FIFRA/ESA Assessments and Beyond: How FESTF's Data Management Tool, Gopher, Answers Questions and Provides Options

Transcription

1 FIFRA/ESA Assessments and Beyond: How FESTF's Data Management Tool, Gopher, Answers Questions and Provides Options Ashlea Frank1, Bernalyn McGaughey1, Tilghman Hall2, Dan Campbell3 1Compliance Services International, 2Bayer CropScience, 3Syngenta Crop Protection SETAC North American 39th Annual Meeting Sacramento, CA November 4-8,

2 Evaluating Potential Risk /Jeopardy NMFS s OP Biological Opinion used R-plots to summarize data used to evaluate the likelihood of exposure for species and critical habitat Example R-plot from NMFS s BO 2

3 Gopher as a Tool Gopher can be used to compile, apply, and evaluate components that feed into the likelihood of exposure evaluation for pesticides and risk/jeopardy determination in a well-documented and transparent manner 3

4 Building Components: Status and Life History Status of the Species available in Gopher SOS from NMFS BO is available as a reference 4

5 Evaluating Components: Temporality and Duration Gopher houses the information needed to evaluate seasonality of species presence in relation to application timing duration of species occupancy in aquatic systems 5

6 Additional Life History Components in Gopher Inform Evaluation Data from EPA s ESKB and other attributes can be queried by agency users to better inform likelihood of exposure Data from EPA s ESKB and other attributes can be queried by agency users for model inputs 6

7 Building Components: Range Sockeye salmon Ozette Lake ESU Range 7

8 Building Components: Aquatic Bins 8

9 Building Components: Uses and Overlaps Through scenarios users can build label-specific use footprints, and select species location data sources 9

10 Evaluating Components: Uses and Overlap 10

11 Evaluating Components: Uses and Overlap (2) Users can build customized footprints, accounting for labeled crops, geographic restrictions, and other label specifications Customization is as easy as checking boxes Leads to an action area and percent overlap with species ranges that are more accurate and realistic than what was used in the BEs and BOs The crop group Other Row Crops consists of data from the Cropland Data Layer, aggregated (USDA NASS CDL, ) for the 5 crops identified by EPA in the BE: CDL Crop Value 6 (Sunflower), 10 (Peanuts), 11 (Tobacco), 41 (Sugarbeets), and 56 (Hops). Hops is the only crop in this crop group labeled for malathion. Acreage value is based on pixel count and is based on aggregated total. 11

12 Evaluating Components: Proximity Co-occurrence and proximities are generated from user-selected species, use sites, and locations 12

13 Gopher Future Enhancements Additional datasets can be integrated, including pesticide usage, BMPs, conservation, soils, and state-level data to provide an understanding of environmental baseline and to explore conservation options USGS Soils Maps USDA Conservation Reserve Program BMP enrollment areas USGS Pesticide Usage 13

14 Gopher - Takeaway Gopher can inform and facilitate preparation of USEPA s endangered species pesticide assessments and to USFWS/NMFS consultations by bringing efficiency and transparency in a stable and documented system Allows analysis at various levels of resolution and considers multiple lines of evidence using best available data National-level scoping State and regional examination Local and species-specific analysis The flexibility of Gopher allows for further applications such as capturing voluntary measures as a mechanism to better inform the interface of pesticide use and endangered species data 14

15 Thank you for this opportunity and please contact me with any questions! Ashlea Frank Principal Consultant, Compliance Services International Technical Consultant, 7501 Bridgeport Way West Lakewood, WA