establish a self-sustaining local business that could provide contracting services to the mining companies prior to mine closure (critical since employment was declining)
* CEPF provided seed money, De Beers also eventually supported financially
* restoration packs used to revegetate → open cardboard box installed in ground, filled with growth media, and planted with seed mix.
* NMR → community owned company
* NRI developed the restoration company, had training and De Beers relied on NMR for restoration services
* NRI-2 also created to provide additional training, mentoring and technical support for NMR
* Main obstacle → the massive amount of land that requires restoration and the uncertainty of the mining company’s level of commitment to accomplish the work.
* 30,000 ha requires revegetation which will take about 100 years to complete
* De Beers is proposing to sell the land without completing restoration

Case Study A - Alaska’s North Slope

things to remember

* tundra landscape → vulnerable
* wetland-rich
* one of the most important breeding grounds in N.A. for migratory shorebirds and waterfowl
* due to oil development, wetlands have been filled with gravel
* prevents shallow permafrost from melting, which would destabilize the surface
* wet tundra vegetation didn’t naturally recolonize where the landform and hydrology approximated pre construction conditions → seed mix was developed.
* three frequent colonizers identified, each were grasses
* specimen collected from several locations then sent to Alaska
* selected strains that produced most seed and grew most vigorously
* caused native plants of surrounding areas to not be able to recolonize
* began to encourage growth of local colonizers in 2002 by using phosphorus-rich fertilizer
* unsuccessful
* years of monitoring is required to see full results from trials
* geographic information system maps used to collect data and assess trends
* learned from Sag Delta 32 Exploratory Well Site that gravel didn’t need to be left for thermal stability and that grass cultivators outcompeted the native colonizers
* learned from Annex 3 that native colonizers were not very successful when the area was poorly drained, so they promoted drainage with a culvert and have found that the site will likely meet performance requirements
* Adaptive management
* planting non-native grass species ended up not being a good idea so they reassessed
* as moving west, need more than just the same seed mix to preserve biodiversity
* oil companies need to show public they can do the project and improve the environment
* importance of restoring physical attributes in this landscapes
* make sure there’s a habitat available for the biological aspects
* arctic isn’t forgiving → lose something, can’t get it back

Case Study E - Jarrah Forests

* Southwest Australia
* a biodiversity hotspot
* provides freshwater and timber, and bauxite
* Alcoa operates two mines and three refineries here → produces 13% of world’s alumina
* Huntly Mine → largest bauxite mine in world → produces 20 million tons/yr
* Lands are leased to Alcoa by government on mutually agreed-upon standards → required to restore lands
* Alcoa recognized they needed to develop expertise to restore the ecosystem (1970)
* adaptive management
* alcoa’s team of environmental scientists conducted trials and evaluations to develop restoration practices → helped integrate the practices, and collaborated with research scientists at universities and other research institutes to address uncertainties
* Alcoa’s objectives
* completion criteria
* 32 covering water quality protection, restoration of timber productivity, and restoration of biodiversity
* has adopted ‘working arrangements’ in consultation with state agencies and more internally developed ‘targets’
* used intact reference forests
* Stretch goals
* allowed to anticipate and meet higher regulatory standards as they evolved rather than wait for changes to be imposed
* establish self-sustaining jarrah forest ecosystems with the full complement of biodiversity that existed prior to mining
* Protect plantings from kangaroo grazing with small mesh bags
* also apply fertilizer
* vegetation monitored about 9 months after planting to assess what steps taken next
* again monitored at 15 months, then monitored at 6, 15, 20, 30, and 50 years.

