USGS Priority Ecosystems Science Program

Science for Ecosystem Restoration: The Place-Based Science Program

The USGS Priority Ecostems Science (PES) Program provides objective integrated science for managers who are seeking to restore natural functions and values of resources and the environment. In order to restore these functions, managers must have scientific information to resolve the complex resource problems that are before them. Resource managers use scientific information for several purposes. First, it helps to define the extent of environmental problems, and to distinguish changes caused by management actions from natural changes caused by climatic shifts, environmental succession, and natural climatic variability. Second, understanding how the ecosystem functions helps managers formulate possible solutions to those problems. Third, ecosystem models provide tools for determining which proposed actions will be the most effective in resolving the problems. Fourth, scientific information is necessary to develop the criteria and strategy for monitoring the success of management modifications.

Goals

The goals of the PES Program are (1) to provide relevant, high-quality, impartial scientific information that permits resource-management agencies to improve the scientific basis for their decisions and to prevent or resolve resource-management conflicts and (2) to facilitate integration of scientific information.

The PES Program integrates USGS research in specific, critical ecosystems. At present the areas under study are the San Francisco Bay/Delta, South Florida, the Chesapeake Bay, the Platte River, the Greater Yellowstone area, the Mojave Desert, and the Salton Sea. Funding has been requested to start studies in the Great Lakes in FY 2000 .

The information is designed to have a direct, significant, and immediate impact on management and policy decisions. Multi- and inter-disciplinary approaches to environmental science are used to address issues that involve environmental resources such as water, minerals, biota, and land in specific critical ecosystems in the United States.

Scientist are selected for their particular expertise from the wide array of disciplines within the USGS, and apply their diverse approaches to common problems. Studies in the present suite of ecosystem areas include land characterization, surface hydrologic and ecological modeling, geospatial database management, ground- and surface-water hydrology, geophysics, ecology, geochemistry, paleontology, and contaminant, sediment, and nutrient dynamics. Scientists improve their interpretation of data by working with related information from other disciplines.

(This information is from "Science for Ecosystem Restoration: The Place-Based Science Program", USGS fact sheet 70-98.)