Ecological evaluation is essential for remediation, restoration, and Natural Resource Damage
Assessment (NRDA), and forms the basis for many management practices. These include
determining status and trends of biological, physical, or chemical/radiological conditions,
conducting environmental impact assessments, performing remedial actions should
remediation fail, managing ecosystems and wildlife, and assessing the efficacy of
remediation, restoration, and long-term stewardship. The objective of this paper is to explore
the meanings of these assessments, examine the relationships among them, and suggest
methods of integration that will move environmental management forward. While
remediation, restoration, and NRDA, among others, are often conducted separately, it is
important to integrate them for contaminated land where the risks to ecoreceptors (including
humans) can be high, and the potential damage to functioning ecosystems great. Ecological
evaluations can range from inventories of local plants and animals, determinations of
reproductive success of particular species, levels of contaminants in organisms, kinds and
levels of effects, and environmental impact assessments, to very formal ecological risk
assessments for a chemical or other stressor. Such evaluations can range from the individual
species to populations, communities, ecosystems or the landscape scale. Ecological evaluations
serve as the basis formaking decisions about the levels and kinds of remediation, the levels and
kinds of restoration possible, and the degree and kinds of natural resource injuries that have
occurred because of contamination. Many different disciplines are involved in ecological
evaluation, including biologists, conservationists, foresters, restoration ecologists, ecological
engineers, economists, hydrologist, and geologists. Since ecological evaluation forms the basis
for so many different types of environmental management, it seems reasonable to integrate
management options to achieve economies of time, energy, andcosts. Integration anditeration
among these disciplines is possible only with continued interactions among practitioners,
regulators, policy-makers, Native American Tribes, and the general public.