Injury Assessment Methods and Quantification Sample Clauses

Injury Assessment Methods and Quantification. Injury assessment studies were conducted by the Trustees, EMPCo, and consultants with damage assessment experience for the Incidents. Descriptions of injuries are organized into the following injured resource categories: 1) xxxxx habitat 2) mudflat habitat (Lake Washington), and 3) birds. Although water column organisms, benthic organisms in tidally-exposed mudflats, recreational use, and other wildlife species had the potential to be injured during the Incidents, injury to these resources was not observed during comprehensive field surveys following the Incidents. Therefore it was the opinion of the Trustees that reasonable and protective assumptions for xxxxx and birds would represent the overall injury to natural resources and services resulting from the Incidents. For habitat injury, the Trustees used a Habitat Equivalency Analysis (HEA) (NOAA, 2006) based approach to quantify interim service losses (i.e., service losses incurred from the time of injury until recovery to baseline) of habitats impacted by the Incidents. Interim service losses were quantified in terms of lost service acre years, where a service acre year is the flow of services of one acre of habitat over the course of one year. The input parameters required to calculate the debit-side of the HEA (i.e., habitat injury) are: 1) total acres of injured habitat;