Case Study D - Great Barrier Reef Marine Park

things to remember

* Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Act
* multiple-use zoning system provided high levels of protection for specific areas while allowing other uses in other zones
* established the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA)
* created zoning maps
* key areas designated as highly protected “no take” zones → prohibit fishing or collecting
* 5% of park
* review of zones began in 1999 (5 year comprehensive planning process)
* Representative Areas Program (RAP) and expansion of no-take zones
* no-take zones increased to 33.3%
* Reef Water Quality Protection Plan
* long-term, community-based program to reduce nutrient and sediment runoff from the land
* rezoning process allowed for cooperative among local, state, and federal levels
* adaptive management
* modified zones in response to monitoring and evaluation
* GBRMPA monitoring of coral reefs draws on following sources of info:
* large-scale monitoring of coral cover and crown-of-thorns starfish outbreaks at 150 sites
* detailed status and trends info on 47 offshore and 27 inshore reef sites monitored by AIMS and 60 sites monitored by community-based orgs
* weekly reports of anecdotal sightings of iconic or protected species, reef health indicators, and other emerging issues at 25 dive sites in the Cairns and Port DOuglas region (dive staff reports)
* Weekly reports of coral bleaching status during the summer (tour operator reports)
* digital mapping of algal blooms (community-based orgs)

Work for Water Case Study

things to remember

Driven by constitutional. Driven by social and institutional support

administrative policy → government agency tasked with defining WfW

incentive → pay people (private contractors) to clean water

Players of social and institutional support

* Government → federal lands, native american lands, military bases (Yasuni-ITT Initiative)
* Educational Institutes → UNI (players→

expertise, availability, values, desire for restoration)
* Industry: usually forced to do some restoration due to damaging ecosystems, usually have to pay fines that can go to restoration research and other programs to help restore the area damaged, sometimes done for public image
* NGO’s:
* International
* National
* Community-based organizations
* Individuals/Foundations → Ted Turner
* Non-traditional markets → Hyvee, Alipay Ant Forest Program

restoration concession

experimental approach to restore government land

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areas of degraded state forest land leased to enterprises on long-term licences for restoration-compatible business development

ecological resilience

ability of an ecosystem to maintain its normal patterns after stress

organizational resilience

under stress, they really shine and do well (ability to continue under stress)

* Identify what is coming your way, situational awareness
* Management of keystone vulnerabilities: understanding which aspects of an organization’s operations have the greatest potential to cause failures and building capacity to counteract those deficiencies

adaptive capacity

* Indicators of an organization’s capacity to meet changing needs and challenges:
* Strategic vision and outcome expectancy
* Communications and relationships
* Avoidance of silo mentality
* Innovation and creativity
* Information and knowledge
* Devolved and responsive decision making
* Leadership, management, and governance

FPIC

* Free
* consent given freely and voluntarily with no coercion, manipulation, or intimidation, and following a process directed by the community, respecting the time requirements of indigenous
* Prior
* consent is to be sought in advance of any interventions at the early stages of development
* Informed
* communities have been provided with complete information and understand the potential impact
* Consent
* collective decision-making

monitoring and evaluation purpose (adaptive management)

* Meet goals
* Efficiency
* Improvement

Random Sampling

more time-consuming than those tied to a convenient route but allows for a better representation of the entire site

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difficult in that there is more travel time spent between each site

transect/belt sampling

straight line sampling

stratified random sampling

regions/patches

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mapped so that each area is relatively uniform with respect to important factors like history or environment

sampling variance

low variability means you can do less samples, high means more needed

p-value

start with the assumption that it is random data, what is the probability of seeing the pattern that you see (if the value is low, it means that there is something actually happening there)

BACI

Before after control impact

Data management

Backing up your data is important so you don’t lose it

moving soil intentionally

terraces to help with erosion, beachfront property in Dubai

Eolian

wind derived

Loess

certain type of feature in eolian

Wrack line

where high tide comes in on dunes on the beach where a lot of trash and junk accumulates due to it washing up from the shore

impervious surfaces prevent ___

infiltration

impervious surfaces __ runoff

increase

base flow

steady water flow

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discharge between high flow pulses

time of concentration

lag between peak rainfall across a drainage basin and peak discharge in a river

angle of repose

maximum slope angle at which a barren slope is stable

mass wasting

mass movement

* occurs when gravitational force, in addition to some other stress, is greater than the internal strength of the slope system

infiltration

* the rate at which water moves from the ground into the soil

We can influence the amount of water that runs off and the amount of water that is absorbed by the soil

groundwater

Water that moves underground horizontally

* Very slow processes → 1 km every 10 years
* We have to think of very long time frames because things happen so slowly
* Nutrient pollution happening now will have a huge effect in hundreds of years because of the slow processes

surface runoff

anything that does not infiltrate or evaporate runs off to lower areas due to gravity

base flow

 the amount of water moving through streams not due to precipitation, enough groundwater is feeding into the river to keep it moving and not run out (amount of water naturally moving down that stream)

what affects infiltration?

