Kevin Moody Resource Center (ENV TST) Federal Highway Administration

1. Integrating Green and Gray Infrastructures---Eco-Logical Approaches and the Passage of Wild Things Kevin Moody Resource Center (ENV TST) Federal Highway Administration

2. Integrating Green and Gray Infrastructure: the Eco-Logical Approach and the Passage of Wild Things Outline: • Design Themes and Context Sensitivity • Analytic Framework – Show Your Work • Rational Approaches to Problems and Opportunities

3. Keep the Spaghetti off the Wall Workshop Foundations • Institutionalizing Rational Approaches to Decision Making through Scientifically Sound Analyses is a Legitimate Pathway to “Leadership” and “Best” (vision and mission) • Implicit association with reliability and safety • Investments in Positive Passage should have Measurable Environmental Benefits

4. Integrating Green and Gray Infrastructure: the Eco-Logical Approach and the Passage of Wild Things • Integrate an Eco-Logical Approach and SAFETEA-LU section 6001 to add value to long range and other transportation planning efforts

5. Integrating Green and Gray Infrastructure: the Eco-Logical Approach and the Passage of Wild Things Outline: • Design Themes and Context Sensitivity • Analytic Framework – Show Your Work • Rational Approaches to Problems and Opportunities

6. Decision Guide (NCHRP25-27)

7. Non-Structural • Road (network) that accommodates fire & smoke • Landscape corridors and agricultural retirement • Lighting • Easements • Access • Development • Land Use, Logging …

8. Minimalist & Non-Structural • Noise • Lighting • Wind • Using topography in design • Buy-outs

9. Structural • Re-tool off-the-shelf stuff • Extra arches at bridges • Rock channels and gullies • Overpasses

10. Fences & Jump Gates

11. Wall & Passage

12. Guides and Culverts

13. Integrating Green and Gray Infrastructure: the Eco-Logical Approach and the Passage of Wild Things Outline: • Design Themes and Context Sensitivity • Analytic Framework – Show Your Work • Rational Approaches to Problems and Opportunities

14. Identify and Structure Values and Objectives Fundamental Means (quantifiable ways to achieve Fundamental Objectives) Resource Attributes Forcing Agents Values and Objectives How to Achieve? Fundamentals Why Important? Means

15. Ecological Principals • Longevity and Recruitment Events • Demographics and Age Structure • Genetic Diversity • Variable environment • Ecosystem Forcing Agents • Stabilizing influence • One or More Habitats and Ecosystems

16. Extinctions are Rarely Random • Traits that Increase • Down the Food Web: • Vulnerability to stress • Adaptability • Spp. richness (insurance) • Traits that Increase • Up the Food Web: • Body size • Longevity • Home Range area • Vulnerability to • fragmentation

17. Range and Forcing Agents • Dominant Processes • Long distance dispersal • Founder events • Populations events • Lineage mixing • Refugial isolation • Genetic drift • Local adaptation Leading Edge Tail Edge

18. Sustainability • Power Law Function? • Deviations? • Shifts continuous or discontinuous • Biotic or Abiotic Forcing Agents • Exposure-Response Profiles • Feedbacks and Adjustments

19. Sustainability • Thresholds • Resilience • Alternate States • Dynamic Equilibrium • Complex Systems Behavior • Feedbacks and Adjustments

20. Sustainability

21. Complex System Behavior

22. Stationarity is Dead • Physical patterns and processes • Flood frequency • Wildlife magnitude • Ecological patterns and processes • Species Distribution and Abundance • Community Assemblages and Niches • Individual Responses • Built Environment patterns and processes • Behaviors

23. The Basics Environmental Impacts Analysis • Two-part analysis • Categories of Impacts • Uncertainty • Sound Science and Administrative recordkeeping Congestion on I-95 in Northern Virginia

24. Analyses ForRational Mitigation

25. Environmental Impacts • Categories of Effects • Encroachment – Alteration • Induced Growth and Related • Two Parts to Analysis • Interaction of Project and Resource Attribute (REC) • Risk to REC Sustainability • Analysis is part of Assessment • Mitigation and Addressing Uncertainty

26. EIA Basics Environmental Impact Analysis • Identify, predict, evaluate [and mitigate] relevant and potential effects caused by the project on affected resources • Has two parts (Action and Resource Focused): • Cause-and-effect (project’s interaction with resource attribute) • Risk effect poses to resource’s sustainability

27. EIA Basics • Resources: Which Attributes or Elements? • Resource Trends and Condition (Resilience) • Action x Resource Interactions • Feedbacks, Adjustments, and Risks to Sustainability (So What?) • Mitigating Total Effects and Managing Uncertainty

28. Sustainability • Not Defined • Law or Regulation Specific set by administrative process • Resource or Project Specific based on natural phenomena, community standards, perceptions

29. Thresholds and Sustainability

30. Risk to Sustainability

31. Resource Attribute REC • Acronym for: Resources, Ecosystems, and Human Communities; • Some practitioners use: Valued Ecosystem Component, or VEC (see Larry Cantor) • REC’s are tractable attributes of Environmental Quality

33. Influence Diagram

34. REC is Dependent VariableStressor is Independent

35. Analysis and Assessment Disclosing the Implications Scoping Predicting Effects Identify useful information Conduct: 1. Action-Focused Analysis Discuss uses and limits of the information 2. Resource-Focused Analysis