Search

The Natural Resource Damage Assessment and Restoration process assesses natural resource injury due to oil or chemical spills and calculates the damages to compensate the public for those injuries. Ecological restoration provides a means for recovering resources injured or lost due to contamination from oil or chemical spills by restoring the injured site after remediation, or acquiring or reconstructing equivalent resources off site to replace those lost due to the spill. In the case of restored forests, once restoration is implemented, monitoring of forest ecology helps keep recovery on track, with the maturation of forest vegetation, recovered soil conditions, and development of microbial, fungal, and faunal communities, necessary for ecologically functioning forests. This series of papers focuses on applying methods for monitoring restoration progress in forest vegetation and soils, and amphibian, avian, and mammalian communities, assessing strengths and weaknesses of different methods, and evaluating levels of effort needed to obtain accurate indications of forest ecological condition. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2024;20:1912–1916. © 2024 The Author(s). Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society of Environmental Toxicology & Chemistry (SETAC). This article has been contributed to by U.S. Government employees and their work is in the public domain in the USA. Key Points: Ecological restorations recover resources injured or lost due to contamination from oil or chemical spills, by restoring the injured site after remediation, or by acquiring or reconstructing equivalent resources off site to replace those lost due to the spill.In the case of forests, once restoration is implemented, monitoring is important to track the progress of indicators of ecological function, such as maturation of forest vegetation, recovered soil conditions, and development of faunal communities.Articles in this special series describe the recovery of vegetation and soils, and amphibian, avian, and mammalian communities in forest restorations of multiple ages, while simultaneously comparing the strengths, weaknesses, and relative efficiency of different monitoring methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many sampling and analytical methods can estimate the abundance, distributions, and diversity of birds and other wildlife. However, challenges with sample size and analytical capacity can make these methods difficult to implement for resource‐limited monitoring programs. To apprise efficient and attainable sampling designs for landbird monitoring programs with limited observational data, we used breeding season bird point survey data collected in 2016 at four forest restoration sites in Indiana, USA. We evaluated three subsets of observed species richness, total possibly breeding landbirds, Partners in Flight Regional Conservation Concern (PIF RCC) landbirds, and interior forest specialists (IFSs). Simulated surveys based on field data were used to conduct Bayesian Michaelis–Menten curve analyses estimating observed species as a function of sampling effort. On comparing simulated survey sets with multiple habitat types versus those with one habitat, we found that those with multiple habitat types had estimated 39%–83% greater observed PIF RCC species richness and required 41%–55% fewer visits per point to observe an equivalent proportion of PIF RCC species. Even with multiple habitats in a survey set, the number of visits per point required to detect 50% of observable species was 30% higher for PIF RCC species than for total breeding landbird species. Low detection rates of IFS species at two field sites made precise estimation of required effort to observe these species difficult. However, qualitatively, we found that only sites containing mature forest fragments had detections of several bird species designated as high‐confidence IFS species. Our results suggest that deriving specialized species diversity metrics from point survey data can add value when interpreting those data. Additionally, designing studies to collect these metrics may require explicitly planning to visit multiple habitat types at a monitoring site and increasing the number of visits per survey point. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2024;20:1954–1968. © 2024 The Author(s). Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society of Environmental Toxicology & Chemistry (SETAC). This article has been contributed to by U.S. Government employees and their work is in the public domain in the USA. Key Points: Four forest restoration sites in Indiana supported a variety of potentially breeding migratory bird species, including interior forest specialists and regional conservation concern species.At forest restoration sites in Indiana with various habitat types, it was necessary to visit both open and woody plant‐dominated habitats to efficiently detect bird species of regional conservation concern.When analyzing bird point survey data, deriving specialized species diversity metrics, such as richness of habitat specialist species or conservation concern species, can add value when interpreting those data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Control and elimination of invasive fishes, like carps (Order Cypriniformes), may be possible by using chemical stimuli to congregate them for removal. To this end, we tested behavioral responses of grass (Ctenopharyngodon idella), bighead (Hypophthalmichthys nobilis), and silver carp (H. molitrix) to L‐alanine, L‐arginine, L‐glutamic acid, and L‐aspartic acid. In grass carp, the first three amino acids have been shown to be beneficial for growth, and all four produce a strong olfactory response in this species. This study used pairs of conspecific fish in a video‐recorded, sound‐insulated, clear acrylic, tube‐shaped tank; during trials, an amino acid stimulus was delivered at one end of that tank. Changes in space use, velocity, and acceleration across all amino acids differed significantly among species. Changes in space use by grass carp indicated avoidance of only two amino acids, L‐alanine and L‐aspartic acid. There was no evidence for attraction to amino acids for grass or silver carp. For bighead carp, change in spatial use on exposure to amino acids indicated attraction across the four amino acids. This attraction was enhanced by lowered velocity. Our results suggested that olfactory sensitivity does not directly translate to behavioral responses. Other sensory cues, for example tactile, visual, and/or taste, may mediate the selective foraging of grass carp. Amino acids may serve as a better olfactory attractant for bighead carp compared to grass or silver carp. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]