Environmental Assessment

Environmental Assessment, Management & Restoration

How do we value an ecosystem? [view report] This question has major policy and research implications. Policy makers often are forced to weigh environmental choices against economic opportunities, such as in the Columbia basin where salmon and hydropower compete for water resources [view report] or in the Missouri River ecosystem where floodplain recovery must co-exist with navigation interests [view report]. These choices can be difficult because environmental elements are not as easily quantified as economic ones, and traditional quantitative or economic approaches may not accurately value ecological elements.

Sometimes environmental assessment is done through the evaluation of an environmental program or activity. WSTB reports about environmental monitoring and assessment programs include operations of the Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River [view report] river management in the Grand Canyon [view report, River Resource Management in the Grand Canyon and Downstream: Adaptive Management of Glen Canyon Dam and the Colorado River Ecosystem], aquifer storage aspects of the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan [view report] and the Everglades Critical Ecosystem Studies Initiative [view report].

Research on environmental assessment takes several forms. Some environmental assessment research focuses on applying economic methods to value ecosystem goods and services [view report]. Other approaches aim to understand ecological goods and services from a multi-disciplinary perspective. WSTB studies on riparian zone [view report] and wetland [view report] ecosystems, the Platte River habitat for endangered species [view report], and instream flows in Texas [view report] describe different aspects of river ecosystems that can be considered as ecological values. Finding adequate ecological indicators or performance measures is another research area that indicates value, gauges the ecosystem integrity [view report], or assesses system level conditions [view report].

Books Related to Environmental Assessment
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