Threat Assessment
The Goal:
Ecological Risk Assessment
The Issue:
Ecological risk assessments require comprehensive geospatial information on the occurrence and distribution of species and their habitats to facilitate evaluation of contaminated sites and wildlife species potentially at risk.The Solution:
Create an eco-screening tool that can be used by natural resources professionals to find information on the species that may be influenced by environmental contamination.
The Example:Ecological Risk Assessment in Northeastern Illinois
Researchers created a GIS database of selected terrestrial and aquatic special that were potentially at risk in northeastern Illinois. The database included species range, habitat requirements, and an assignment to GAP land cover categories. To create an eco-screening tool, they created a GIS user interface that includes predicted species distribution, characteristics of a species' relative susceptibility to contaminants, vegetation classifications, public lands, streams, watershed boundaries, roads, topographic maps, Toxic Release Inventory sites and Superfund sites.
The Result
Preliminary use suggests that this was an effective and efficient way to address ecological risk assessment screening.
References:
Weicherding, T. J. Levengood, S. Lavin, and P. Brown. 2002. Ecological Risk Assessment in Northeastern Illinois. An Application of GAP Analysis. Retrieved from <http://www.gap.uidaho.edu/meetings/posters/2002posters/ecorisk_2002_GAPConf.pdf> on July 14, 2006
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