Britta Bierwagen - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Uploads

Papers by Britta Bierwagen

River Research and Applications, 2020

Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology, 2008

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) is working with its regional offices... more The United States Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) is working with its regional offices, states, tribes, river basin commissions and other entities to establish Regional Monitoring Networks (RMNs) for freshwater wadeable streams. To the extent possible, uninterrupted, biological, temperature and hydrologic data will be collected on an ongoing basis at RMN sites, which are primarily located on smaller, minimally disturbed forested streams. The primary purpose of this document is to provide guidance on how to collect accurate, year-round temperature and hydrologic data at ungaged wadeable stream sites. It addresses questions related to equipment needs, sensor configuration, sensor placement, installation techniques, data retrieval, and data processing. This guidance is intended to increase comparability of continuous temperature and hydrologic data collection at RMN sites and to ensure that the data are of sufficient quality to be used in future analyses. It also addresses challenges posed by year-round deployments. These data will be used for detecting temporal trends; providing information that will allow for a better understanding of relationships between biological, thermal, and hydrologic data; predicting and analyzing climate change impacts and quantifying natural variability.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Jan 7, 2010

Understanding the impacts of climate change on people and the environment requires an understandi... more Understanding the impacts of climate change on people and the environment requires an understanding of the dynamics of both climate and land use/land cover changes. A range of future climate scenarios is available for the conterminous United States that have been developed based on widely used international greenhouse gas emissions storylines. Climate scenarios derived from these emissions storylines have not been matched with logically consistent land use/cover maps for the United States. This gap is a critical barrier to conducting effective integrated assessments. This study develops novel national scenarios of housing density and impervious surface cover that are logically consistent with emissions storylines. Analysis of these scenarios suggests that combinations of climate and land use/cover can be important in determining environmental conditions regulated under the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts. We found significant differences in patterns of habitat loss and the distributi...

Environmental Science & Policy, 2007

... 1948] and [Scott, 2004]). Organizations are the dominant feature of our socio-economic enviro... more ... 1948] and [Scott, 2004]). Organizations are the dominant feature of our socio-economic environment, and they impose constraints on the flow of information, authority, and resources (Kovoor-Misra, 2002). Organizations are also ...

Conservation Biology, 2008

Endangered Species …, 1998

... edu Britta Bierwagen Donald Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, University o... more ... edu Britta Bierwagen Donald Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, University of California, Santa Barbara Noah Goldstein Department of Geography, Biogeography Lab, University of California, Santa Barbara Abstract The US Endangered Species Act (ESA ...

Conservation Biology, 1999

Global change stressors, including climate change and variability and changes in land use, are ma... more Global change stressors, including climate change and variability and changes in land use, are major drivers of ecosystem alterations. Invasive species, which are non-native species that cause environmental or economic damages or human-health impacts, also contribute to ecosystem changes. The interactions between stressors and invasive species, although not well understood, may exacerbate the impacts of climate change on ecosystems, and likewise, climate change may enable further invasions. This report reviews available literature on climate-change effects on aquatic invasive species (AIS) and examines state-level AIS management activities. Data on management activities came from publicly available information, was analyzed with respect to climate-change effects, and was reviewed by managers. This report also analyzes state and regional AIS management plans to determine their capacity to incorporate information on changing conditions generally, and climate change specifically. Although there is no mandate that directs states to consider climate change in AIS management plans, state managers can consider predicted effects of climate change on prevention, control, and eradication in order to manage natural resources effectively under changing climatic conditions. Further scientific research and data collection are needed in order to equip managers with the tools and information necessary to conduct effective AIS management in the face of climate change.

Climate change will affect stream ecosystems directly, indirectly, and through interactions with ... more Climate change will affect stream ecosystems directly, indirectly, and through interactions with other stressors. Biological responses to these changes include altered community composition, interactions, and functions. Effects will vary regionally and present heretofore unaccounted influences on biomonitoring, which water-quality agencies use to assess the status and health of ecosystems as required by the Clean Water Act. Biomonitoring, which uses biological indicators and metrics to assess ecosystem condition, is anchored in comparison to regionally established reference benchmarks of ecological condition. Climate change will affect responses and interpretation of these indicators and metrics at both reference and nonreference sites and, therefore, has the potential to confound the diagnosis of ecological condition. This report analyzes four regionally distributed state biomonitoring data sets to inform on how biological indicators respond to the effects of climate change, what climate-specific indicators may be available to detect effects, how well current sampling detects climate-driven changes, and how program designs can continue to detect impairment. Results can be used to identify methods that assist with detecting climate-related effects and highlight steps that can be taken to ensure that programs continue to meet resource protection goals.

Increasing groundwater contamination with methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE) requires more efficient ... more Increasing groundwater contamination with methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE) requires more efficient remediation tech- nologies. Accurate measurement of MTBE's air-water partitioning coefficient (Henry's law constant, H) is important for the design and optimization of removal efficiency for many treatment systems as well as for predicting its fate and transport. Previously published data for MTBE appear to have some unusual nonlinearity at lower temperatures (15-308C), and a wide range of values exists for dimensionless H at 258C, from 0.0216 to 0.1226 in the published literature. We measured H for MTBE using headspace solid-phase microextraction (SPME) and a static method that considers equilibrium partitioning in a closed system, for temperatures between 15 and 408C. To validate our methods, we measured H for benzene, toluene, and trichloroethylene and compared our results to previously published values, with excellent agreement. The Arrhenius plot for MTBE indicates that ln(H...