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OSM Announces More Than $300 Million Available to Clean Up Abandoned Coal Mines
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The U. S. Department of the Interior’s Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSM) today announced the availability of more than $305 million in Abandoned Mine Land (AML) grants to states and tribes—90 percent of the more than $339.4 million available for distribution—to eliminate environmental hazards caused by past coal mining. OSM administers the grants in accordance with the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 (SMCRA), which requires OSM to make AML funding available to eligible states and tribes.
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Position Available - Interdisciplinary (Air and Water Program Manager) Ecologist or Physical Scientist
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This is a natural resource management position located in the Natural Resources Branch, Division of Natural and Cultural Resources at Shenandoah National Park. The Air and Water Quality Program Manager engages in the study, inventory, monitoring, restoration, and management of air resources /air quality, associated ecological components such as water quality, fisheries, vegetation and wildlife impacts in addition to associated visibility components, and tropospheric ozone.
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Pricing the Priceless: Ecosystem Services Science at USGS
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Nature's products and services are essential not only to the ecosystems that provide them, but also to the people and societies built on them. Factoring their value into cost-benefit analyses is an important part of smart planning. But that raises a new question—how to assign value to ecosystem services?
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Primary Influences on Water Temperature for Inland Streams
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The COMET Program is pleased to announce the publication of the new lesson, "Primary Influences on Water Temperature for Inland Streams". The temperature of inland streams, rivers, and reservoirs affects aquatic wildlife, riparian vegetation, and infrastructure.
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Seeing the landscape for the trees: Metrics to guide riparian shade management in river catchments
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Rising water temperature (Tw) due to anthropogenic climate change may have serious conse- quences for river ecosystems. Conservation and/or expansion of riparian shade could counter warming and buy time for ecosystems to adapt. However, sensitivity of river reaches to direct solar radiation is highly het- erogeneous in space and time, so benefits of shading are also expected to be site specific. We use a network of high-resolution temperature measurements from two upland rivers in the UK, in conjunction with topo- graphic shade modeling, to assess the relative significance of landscape and riparian shade to the thermal behavior of river reaches. Trees occupy 7% of the study catchments (comparable with the UK national aver- age) yet shade covers 52% of the area and is concentrated along river corridors. Riparian shade is most ben- eficial for managing Tw at distances 5–20 km downstream from the source of the rivers where discharge is modest, flow is dominated by near-surface hydrological pathways, there is a wide floodplain with little land- scape shade, and where cumulative solar exposure times are sufficient to affect Tw. For the rivers studied, we find that approximately 0.5 km of complete shade is necessary to off-set Tw by 18C during July (the month with peak Tw) at a headwater site; whereas 1.1 km of shade is required 25 km downstream. Further research is needed to assess the integrated effect of future changes in air temperature, sunshine duration, direct solar radiation, and downward diffuse radiation on Tw to help tree planting schemes achieve
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South Florida Water Management District
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Our mission: To safeguard and restore South Florida's water resources and ecosystems, protect our communities from flooding, and meet the region's water needs while connecting with the public and stakeholders.
The South Florida Water Management District is a regional governmental agency that manages the water resources in the southern half of the state, covering 16 counties from Orlando to the Florida Keys and serving a population of 9 million residents. It is the oldest and largest of the state's five water management districts. Created in 1949, the agency is responsible for managing and protecting water resources of South Florida by balancing and improving flood control, water supply, water quality and natural systems.
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Southeast Aquatic Barrier Prioritization Tool
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The Southeast Aquatic Barrier Prioritization Tool aims to build aquatic connectivity in rivers and streams. The Tool provides inventory data on aquatic barriers (like dams and road-related culverts) and helps practitioners to describe, understand, and prioritize these barriers for removal, restoration, and mitigation.
Aquatic connectivity in rivers and streams is essential for fish and other aquatic organisms.
The Southeast Aquatic Resources Partnership (SARP) developed the tool with support from partners and funders.
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Landscape Partnership Spatial Datasets
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Aquatic and Freshwater Spatial Data
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Stream Restoration Challenge Kicks Off with Spring Plantings
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This spring, more than 2,000 students from across Maryland got an early start on their Earth Day contributions, planting trees to improve water quality through Governor Martin O’Malley’s Stream Restoration Challenge. The program ─ which is still accepting proposals ─ provides grants for students and groups to carry out projects to improve Chesapeake Bay water quality through service learning and environmental education activities.
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The Clean Water Act Owner's Manual is coming soon!
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The Clean Water Act became law 50 years ago. To commemorate the milestone of this landmark legislation and mark our continued resolve to protect waterways across our country, River Network is updating our transformational Clean Water Act Owner’s Manual!
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Tree mortality predicted from drought-induced vascular damage
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The projected responses of forest ecosystems to warming and drying associated with twenty-first-century climate change vary widely from resiliency to widespread tree mortality (1–3). Current vegetation models lack the ability to account for mortality of overstory trees during extreme drought owing to uncertainties in mechanisms and thresholds causing mortality (4,5). Here we assess the causes of tree mortality, using field measurements of branch hydraulic conductivity during ongoing mortality in Populus tremuloides in the southwestern United States and a detailed plant hydraulics model. We identify a lethal plant water stress threshold that corresponds with a loss of vascular transport capacity from air entry into the xylem. We then use this hydraulic-based threshold to simulate forest dieback during historical drought, and compare predictions against three independent mortality data sets. The hydraulic threshold predicted with 75% accuracy regional patterns of tree mortality as found in field plots and mortality maps derived from Landsat imagery. In a high-emissions scenario, climate models project that drought stress will exceed the observed mortality threshold in the southwestern United States by the 2050s. Our approach provides a powerful and tractable way of incorporating tree mortality into vegetation models to resolve uncertainty over the fate of forest ecosystems in a changing climate.
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