Applied Ecosystem Services, LLC

The Environmental Issues Doctor

Environmental science and its regulation are very complicated. It is important for environmental permit holders to understand both and how their business fit into the natural environments in which they operate.

In these times of climate change and weather event uncertainties being prepared to quickly adapt is vital for your future success. These posts will help you be better positioned to sustain your position and business.

  1. Photo of Environmental Issues Involving Fish and Wildlife

    Environmental Issues Involving Fish and Wildlife

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    Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

    There are many plant and animal species considered to be threatened, endangered, or of special concern to regulators and the public. Correctly estimating population sizes, relationship to habitats, and potential effects of industrial activities is crucial to many permit issues and lawsuits. Other environmental issues are more broad, such as quantifying relationships of industrial activities and natural ecosystems. The most effective approach to addressing these issues is to quantify causality (cause-and-effect) and explain it in language understood by non-technical decision-makers or finders of fact.
  2. Photo of Explaining Environmental Data

    Explaining Environmental Data

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    Estimated reading time: 1 minutes

    Most people are familiar with statistical hypothesis tests such as the t-test and ANOVA to analyze whether two or more samples (from a parametric distribution) came from the same population. The nonparametric equivalents (Wilcoxon and Kruskal-Wallis tests) are less familiar but equally robust. What is not always clear is that these models are applied to one or more response variables; e.g., chemical concentrations that result from natural or anthropogenic causes. They do not answer the question of why these values were observed.
  3. Photo of Factors Limiting Species Populations: 2

    Factors Limiting Species Populations: 2

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    Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

    Habitat use is one of the first factors considered when determining limitations on species abundance and distribution. For species being considered for some level of protection there are existing data describing habitats in which they have been found as well as abundance estimates. When projects are proposed in areas with potential habitats for the species it is common to survey these habitats for the species’ presence. The survey methods seek data to answer this question: What is the probability of the species occupying a site if it is not observed during a visit?
  4. Photo of Factors Limiting Species Populations: 1

    Factors Limiting Species Populations: 1

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    Estimated reading time: 1 minutes

    There are many plant and animal species considered to be threatened, endangered, or of special concern to regulators and the public. Correctly estimating population sizes, relationship to habitats, and potential effects of anthropomorphic activities is crucial to making informed policy and regulatory decisions. Environmental conditions affecting species populations are the limiting factors. Quantifying limiting factors is fundamental to developing policies and practices that are most likely to create the desired future conditions for the species and its habitats.
  5. Photo of Fit Model to Data

    Fit Model to Data

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    Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

    To make informed regulatory decisions it is necessary to understand differences between ecological and environmental data. Analyses of environmental data historically use models adapted from engineering models by numerical ecologists for ecological data collected by academic and research agency scientists. These numeric and statistic models require well-structured data collected to fit assumptions and requirements of the models. This works for researchers who identify a question to be answered and work forward from that to determine when, where, and how much data need collecting to answer that question.
  6. Photo of Forecasting Water Quality

    Forecasting Water Quality

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    Estimated reading time: 1 minutes

    Predicting concentrations of chemicals in surface waters is a major component of permitting decisions, from NEPA impact assessments and NPDES point source discharge to mine closure and Superfund liability bond releases. Decision delays are costly for operators, and regulators are too often sued by those claiming that decisions were based on inadequate data. Usual approaches to forecasting chemical concentrations are to build complex numeric ecosystem models or predict concentrations of single chemicals rather than the entire set of chemicals of interest.
  7. Photo of Improving the ESA

    Improving the ESA

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    Estimated reading time: 1 minutes

    The United States’ Endangered Species Act (ESA) is based on societal values, not science. For practical as well as political reasons, the ESA should remain an active, Federal statute. However, many modifications can be made in the language of the ESA to greatly improve its implementation and enforcement. Some proposed changes are minor; others will have major impact on the law. My suggestion intend: To make the ESA more reasonable, effective and accepted (by the regulated public).
  8. Photo of Instream Flow Requirements

    Instream Flow Requirements

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    Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

    The concept of minimal in-stream flows dates from at least the mid-1970s. It is an important issue to everyone who withdraws ground or surface waters, injects water underground, or adds water to streams and rivers, particularly in the drought-stricken western US. At the federal level, the US EPA funded a grant to define ecological and related flows and create methods to measure them and the US Geological Survey developed measurement methods.
  9. Photo of Instream Water Rights and Ecological Flows

    Instream Water Rights and Ecological Flows

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    Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

    Instream water rights are (or should be) based on ecological flows. Several western states (including Oregon, Alaska, California, Colorado, and Montana) have statutory requirements for these flows, and the US Geological Survey’s Fort Collins Science Center hosts an ecological flows research center. Incorporating effects of changes in climate, human population size and distribution patterns, and other variables makes it difficult for policy makers to allocate a scarce and varying resource among competing vested interests.
  10. Photo of Metals and Aquatic Life

    Metals and Aquatic Life

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    Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

    Dissolved metals such as copper, cadmium, and zinc can be toxic to aquatic life, particularly fish. The current tool used to estimate site-specific water quality criteria for a metal is the biotic ligand model (BLM). The BLM intends to quantify how water chemistry affects chemical speciation and biological availability of metals in aquatic ecosystems. This is important because bioavailability and bioreactivity of metals control their potential for acute or chronic harm.

Providing essential environmental services since 1993.