CASE STUDY: USING GIS TO TRACK AND MANAGE GROUNDWATER MONITORING DATA AT A SPECIALTY CHEMICAL PLANT LOCATED IN CHESTER, SOUTH CAROLINA

2002 ◽  
Vol 2002 (7) ◽  
pp. 109-113
Author(s):  
Peter J. Randazzo
Author(s):  
Kimberly W. Jones ◽  
Ronald Bullman

The Town of Bluffton, South Carolina was a one square mile coastal village until it experienced exponential growth in the early 2000s, and today is approximately 54 square miles. Until this recent growth, few sources of possible impairments to water quality were recognized within the watershed, and even fewer within close proximity to the river itself. In 2007, the Town was told by the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control (SCDHEC) that fecal coliform levels in the May River headwaters were increasing and in 2009 the river received a shellfish harvesting classification down-grade. In response to this down-grade, the Town of Bluffton, with Beaufort County and stakeholders, committed to take action to restore shellfish harvesting in the river and to prevent further degradation to the river. Following the U.S. EPA (EPA) guidelines for developing watershed plans, Town staff worked for nearly a year with consultants, Beaufort County, topic experts and local residents to develop the May River Watershed Action Plan which was adopted by Town Council in November 2011.


Author(s):  
Vanessa Tobias ◽  

In fisheries monitoring, catch is assumed to be a product of fishing intensity, catchability, and availability, where availability is defined as the number or biomass of fish present and catchability refers to the relationship between catch rate and the true population. Ecological monitoring programs use catch per unit of effort (CPUE) to standardize catch and monitor changes in fish populations; however, CPUE is proportional to the portion of the population that is vulnerable to the type of gear used in sampling, which is not necessarily the entire population. Programs often deal with this problem by assuming that catchability is constant, but if catchability is not constant, it is not possible to separate the effects of catchability and population size using monitoring data alone. This study uses individual-based simulation to separate the effects of changing environmental conditions on catchability and availability in environmental monitoring data. The simulation combines a module for sampling conditions with a module for individual fish behavior to estimate the proportion of available fish that would escape from the sample. The method is applied to the case study of the well monitored fish species Delta Smelt (Hypomesus transpacificus) in the San Francisco Estuary, where it has been hypothesized that changing water clarity may affect catchability for long-term monitoring studies. Results of this study indicate that given constraints on Delta Smelt swimming ability, it is unlikely that the apparent declines in Delta Smelt abundance are the result of changing water clarity affecting catchability.


Author(s):  
Vanessa Tobias

In fisheries monitoring, catch is assumed to be a product of fishing intensity, catchability, and availability, where availability is defined as the number or biomass of fish present and catchability refers to the relationship between catch rate and the true population. Ecological monitoring programs use catch per unit of effort (CPUE) to standardize catch and monitor changes in fish populations; however, CPUE is proportional to the portion of the population that is vulnerable to the type of gear that is used in sampling, which is not necessarily the entire population. Programs often deal with this problem by assuming that catchability is constant, but if catchability is not constant, it is not possible to separate the effects of catchability and population size using monitoring data alone. This study uses individual-based simulation to separate the effects of changing environmental conditions on catchability and availability in environmental monitoring data. The simulation combines a module for sampling conditions with a module for individual fish behavior to estimate the proportion of available fish that would escape from the sample. The method is applied to the case study of the well-monitored fish species Delta Smelt (Hypomesus transpacificus) in the San Francisco Estuary, where it has been hypothesized that changing water clarity may affect catchability for long-term monitoring studies. Results of this study indicate that given constraints on Delta Smelt swimming ability, it is unlikely that the apparent declines in Delta Smelt abundance are due to an effect of changing water clarity on catchability.


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