Assessment
Ecosystem Solutions provides technical assistance with a variety of habitat or condition assessments. These may include ecological impacts (restoration, construction, etc), biological inventories, or water quality, to name a few.
Habitat Assessment
At
Ecosystem Solutions, we believe that habitat restoration is a vital component
to improving the condition of our natural resources. However, many programs
and entities currently do not assess the effectiveness of habitat restoration
practices. ESI scientists are well positioned to provide this valuable
data gathering and analysis service in order to broaden our current understanding
of spatial and temporal variability in ecological responses.
For many of our restoration programs, we recommend a monitoring and assessment component to be built in to the project in order to identify successful and unsuccessful restoration practices. Numerous habitat enhancement projects are undertaken in order to improve fish habitat, yet little literature exists that explicitly supports this assumption. Our scientists are gathering additional data on this subject from estuarine and marine systems in order to quantify the impacts of restoration.
In stream systems, our scientists are developing new methods that detect ecological changes within stream insect populations in regions that have been reforested within the past twenty years. As more public and private financial resources are leveraged for restoration, development of these long-term data sets is critical towards improvement of our methodologies.
- Spa Creek Watershed Assessment
- Isle of Wight Coastal Marsh Restoration Assessment
- Assessing Forest Riparian Buffer Zones in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed
- Assessing Submerged Aquatic Vegetation Restoration in Chesapeake Bay
Surface Waters
At
Ecosystem Solutions, our expertise allows us to carry out surface water
monitoring and assessment programs (lentic and lotic environments). We
can perform both basic and in depth water chemistry analyses including
in-field measurements (DO, temperature, salinity, conductivity, etc) as
well as taking grab samples for analysis in the laboratory. Through partnerships
with the University of Maryland and George Mason University, we can provide
water quality analysis for a variety of dissolved nutrients, sediment
loads, and chlorophyll.
Scientists with Ecosystem Solutions also have a wealth of experience with biotic sampling. Our surface water biotic sampling knowledge encompasses fish and invertebrate and biofilm collections. Through intensive training and use of several data management and analysis techniques, we have the ability to manage data (using established QA/QC procedures from EPA) and provide cursory and in-depth analyses using a variety of statistical tools.