[Federal Register Volume 72, Number 192 (Thursday, October 4, 2007)]
[Notices]
[Pages 56755-56756]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: E7-19624]
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ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
[FRL-8479-3]
2007 Release of Causal Analysis/Diagnosis Decision Information
System (CADDIS)
AGENCY: Environmental Protection Agency.
ACTION: Notice of public release.
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SUMMARY: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announces the
availability of the EPA Web site, ``Causal Analysis/Diagnosis Decision
Information System (CADDIS)''--2007. EPA's National Center for
Environmental Assessment (NCEA) in the Office of Research and
Development (ORD) led the development of the CADDIS Web site in
response to strong demand within the EPA (e.g., the Office of Water)
and from stakeholders and citizens across the United States seeking a
defensible method for determining causes of ecological impairment.
CADDIS guides users through EPA's Stressor Identification process, with
interactive tools and methods, worksheets, and examples to help
scientists and engineers evaluate causes of biological impairment
observed in aquatic systems such as streams, lakes, and estuaries.
Access: The CADDIS 2007 Web site can be accessed via the Internet
at http://www.epa.gov/caddis/.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: For further information about CADDIS,
contact Rick Ziegler, NCEA, via phone: 202-564-2257, or e-mail:
[email protected].
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Thousands of water bodies in the United
States have been reported to have an ``unknown'' cause of impairment.
To formulate appropriate management actions for impaired water bodies,
it is critical to identify the causes of biological impairment (e.g.,
excess fine sediments, nutrients, or toxic substances). Effective
causal analyses call for knowledge of the mechanisms, symptoms, and
stressor-response relationships for various stressors, as well as the
ability to use that knowledge to draw appropriate, defensible
conclusions. NCEA developed CADDIS, a Web-based decision support
system, to help regional, state, and tribal scientists perform causal
analyses. With this release, CADDIS will also help scientists find,
access, organize, and share information useful for causal evaluations
of impairment in aquatic systems. It is based on EPA's Stressor
Identification process, which is an EPA-recommended method for
identifying causes of impairments in aquatic environments. EPA released
the first version of CADDIS in 2006, after addressing comments from the
public and independently selected, external peer reviewers. The first
release of CADDIS included a step-by-step guide to conducting causal
analysis, downloadable worksheets and examples, a library of conceptual
models, and links to useful information sources.
CADDIS 2007 adds considerable power and usability to the first
release. Namely, CADDIS ecologists and Web specialists made the
following changes:
Added eight modules, each describing a common stressor or
candidate cause of biological impairment; the stressor modules include
metals, sediments, nutrients, dissolved oxygen, temperature, ionic
strength, flow alteration, and unspecified toxic chemicals.
Added material on data analysis including:
[cir] Information on how nine analytical methods (e.g., scatter
plots, linear regression, predicting environmental
[[Page 56756]]
conditions from biological observations, quantile regression and
species sensitivity distributions) can be used to analyze causal
relationships.
[cir] CADStat, a downloadable software package for analyzing data
using a variety of exploratory and statistical approaches.
[cir] SSD Generator, a tool for deriving species sensitivity
distributions.
[cir] Databases of stressor-response information including chronic
exposure-response relationships and species sensitivity distributions
for metals from laboratory tests; and stressor-response associations
from field observational data for metals and sediments.
Greatly expanded the conceptual model library by adding
generic conceptual models for common causes of biological impairment.
Developed an interactive Flash-based conceptual model
diagram for one common stressor (phosphorus), which provides source
citations for cause-and-effect linkages shown in the diagram. (The
CADDIS team anticipates this part of the site will expand to include
other common stressors and--at some point in the future--harness
information collaboratively from the greater scientific community.)
Updated CADDIS's underlying code, which adheres to EPA's
latest Web guidelines, and--similar to the first release--continues to
maintain accessibility and 508 compliance.
The CADDIS 2007 release provides users with state-of-the-art causal
assessment information and tools for determining why aquatic systems
are biologically impaired. Ultimately, use of the CADDIS Web site
translates to healthier ecosystems within the United States, while
serving as an example stressor identification tool for our global
environment.
Dated: September 27, 2007.
Rebecca Clark,
Acting Director, National Center for Environmental Assessment.
[FR Doc. E7-19624 Filed 10-3-07; 8:45 am]
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