* Soil structure: how many pores there are in the soil
* Macropores: Formed by roots, animals, worms; all of these holes are amplified by freezing. 
* Soil can be compacted by different things (cattle, vehicles, crop plant roots, less burrowing animals, etc) mostly from agriculture
* Soil Texture class
* Vegetation cover
* Subsurface drainage

What affects runoff?

* Infiltration rate
* Precipitation rate
* Slope

What soil type has the highest infiltration rate?

sandy

when precipitation rate exceeds the infiltration rate..?

runoff

water driven erosion forms

* Sheet erosion: where you have runoff that is not concentrated (a sheet of water moving across a landscape), wide and shallow, low erosion


* Rills: concentrated flow, < 10 cm deep, high erosion
* Gullies: large volumes of water, > 10 cm deep, mass wasting

60-98% of sediment deposited in receiving water bodies is from gully and channel walls

hydroseeding

* seeds, water, tackifier, and mulch
* Mixed and sprayed on wet
* Dries to form a crust over ground
* Roadside constructions
* Plant vegetation by spraying seeds, water, tackifier (kinda like glue), and mulch through hydroseeder
* While tackifier is in place, decreases infiltration temporary while protecting underlying soil particles from erosion

Mulch/erosion control blankets

helps to control soil erosion due to runoff not taking soil

* Slowing water at soil surface
* Less power, less ability to erode, less movement of soil particles
* Increases infiltration rates

confined aquifer

* disconnected from the surface by soil
* take over decades to move
* Doesn’t influence rivers, streams, wetlands directly
* Source for drinking water and irrigation water

Example:

* Ogallala Aquifer
* Contains several confined aquifers, remnants of glacial melts of the last ice age
* Relied on for drinking water
* Concern for running out bc it’s not replenished since it has no connection to surface waters

aquitard

the soil mass that separates water from the surface

Stage, Storage, and Discharge

* Stage is the water level (height)
* Storage is the amount of water in a wetland (volume)
* Discharge is the amount of water that leaves (flow rate of water out of wetland)

What is a flashy wetland?

water moves very quickly in and out

Hydroperiod Characteristics:

* Permanence: what proportion of the year is the wetland wet (avg across years)
* Predictability: how predictable is the body of water, what patterns are observed a year after year
* Phenology: the timing of events in the calendar year, natural patterns of nature
* Duration: periods of time where the area is wet (wet for 6 months, dry for 6 months)
* Harshness: the amplitude of these fluctuations

What decreases runoff?

* Rain gardens
* Rooftop gardens
* Permeable pavers

formative assessment

are you progressing to that end goal, what are the processes that help

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biological processes and restoration techniques

summative assessment

the goals/outcomes

P Value

* Is the outcome due to random chance or due to something we have done?
* P-value starts with the assumption that everything is random chance, how unlikely is this result?
* Low p-value implies that it’s not random chance

evapotranspiration

Both evaporation and transpiration occurring at the same time

* Will removing the dam restore the ecology?
* Will plugging the drain restore it?

It will stop the drainage ditch but by draining the wetland, may have altered the wetland to where just removing the problem won’t fix

Florida example of plugging drain

* Pounded pipe down level to soil, 80 years later the pipe is a lot more visible and soil is a lot lower because the drainage of the wetland
* Subsides because of the more air spaces being available allows gravity to pull it down, but also happens because the soil is altered. Loses soil mass → goes solid to gas
* Subsidence
* If we plug the drainage, it will become a lake 
* Engineering to prevent from happening
* Sand pipe allows for control over water level

