Technical guide for the development, evaluation, and modification of stream assessment methods for the Corps Regulatory Program

The U.S. Army Corps Regulatory Program considers the loss (impacts) and gain (compensatory mitigation) of aquatic resource functions as part of Clean Water Act Section 404 permitting and compensatory mitigation decisions. To better inform this regulatory decision-making, the Regulatory Program needs transparent and objective approaches to assess the function and condition of aquatic resources, including streams. Therefore, the Regulatory Program needs function-based stream assessments (1) to characterize a stream’s condition or function, (2) to improve understanding of the impact of a proposed action on an aquatic resource, and/or (3) to inform the development of stream compensatory mitigation tools rooted in stream condition and/or function. A function-based stream assessment can provide regulatory decision makers with the resources to objectively consider alternatives, minimize impacts, assess unavoidable impacts, determine mitigation requirements, and monitor the success of mitigation projects. A multiagency National Committee on Stream Assessment (NCSA) convened to create these guidelines to inform the development of new methods and evaluation of both national-level and regional methods currently in use. The resulting guidelines present nine phases, including rationale and recommendations to facilitate work efforts. The NCSA hopes that this technical guide promotes transparency, technical defensibility, and consistent application of stream assessments in the Regulatory Program.

Successional dynamics of a 35 year old freshwater mitigation wetland in southeastern New Hampshire

The long-term ecological success of compensatory freshwater wetland projects has come into question based on follow-up monitoring studies over the past few decades. Given that wetland restoration may require many years to decades to converge to desired outcomes, long-term monitoring of successional patterns may increase our ability to fully evaluate success of wetland mitigation projects or guide adaptive management when needed. In Portsmouth, New Hampshire a 4 ha wetland was constructed in an abandoned gravel quarry as off-site compensatory mitigation for impacts to a scrub-shrub swamp associated with property expansion. Building upon prior evaluations from 1992 and 2002, we conducted a floral survey in 2020 to compare results with prior surveys to document vegetation successional trends over time. In addition, we monitored the avian community throughout the growing season as a measure of habitat quality. The plant community mirrored documented successional trends of freshwater wetland restoration projects as native hydrophytes dominated species composition. Plant species composition stabilized as the rate of turnover, the measurement of succession, declined by nearly half after 17 years. Researchers should consider long-term monitoring of specific sites to better understand successional patterns of created wetlands as we documented long time frames required for the development of scrub-shrub swamps, red maple swamps, and sedge meadows. High species richness was attributed to beaver activity, topographic heterogeneity from Carex stricta tussocks, and the seed bank from the application of peat from the original wetland. Habitat heterogeneity of open water, herbaceous cover, and woody vegetation supports a diverse avian community including 11 wetland dependent species. Although the mitigation project has not created the full area of lost scrub-shrub swamp after 35 years, it has developed a structurally complex habitat and diverse avian community that effectively provides the functions and values of the impacted system.

Stream Mitigation Banking

Stream mitigation banking is a market-based approach for managing negative impacts on fluvial systems under Section 404 of the US Clean Water Act. The core rationale of mitigation banking is that we should protect the environment not by preventing harm, but by pricing it: developers, public-works agencies, and other entities may damage a stream in one location as long as they pay for the restoration of a comparable stream elsewhere (see Compensatory Mitigation and Valuation of Ecosystem Services). That restoration is most often provided by a for-profit company that speculatively purchases rights to land with a degraded stream on it, then restores that stream to produce stream credits. The stream credits can then be purchased by developers or other entities to fulfill the permit obligations incurred by proposing to damage another stream somewhere else (see Stream Mitigation Banking in Practice). Along with its older sister, wetlands mitigation banking, stream mitigation banking is one of the oldest and most firmly established market-based approaches to environmental management in the world. As of 2018, there were nearly 3,500 mitigation banks in the United States, with sales estimated at least $1 billion per year. Mitigation banking has thus become a poster child for market-based (also referred to as neoliberal) approaches to conservation, inspiring comparable policies to tackle issues from endangered species to carbon dioxide emissions on every continent except Antarctica. However, there has been relatively little biophysical evaluation of whether stream mitigation banking actually leads to better outcomes for fluvial systems, and the data we do have are not promising (see Environmental Impacts).

Optimization and Comparative Analysis of Traffic Restriction Policy by Jointly Considering Carpool Exemptions

As a countermeasure to urban exhaust pollution and traffic congestion, traffic restriction policy (TRP) and carpooling strategy have been widely introduced throughout the world. However, their effects are largely determined by the rationality of implementing policies, and unreasonable policies make them controversial on the long-term implementation benefits. To more effectively manage traffic demand and maintain the sustainability of transportation system, it is necessary to make optimization for management policy before implementation. In this paper, the elastic demand model and equilibrium assignment model are developed under TRP. Considering the negative impact of the mandatory TRP on the public acceptance, we propose a novel TRP strategy, namely TRP with carpool exemptions (TRP-CE), that is, a proportion of high occupancy vehicles (HOV) are allowed to travel in the restricted district even if their license plate numbers are restricted. Then, a bi-level programming model is proposed to solve the optimal schemes by combining multi purposes of ensuring travel convenience, alleviating traffic congestion, and reducing the exhaust pollution. Finally, a numerical experiment is conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of proposed models and make comparative analysis between separate TRP and TRP-CE. The results indicate that TRP-CE has benefits in the following aspects: (1) Carpool exemptions provide an incentive to carpool for travelers by private cars; (2) the public acceptance of TRP is improved by introducing carpool exemptions as a compensatory mitigation strategy for mandatory TRP; (3) the implementation effect of demand management can be well achieved by joint optimization; and (4) there is no need to design and reconstruct HOV lanes for the implementation of TRP-CE, which is convenient for practical application.

