Thematic Area Leader

Dr. Michael Reiter
Bethune Cookman University
E-mai: reiterm@cookman.edu

The ECSC’s Integrated Assessment Thematic Area (IA) has as its goal the training of students in integrated resource management, risk assessment, and decision-making methodologies identified as being of key importance in the recent strategic plans for NOAA, NOS, and NCCOS.   The training strategy involves active participation in the formulation and use of integrated conceptual models for each partner NERR site, with the models used as tools to communicate coastal system risks, guide ECSC research, and link scientific and social information to enhance decisions for achieving coastal management goals.

The primary tasks under this theme are to:

1. develop qualitative conceptual models for different ecosystems and levels of aggregation as appropriate for use in site-specific decision making, including models for setting monitoring and research priorities and a more integrative, system-wide meta-model;
   
2. prioritize risks at partner NERR sites utilizing decision-analysis methodologies (e.g., fuzzy set theory, sensitivity analyses) to address NERR-specific management issues and associated links to service flows and other socioeconomic attributes, further tying together the ecological and social components of the models;
   
   
3. use the risk priorities to assess current conditions at each site and objectively identify research and management needs at that site;
   
   
4. develop quantitative forecasting models for assessing stress-response relationships of concern;
   
   
5. conduct targeted risk assessments at the ANERR, focusing on: a) water management of the ACF system, and b) navigation issues of maintaining the commercial barge traffic up the Apalachicola River into Alabama;
   
6. initiating assessments at MANERR focused on characterizing habitat changes, navigation and port issues, and Large Marine Ecosystem (LME) studies on the Gulf of Mexico; and
   
   
7. demonstrate the transferability of the ECSC IA methodology to other NOAA sites where similar coastal management issues exist, and to other stakeholders dealing with coastal resource management issues.

The ECSC IA framework is comprised of two components:

1. The Assessment Component, the central focus of ECSC research activities, includes our conceptual modeling process as the baseline for: a) the formulation of hypotheses; b) the identification of stress-response hypotheses; c) the development of quantitative physical, ecological, and economic forecast models; d) a scenario/consequence analysis process in which scenarios (specific quantitative representations of management options) are assessed through forecasts of their consequences compared with management goals; and e) identification of plausible management options for further consideration by decision-makers.
   
   
2. The Management Component is primarily for NOAA and other coastal managers, but shown here to indicate how the ECSC IA methodology will provide the science needed for the decision-making processes. It is adaptive, to address the inherent uncertainties in assessments of natural systems, particularly when the system does not meet selected performance measures and/or manifests unanticipated results.