Restoring River Channels

* Fish ladders
* Fish jump from each step
* Allows fish to bypass dam
* Channel construction
* Reconstruction from the altered channel to the natural channel
* Channel alteration
* Step pools to replace the rippling and slower areas of water in a waterway to undo the scouring that has happened in a stream channel that has been altered to be completely straight
* retention/detention/ infiltration basins
* Especially in urban areas
* To replace the permeable surface that was originally area and reduce runoff and flooding
* Reduce flashiness of hydrograph → local governments can pass ordinances to require retention basins
* Dam removal
* Can be okay with smaller dams like Cedar Falls dam
* Because it didn’t affect the landscape much
* Can happen with large too but have big effects
* To avoid that → alter dam discharge
* Alter dam discharge
* Still have fish moving through channel though so fish ladders

Urban restoration

Technogenic soils → soils heavily influenced by people

Sheet erosion, rills, gullies severity of problems

* Little problems with sheet erosion
* More problems with rills
* Most problems with gullies

Mississippi River Watershed study

* Really good prediction!
* Graph shows predicted vs observed: 1:1 relationship
* Able to predict about 99% of the variability
* Different contributors to erosion
* More cropland = more erosion
* Model helps us find how to reduce this erosion

water bars

* Temporary terrace
* Fill tube with water
* Slows down the water from creating more erosion from the slope runoff
* See in construction alot
* Increases infiltration rates

terracing

* Reduce slope, allows for plant establishment and reduction of soil erosion
* Increases infiltration rates

soft engineering

* Hard to get vegetation to stay in place often because of the water erosion, so 
* Stake them into the ground
* See in extreme slopes
* Increases infiltration rates

Grass waterways

* Erosion
* Re-seeded the second time
* Created research plots to experiment with increasing restoration in grass waterways

unconfined aquifer

* Connected to surface water
* Directly influences rivers, streams, wetlands

aquifer replenisher example/strategy

* Nebraska sand hills
* Big replenisher for the aquifer
* Because of the rough landscape, water that falls at any point doesn’t travel far because it is confined due to the landscape so it sits there and eventually infiltrates
* Land imprinter
* Makes ridges in soil that replicates this sand hill texture
* Gives time for plants to develop in the wet spots
* Used a lot in arid areas 
* Prevents runoff and soil erosion, promotes water moving into groundwater
* Method for restoring impaired groundwater

salinization

* Often seen on previously irrigated land
* Tough to deal with in terms of restoration
* Add organic matter to overcome to buffer the salts which allows plants to grow
* Difficult to do in large areas b/c limited access to organic matter

hydrograph

Shows stage (sometimes discharge) overtime

how to restore wetness from dams

* Remove the dam
* Control amount of water released by dam

how to restore hydrograph

* Plug the drains
* To restore natural hydrology, restore nature physicality

situational awareness aspects

monitoring, regional indirect and direct drivers, scenario planning, roles and responsibilities

management of keystone vulnerabilities aspects

redundancy in personnel, record-keeping, reporting mistakes, multiple funding sources

social and institutional support mechanisms

legal

* constitutional
* regulatory
* administrative policy
* private law

Economic

* incentives
* disincentives
* perverse incentives

Social

* stakeholder inclusion
* diversity
* environmental justice

stakeholder

any person or party interested in or affected by a decision process

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includes those who:

* will be materially affected by a decision
* need or want to take action to secure a flow of ecosystem services
* might take action that would impede the flow of ecosystem services
* are not aware they are benefiting from or impeding flows

stakeholder inclusion allows you to

ensure equity and inclusion for stakeholders

stakeholder matrix

plot stakeholders in four quadrants to show the unique positions of power influence, and interest

monitoring and evaluation - adaptive management

plan → do → evaluate and learn → adjust

Domestic laws

established by national or subnational governments

Drivers of economic development

natural resource use (i.e. agriculture, mining, forestry), transportation, and urbanization

Administrative policies

rules that agencies adopt to accomplish their legal mandates

conservation easement

voluntary agreement with a nonprofit land trust or government agency that allows a landowner to limit the type or amount of development on their property while retaining private ownership of the land

conservation easement is an example of

incentive

governments can create financial disincentives for restoration when

private markets undervalue the use of particular ecosystem services and societies are therefore shouldering the burden of uncompensated environmental impacts

perverse incentives

when economic policies use financial incentives to encourage economic development without regard for environmental consequences so widespread impacts result and continue long after problems have been recognized.