The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is in the third year of implementing its Ecosystem Management Research Program for the Pacific Northwest. The aim of the "PNW Research Program" is to help communities and their public officials better respond to the cumulative effect of seemingly small, unavoidable impacts to the environment. The desired outcome of the research effort is knowledge of how to reduce environmental risk through strategic community planning. The research program is composed of federal researchers and contractors located at EPA's Laboratory in Corvallis, Oregon. That research team is complemented by another sizable group of researchers organized under a consortium of the Oregon State University, the University of Oregon, and the University of Washington.
As a nation, we have made great strides in environmental protection over the last 25 years. Those accomplishments are based primarily on management strategies that rely on engineering and regulatory solutions. Federal and state programs that support the construction of wastewater treatment facilities and wetlands protection are good, enduring examples of the approach. Yet, there is significant risk that much of what has been gained will be offset by ecosystem degradation that continues to occur. For example, a whole host of water and land use practices continues to threaten salmon fisheries in Oregon despite the state having relatively progressive land use law. Such a predicament has spawned a growing consensus among environmental managers. It appears that increased regulatory control cannot produce the desired recovery of the lost beneficial uses attributed to stream corridors, wetlands, and other ecological resources. Innovative means are being explored to supplement current applications of the more traditional methods of environmental protection.
"Ecosystem management" is the favored term given to this new approach to environmental protection. It also is known as the "watershed protection approach," and still other groups call it "community-based environmental protection." Whatever the chosen phrase, the approach is a process of comprehensive environmental assessment that is not constrained by specific institutional mandates. It is applied to a domain of places rather than individual pollutants or other environmental stressors. Environmental results are achieved through community action.
The PNW Research Program has embraced the concept of ecosystem management with an assumption that its effectiveness depends on the application of good science. The real challenge then is making science relevant and accessible for local community action. The challenge is being met by having research scientists work in partnership with community "stakeholders" having direct interest in sustaining the livability of their towns and countryside.
During the environmental movement of the 1970s there emerged a simple, but elegant, innovation in ecosystem protection. Embedded within the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA) is the concept of alternatives analysis. The idea is that the public and their officials should assess the consequences of projects that might significantly impact the environment. An important objective is to identify project design and location likely to cause the least harm to the environment. Formal assessments usually produce a number of project alternatives, including "no action." Decisions are made by weighing the limitations and benefits of each alternative.
Advances in the science of landscape ecology, the art of landscape design, and the technology of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have created a situation where the tried and true concept of alternatives analysis is ripe for enhancement. The PNW Research Program is taking advantage of the situation by integrating technical methods from the science and art disciplines with the aid of GIS technology. The resulting innovation is the application of alternatives analysis to entire land use scenarios bounded at varying scales of space and time. In this manner, the environmental impacts or benefits of a specific project can be viewed in context with the cumulative effect of multiple actions. Termed "alternative futures," the framework used for integration stems from the work of Harvard University's Dr. Carl Steinitz. It consists of an endeavor to address four basic assessment questions during land use planning:
How has the landscape changed in a particular area?
How might human activities and management decisions alter the landscape in the future? (alternative futures)
What are the expected, relative ecological and socio-economic consequences of the alternative futures?
What types of human activities or management actions, in what geographic areas or types of ecosystems, are likely to have the greatest effect?.
Studies sponsored by the PNW Research Program have been carefully designed to produce and validate procedures for helping communities answer these four questions in the process of alternative futures development. Results from a recently completed demonstration project described below serve as illustration. Over 20 new research projects have been commissioned in Oregon to broaden the scope of the demonstration to larger spatial scales and more complex social settings. For example, the Program is currently collaborating with a group known as The Willamette Valley Livability Forum. Created by Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber in December 1996, one of the primary goals of the Forum is to work with communities to build a vision to shape the Valley's growth for the next 50 years See: <www.econ.state.or.us/wvlf>. Also, the Program will continue to support related research in the Willapa Bay area of coastal Washington.
Work was completed this summer on the development of a set of alternative futures for the Muddy Creek watershed of Oregon. The 125-square-mile watershed is located within western Oregon's Willamette River Basin just south of the City of Corvallis. Forestry and agriculture are the dominant uses of land in the area. The study venture was carried out by an interdisciplinary group of scientists and planners led by Prof. David Hulse of the University of Oregon. Dr. Kathryn Freemark, Joe Eilers and Dr. Steve Radosevich also were key investigators in the project, representing the organizations Canadian Wildlife Service, E&S Chemistry and Oregon State University, respectively. Their research proceeded under a three-task study agenda that included extensive interaction with local landowners.
