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Exploring the scientific underpinnings of ecosystem services in the Willamette Valley, Oregon, USA - a place-based study
Citation:
LANDERS, D. H., R. B. MCKANE, J. E. COMPTON, D. WHITE, BROOKS, D. L. PHILLIPS, M. G. JOHNSON, P. T. RYGIEWICZ, C. P. ANDERSEN, P. A. BEEDLOW, S. L. KLEIN, W. E. HOGSETT, AND C. A. BURDICK. Exploring the scientific underpinnings of ecosystem services in the Willamette Valley, Oregon, USA - a place-based study. Presented at Ecosystem Services: Solution for problems or a problem that needs solution, Keil, GERMANY, May 13 - 15, 2008.
Impact/Purpose:
The US Environmental Protection Agency has undertaken a national research effort (Ecological Research Program) involving approximately 200 scientists, nation-wide to develop the science breadth and depth required to incorporate ecosystem services into environmental policy decisions.
Description:
The US Environmental Protection Agency has undertaken a national research effort (Ecological Research Program) involving approximately 200 scientists, nation-wide to develop the science breadth and depth required to incorporate ecosystem services into environmental policy decisions. The Willamette River Basin is one of four different trans-disciplinary place-based studies that are being implemented throughout the US to develop and demonstrate how ecosystem services can be inventoried, mapped, quantitatively related to one another, and valued. The Willamette River Basin has a surface area of 29,727 km2; a cold Mediterranean climate with dry summers and wet winters and a population expected to double by the year 2050. The western boundary of the basin defined by the coast mountain range and the east boundary is marked by the higher Cascade Mountains. Forestry (66%) and agriculture (20%) are the dominant land uses but urban and urbanizing landscapes comprise approximately 11% of the basin. Our approach focuses on the approximately 90% of the basin for which land cover is forest, agriculture and riparian wetland. Key ecosystem services of interest are carbon sequestration, N retention, water quality and water quantity. The primary forcing variables of interest are climate change, nitrogen regulation, and land-use change. We seek to develop an understanding of individual ecosystem services as well as bundles of ecosystem services and their responses to forcing variables. These quantitative relationships represent the key scientific information required to parameterize quantitative models. The models will be incorporated into a decision support platform that will allow decision makers to project the results of a suite of possible decisions affecting the ecosystem services into the future and then to observe how these decisions are likely to be expressed from an ecosystem service perspective. An eventual goal of the Ecological Research Program is to provide defensible, nation-wide, scientific information regarding the status and projected changes in ecosystem services in response to human mediated impacts. An overview of the organizational structure, approach and modeling framework will be presented.