Unpacking the eagle collision risk model: practical guidance for wind energy

ABSTRACTClimate change is one of the greatest threats facing biodiversity, and solutions to reduce carbon emissions are needed to conserve species. Renewable energies are a prominent means to achieve this goal, but the potential for direct harm to wildlife has raised concerns as these technologies proliferate. To protect biodiversity, approaches that facilitate renewable energy development while protecting species are needed. In the United States wind energy developers must obtain a permit for any Bald or Golden eagles that might be killed at a facility. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service estimates fatalities using a Bayesian modeling framework, which combines pre-construction eagle surveys with prior information. The ways in which prior information is incorporated and how pre-construction monitoring affects model outcomes can be unclear to regulated entities and other stakeholders, creating uncertainty in the permitting process and retarding both the build-out of renewable energy and conservation measures for eagles. We conducted a simulation study quantifying the differences in predicted eagle fatalities obtained by incorporating prior information and using only site-specific survey data across a range of scenarios, evaluating the impact of survey effort on the magnitude of this effect. We identified predictable relationships between survey effort, eagle activity, facility size and discrepancies between estimates. We also translated these patterns into real-world financial costs, illustrating the interaction between pre-construction surveys, fatality estimates, and compensatory mitigation obligations in determining permit timing and expense.

Long-term performance of seagrass restoration projects in Florida, USA

Seagrass restoration is a common tool for ecosystem service enhancement and compensatory mitigation for habitat loss. However, little is known about the long-term performance of these projects. We identified seagrass restoration projects by reviewing historic permitting documents, monitoring reports, and studies conducted in Florida, USA, most of which have not been cited previously in peer-reviewed literature. We then revisited 33 seagrass restorations ranging in age from 3 to 32 years to compare seagrass percent cover, species diversity, and community structure in restored and contemporary reference seagrass beds. We found that 88% of restoration projects continued to support seagrass and, overall, restored percent cover values were 37% lower than references. Community composition and seagrass percent cover differed from references in projects categorized as sediment modification and transplant restorations, whereas all vessel damage repair projects achieved reference condition. Seagrass diversity was similar between restored and reference beds, except for sediment modification projects, for which diversity was significantly lower than in reference beds. Results indicate that restored seagrass beds in Florida, once established, often exhibit long-term persistence. Our study highlights the benefit of identifying and surveying historic restorations to address knowledge gaps related to the performance and long-term fate of restored seagrass beds.

A future without stocking? The importance of harvest and river regulation for long-term population viability of migratory salmonids

1. Humans are influencing animal and plant populations both directly (e.g.through harvest) and indirectly by altering environments. For many exploitedspecies, stocking with captive-bred individuals is a common strategy tomitigate negative human impacts and sustain populations over time. However,accumulating knowledge of negative side effects of stocking calls for quantificationof consequences and exploration of sustainable alternatives.2. Evaluating alternative management strategies using quantitative models iscentral to conservation. Here, we investigate the effects of several managementstrategies on a population of landlocked, migratory brown trout (Salmotrutta) inhabiting a large lake and spawning in a dammed river. We assess thepopulation level consequences of terminating a long-term stocking programmeand evaluate whether the loss of artificial recruitment may be compensatedby changes in harvest regulations and/or river habitat improvement.3. We build an integral projection model (IPM) classifying individuals bybody size, life history stage, and location relative to the hydropower damand parameterised it with 50 years of individual-based data supplementedwith literature values. We first analyse the model to assess size, structure,and relative importance of different mortality components across life stagesand locations in trout populations with and without stocking. We theninvestigate potential responses of an unstocked population to managementactions involving different sets of harvest rules, reductions in dam passagemortality, and improvements of spawning habitat below the dam.4. Our model predicts a strong population decline of 12–21% per year in theabsence of stocking. This decline is largely attributed to high harvest mortality,and drastic reductions in fishing pressure thus necessary to ensure populationviability without stocking. Reducing mortality associated with passage of thehydropower dam and restoring spawning areas has only small positive effectson population growth. Nonetheless, these mitigation measures can contributeto population viability when combined with changes in harvest regulations.5. Intensely harvested populations may rely heavily on the addition of captive-bredindividuals, and our results indicate that premature termination of stockingprogrammes can be detrimental without compensatory mitigation measuressuch as harvest reductions and habitat improvements. It is therefore crucialto collect necessary data and assess the impacts of alternative managementstrategies using quantitative models prior to making decisions.