Applied Ecological Institute

Applied Ecological Institute (aei) was established to innovate Ecological solutions and approaches to address some of the most challenging Ecological problems on the planet. These include Ecological challenges with climate change, water availability, food quality and nutritional density, biodiversity decline, and equitable access to natural resources for a variety of uses along with the restoration of ecosystem and wildlife habitat. This work is entirely focused on creating public benefits by helping land use change agents make better decisions by letting nature and ecosystem restoration principles guide their decision.see supplemental statements:aei is routinely called about opportunities for innovating new Ecological solutions and on related projects that drive innovation while finding new ways of addressing biological challenges. The innovations include new strategies for measurements of the effects and benefits of an approach under any of the opportunities, new ways to engage people and communities in addressing the challenging problems with new solutions, new ways to communicate new solutions, new ways to value and monetize new solutions, and programs that focus more generally and comprehensivley on bringing mutltiple challenges under combined solutions that save timemoney and improve effectiveness.aei engages in projects that align with its mission of designing nature-based solution companies to regenerate the planet. These projects serve as research, development, and scenario testing for future compnaies. In 2022 and continuing today we engaged in the following projects each related to a different aspect of how best to create executable strategies to regenerate degraded ecosystems:1. Arizona state universityarizona state university adaptive multi paddock (amp) grazingresearch. This program, originally started in the southeastern us andfunded by ffar (foundation for food & agriculture), has expanded to thenorthern great plains and involves innovative measurement techniques toevaluate and compare conventional grazing to improved grazing (amp) andwith the results create innovative communication strategies toencourage conventional grazing ranchers to consider the improvedgrazing strategies. This has the potential to influence the adoption ofregenerative ranching practices which benefit climate mitigation, waterresources, biodiversity, and rancher and farmer well-being. A team ofover a dozen research institutions and federal agency scientists,economists, sociologists, and experts in improved grazing have sharedthe early comprehensive findings through film, feature-length movies,and technical papers. In 2022, the aei team met with prospectivenorthern great plains participating ranchers and worked with them tofinalize the research plan for the region. The research teams,including aei began work in 2023 and this will continue through 2025.program focus areas related to future aei ventures include:mmrv (measurement, monitoring, reporting, verification) methodologies& tools ecosystem service protocol and project development land owner success related to regenerative transition2 eldon farms innovative landscape scale analysis of ecosystem health.this property is one of the largest and most ecologically diverseprivately held properties on the east coast. Aei chose to becomeinvolved to demonstrate the benefits of landscape-scale, whole systemmeasurement of land health. The property shares a long border withshenandoah national park and therefore shares common waterways,including high quality rivers and streams that contain increasinglyrare brook trout, and many other species of interest. In 2022, aeifocused on creating the on-site measurement framework andimplementation strategy to evaluate ecosystem health and coordinatedwith the national park service and other landowners to explorepotential larger conservation outcomes by cross-fence collaboration.the measurements included soil genomics sampling, vegetation analysisinvasive plant identification and wildlife surveying to understand thepotential Ecological benefits of restoring degraded forests, wetlands,pastures and farmlands. These findings were used to developrecommendations for cross-fence collaboration and management decisionsto improve ecosystems, water, wildlife habitat, biodiversity and more.the data gathered will be used to create strategies not only for eldonfarms but also to inform similar property owners of the benefits ofrestoration. 3. New albany & wexner - a new semiconductor manufacturing hub is beingplanned on 100,000 acres ne of the columbus, oh metropolitan area. Aeiwas asked to engage as leaders in optimizing and protecting the naturalresources while planning the hub which will impact small towns andrural roads. The project focused on stream and public drinking waterprotection, flood mitigation and overall conservation of the rural andnatural environment appreciated by the communities of the region.aei evaluated potential conservation and regenerative scenarios overthe large landscape and facilitated conversations among community,local leaders and state and federal agency staff to understand andbuild consensus on plans for restoration, protection, and transitioningland use practices to regenerative to reduce water quality impacts andreduce the volume of stormwater runoff and downstream flooding ofcommunities, homes and the drinking water supply reservoirs.aei's findings were used to create a green infrastructure network tomanage stormwater, provide for improved wildlife mobility across thelandscape, and also include greenways for public biking, hiking, etc.park areas were discussed with participating municipalities to coordinatewith their expanded housing and development area, to link their parks and trails with the larger green infrastructure concept. Similar to eldon, but with the added complexity of a built environment, the data gatheredand tools designed and tested will be used to create strategies to informsimilar projects of the benefits of considering the value of conservation and restoration. Program focus areas related to future aei ventures include:natural resource optimization including efficient visualization toolsand frameworks to explore and demonstrate multiple scenariosmoonlight property conservation and restoration mt this projectfocused in a very ecologically sensitive region and provided anotheropportunity for aei to perform landscape-scale, systems level analysisand a recommended plan for restoration. The plan for management andrestoration of the vegetation systems was created including refiningthe existing forestry plan by converting it into a plan focused onthree elements and outcomes a) site fire protection planning by focusing the forestry and herbaceous vegetation management to reduce site combustibility and fire risk, b) a biodiversity focused program to enhance the native vegetation, and c) a native landscaping primer on how to integrate native local genetic plant materials in landscaping. The project was a unique opportunity to developa place based, ecosystem restoration and management framework focused on addressing legacy plant community issues associated with years of livestockovergrazing activities and decades of wildfire suppression which hasallowed former subalpine meadows to convert into shrub dominated plantcommunities; a departure from the lush wildflower and native grasslandscommunities found in this location historically. This framework will beshared with other projects throughout the region that will benefit fromthe analysis and recommended restoration and management plans.in summary, aei is focused on only creating positive outcomes where weengage, such as on the above example programs. This focus is entirelyfor the public good. It is focused on helping others understand howexisting and often proposed land use changes can create deleterious andcostly negative impacts on Ecological systems and the natural resourceswe need, that support our public uses and our economic health. We arelaser focused on providing science based and informed decision makingand information to encourage solving big challenges. Conservationplanning, ecosystem restoration and regeneration and helping the publicunderstand and fostering the benefits of nature-based solutions is thefocus.