The first task of the Muddy Creek project was a characterization of the historic change and current status of environmental conditions in the watershed. Biodiversity and water quality were selected as the environmental attributes of special interest, based on a broader scale, relatively rapid assessment of environmental issues across the Willamette Valley.
The most important products of the characterization effort were a 1990 land use/land cover map and a presettlement vegetation map. The presettlement map was painstakingly derived from 1850s survey notes compiled by the (then) General Land Office. Both of the map products were developed and then archived in a GIS format. This application allowed researchers to query the GIS system and to depict past landscape patterns showing how they differ from current conditions. The depictions were evaluated in light of a compiled set of narrative accounts describing the watershed's history of settlement and resource development. Using the entire information set, researchers ascribed cause for some of the more significant changes in the study area. Certainty attributed to cause-and-effect relationships was modest, but within the bounds of intended use of study results (e.g., community visioning and goal setting).
Also gleaned from the same set of historic and current information was insight on how past land use activities and landscape processes might constrain the development of an otherwise full array of alternative futures. For example, channelization and field drainage conducted in the watershed have acted to incise streams at the mid-elevation areas of the watershed. Some of those stream reaches are "detached" from their floodplain. For that reason, some restoration practices at those reaches may not yield an environmental return over the short term.
The second task of the study focused on developing increased understanding of how ecological processes in the Muddy Creek watershed are affected by human activities and the possible consequences of that impact. To accomplish this task, the study team developed two evaluation models. Both were designed to be sufficiently articulate to guide planning decisions of a broader, more strategic nature (e.g., comprehensive land use planning versus permit decision-making). One of the models was designed to address the issue of biodiversity. Based on the work of Denis White, Oregon State University, its construction began with the compilation of a vertebrate (nonfish) species list for the watershed. An association then was made between species occurrence and habitat based on a literature review and the judgment of local experts. When run, the model predicts changes in potential habitat area for each of 234 species, in each alternative future (discussed below), by calculating the ratio of future or past habitat area to the present habitat area.
A process-based Non-Point Source Geographic Information System (NPS/GIS) model also was developed during the course of study. The model was calibrated using field data collected during storm events within two representative sub-basins of the Muddy Creek watershed. Other data requirements of the model, besides the field values of pollutant loads (for calibration), are land cover and land use data, and daily climate values. When run, the model predicts changes in water quality, by subbasin, for each defined alternative future.
The study's third task produced the actual suite of alternative futures and an evaluation of their ecological consequences. Each of the futures was designed using location-specific information gathered at a series of community forums. Additional community "visioning" was conducted during smaller group sessions with a stakeholders' group formed during the study period. The overall visioning process led to the development of five mapped futures for the watershed: Moderate and High Conservation, Plan Trend, and Moderate and High Development. The Plan Trend Future represents a straight-line projection of trends in zoning and land use, from the recent past projected thirty years into the future. In some respects it can be considered the "no action" alternative. Each of the futures represented a projection of land use and environmental conditions for the year 2025.
Planning assumptions used to shape each of the futures envisioned by stakeholders fall into four general categories amount of residential development, widths of riparian buffer and hedgerows, forest harvest rotations, and crop types. For example, the future labeled "moderate conservation" calls for a 50-foot undisturbed zone adjacent to streams in agricultural areas, with an additional 50-foot buffer in cover crop or secondary forest products. Forests on private lands are harvested on an 80-year rotation. In contrast, the future labeled "moderate development" offered riparian buffers only on forested land. Harvest of forested lands was assumed to occur on a 40-year rotation.
The third task of the study effort was completed when each of the stakeholder-defined futures was run through the project's evaluation models. Results revealed that if the residents of the Muddy Creek watershed desire a future presenting no greater risk to biodiversity and water quality than the present pattern of land use, then they should plan toward a future with a land use pattern between the "Moderate Conservation" and the "Plan Trend." Study recommendations, with supporting materials, have subsequently been forwarded to Benton County planning officials and watershed groups operating in the area. The information appears to have growing appeal because of its spatially explicit nature, its scientific underpinnings, and its community-based origins. More information about the Muddy Creek project can be found @ <ise.uoregon.edu/>-
