Wetland Assessment and Monitoring Protocol Development for NYC Submitted to: U.S. EPA Region 2 Wetland Protection Section EPA-WPDG CD-97269901 March 2010 Acknowledgements This grant was funded by a Wetlands Program Development Grant from U.S. EPA Region 2 EPA-WPDG CD-97269901. Authors: Marit Larson, Kathleen McKarthy, Ellen Hartig, Ellen Pehek, Leilani Vella, Daniel Heinenberg, Kyra Appleby, Jennifer Peters, and Matteo Ferrucci. Special thanks to Matt Palmer of Columbia University for his advise at key periods during the last second year of the wetland rapid assessment development, to Eymund Diegel for his generous sharing of his time and data, to Craig Mandel for his steady GIS assistance, to Jackie Lu for edits and insightful comments, and to our encouraging project manager at EPA, Kathleen Drake. Thanks also to Nate McVey, Susan Stanley, Brady Simmons, Alex Summers, Rob Brauman, Richard Lynch, Mike Feller, and Bram Gunther, and to Joan Ehrenfeld and Lauren Dean during early stages of the project. page 2 EPA-WPDG CD-97269901 Wetland Monitoring Protocol Grant Wetland Assessment and Monitoring Protocol Development for NYC TABLE OF CONTENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY SECTIONS 1. RAPID ASSESSMENT PROTOCOLS 2. RESULTS AND MANAGEMENT PRIORITIZATION 3. MONITORING PROTOCOLS AND RESULTS IN RELATION TO RAP RESULTS 4. PILOT STUDY OF SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF WETLANDS 5. RECOMMENDATIONS AND NEXT STEPS page 3 EPA-WPDG CD-97269901 Wetland Monitoring Protocol Grant EXECUTIVE SUMMARY New York City has lost about 99% of its freshwater wetlands since European settlement1 and faces extreme challenges in preserving, protecting and restoring the ecological functions of the approximately 1,600 acres of freshwater wetlands that remain. The New York City Department of Parks & Recreation, Natural Resources Group (NRG) received a grant from U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 2 to develop and revise protocols for assessing and monitoring freshwater wetlands within New York City parklands in order to better set priorities for protection, restoration, and other management actions in wetlands and riparian systems. The overarching objective of the project was to develop an approach to wetland and riparian assessment and monitoring protocols that could include various levels of effort and scales of investigation (from GIS landscape analysis, to rapid field assessment, to monitoring) to answer specific questions relating to the need for wetlands preservation and management. Further objectives were to incorporate conservation training opportunities in a wetland assessment protocol and explore an assessment of recreational uses or other social functions provided by wetlands. In 2007, NRG began preparing a protocol for rapidly assessing wetland conditions to allow the collection of consistent information on freshwater wetland site conditions. Initial assessments were used to identify need for additional information and helped to determine best locations for more in-depth monitoring. We reviewed the literature on wetland assessment, including sixteen wetland rapid assessment protocols that we thought could meet our needs from different states and municipalities, and met with wetland scientists from U.S.EPA, Columbia and Rutgers Universities to discuss our draft protocols. Ultimately, the wetlands rapid assessment protocol (WRAP) that was developed was most similar to that used by Westchester County in their Wetlands Assessment and Management Plan. It included a field component where physical, hydrologic and vegetative parameters were evaluated, and a list of stressors that indicated impacts to the wetland were scored to yield a “stressor score.” Staten Island was selected as the study area, because of its number and range of freshwater wetlands and streams. In preparation 1 PLANYC New York City Wetlands: Regulatory Gaps and other Threats, January 2009 page 4 EPA-WPDG CD-97269901 Wetland Monitoring Protocol Grant for developing and testing the wetlands protocol, we prepared field maps of most major parks located in Staten Island, identifying and labeling potential assessment sites based on the National Wetland Inventory (NWI) and the NYSDEC freshwater wetland maps. A total of 37 sites were assessed. Sites of past or on-going biological and habitat studies were selected as much as possible to allow comparison of WRAP results with data collected on species diversity. In 2008, the previous season’s WRAP results were analyzed and NRG staff determined that the extent and type of field data collected from the rapid assessments necessitated a thorough review of the assessment protocols. Consequently, at numerous internal NRG meetings, and meetings with external scientific advisors, the draft protocol instructions, content