You may remember from last month that the estuarine ecosystem indicator revision team was exploring ways to integrate both wetland patch size and area of open water – vegetation edge into an Index of Wetland Structure. The intent was to capture important areas both for estuarine birds but also for shrimp, crabs, fish, and other nekton. It turns out there really isn’t a good way to combine the two measures into a single index.Luckily, there was a way to include both indicators separately and stay under the 3 indicator per ecosystem rule. Here’s the group’s recommendation:
1) Remove impervious surface as an estuarine indicator on the condition that the revised flow alteration metric in waterscapes adequately capture alteration of flows going into the estuary. That’s the primary reason for the impervious metric in estuaries
2) Include both open water – veg edge and patch size as separate indicators.
These changes are now open for comment until September 15th. You can either comment at the bottom of this post or email me directly (rua@southatlanticlcc.org)
