PARENT SESSION
Oral Session #87: Ecosystem Ecology.
Presiding: B. Currie
Thursday, August 8. 1:00 PM to 3:45 PM. Graham Meeting Room, TCC.
Monitoring, environmental data, indicators, and thresholds: How will SEMP relate them to military installation ecosystem management needs?
Balbach, Harold*,1, Goran, William1, DeBusk, William2, Davo, Theresa3, Brent, John3, 1 US Army Engineer Research and Development Center, Champaign, IL2 Soil and Water Science, Gainesville, FL3 Environmental Management Division, Fort Benning, GA
ABSTRACT- The SERDP Ecosystem Management Project (SEMP) has been founded to establish a long-term ecological monitoring program in support of military installation management needs. Our installation of focus, Fort Benning, Georgia, has identified scores of ways in which they desire to improve their lands and waters through a DoD procedure called the Integrated Natural Resources Management Plan (INRMP). Several academic research teams are examining soil, vegetation, streams, and selected fauna in an attempt to identify ecosystem elements upon which the installation may base these improvement initiatives. Committed through official policy as well as local interest to focus on installation and regional landscapes and systems rather than individual species, Fort Benning land managers require that the indicators be relevant to their goals, economical to acquire, and responsive to changes in environmental conditions. Research teams are in the process of identifying potential indicators that meet the needs of the INRMP. The balance between the need for basic site data acquisition, such as practiced within the LTER, and the need for very specific management data for a particular management purpose is one which SEMP is striving to identify and put into place at Fort Benning, and, potentially, at many other military installations with similar needs and goals. This will allow facilitates to optimize planning decisions and implementation and operation strategies to meet a variety of long-term stewardship and land-use requirements.
KEY WORDS: ecosystem management, military land management, environmental indicators, environmental monitoring