and format was revised to ease its use in the field, increase consistency between field crews, and reduce redundancy. Changes to the 2007 included converting the stressor score parameters into ten indicators of disturbance (trash, invasive species cover, etc.) that were scored 1-10 according to apparent degree of “stress” at a site. The revised WRAP was implemented at an additional 51 sites in 2009 by seasonal field assistants. These research assistants were trained by NRG ecologists, wetland specialists or environmental scientists, who accompanied them to about half the sites. In addition, a GIS-based landscape analysis, begun in 2007, was further developed and added to the WRAP to provide basic information about drainage contributing to the wetland or stream site, the percent of nearby development, and proportion of impervious land use both in the drainage basins and in the buffer zone surrounding the wetland. The wetlands assessed represented a wide range of wetland sizes, drainage basin areas, and degree of watershed development. An approximately equal proportion of palustrine (forested), emergent, and open water (less than six foot depth) freshwater wetlands were assessed over the two field seasons. This sampling suggests a slight under-sampling of palustrine freshwater wetlands, which are the dominant wetland type in Staten Island. Results from 2009 WRAP stressor scores suggested that about 10% of the sites assessed were relatively free of visible signs of urban impacts, and about 10% of the sites were highly impacted. Based on the WRAP scores, we grouped the wetlands into three general management categories. The sites with the least stress will, in general, have a need for the least on-the ground management actions, but are potentially in greatest need of protection and preservation. page 5 EPA-WPDG CD-97269901 Wetland Monitoring Protocol Grant Appropriate management actions may include increased enforcement of park rules, and more in- depth faunal or vegetation analysis to determine if these sites should be used as future reference sites (such as for reference sites for restored wetlands). The sites that had the highest stressor scores and were therefore the most disturbed may need to be flagged for more active management or some type of restoration or mitigation measures, potentially including hydrologic drainage investigation, fencing, invasive plant removal, re-vegetating the buffer, and investigating and remediating sources of runoff and/or pollutants. The data from the 2007 and 2009 WRAPs were relatively well correlated, allowing the opportunity to incorporate all data in an initial management prioritization scheme. The process of developing the WRAP included efforts to verify the results by 1) comparing the stressor scores of a given wetland with the opinions and comments from wetland experts familiar with a site, and 2) by matching WRAP results with biological monitoring data from a site. The WRAP data yielded results that corresponded to other NRG monitoring datasets. When WRAP stressor scores were compared to data from ongoing odonate monitoring conducted at the same sites, the team found an increase in species richness and diversity of odonates potentially correlated to a decrease in stressor score (lower score means less impacted). However, due to the small number of overlapping WRAP and odonate monitoring sites (6) and one outlier, the results were not statistically significant. Our wetland assessment and monitoring training and outreach efforts began with training of in- house ecologists, environmental scientists, and several graduate students. We intend to expand our training this spring to the training of three Green Apple Conservation Corps team leaders in the use of the WRAP within Parks, who in turn will train their corp members to use the WRAP to prioritize sites for specific wetlands management actions. In addition to the WRAP, a pilot social survey, developed in consultation with U.S. Forest Service Urban Field Station social scientists, was conducted with regular visitors at the Greenbelt Nature Center in Staten Island. The results suggested that wetlands may be the focus of place attachment for park visitors, as ponds were singled out as the most frequent landscape destination and swamps were tied for second place. In the long term, education and a better page 6 EPA-WPDG CD-97269901 Wetland Monitoring Protocol Grant understanding of the social value of wetlands will continue to be important for wetlands management. The following products, generated by this grant project, are found in the accompanying New York City Parks Wetlands Assessment and Monitoring report: • Wetlands Rapid Assessment Protocol for the Field (Section 1) • Wetlands Buffer and Drainage Basin Analysis Protocol (Section 1) • WRAP Results and Management