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Modeling Landscape-scale Ecosystem Services Relative to Biodiversity in the Upper San Pedro River Basin (U.S. Mexico)
Citation:
KEPNER, W. G. AND K. G. Boykin. Modeling Landscape-scale Ecosystem Services Relative to Biodiversity in the Upper San Pedro River Basin (U.S. Mexico). Presented at American Association of Geographers 2009 Annual Meeting, Las Vegas, NV, March 22 - 27, 2009.
Impact/Purpose:
Presentation
Description:
It is widely understood that human condition is tightly linked to environmental condition and the services it provides. Ecosystem services, i.e. "services provided to humans from natural systems" have become a paramount issue of this century in resource management, conservation, human well-being, and environmental decision analysis. Mapping and quantifying ecosystem services have become a strategic interest in regard to integrating ecology with economics to help explain the effects of human policies and the subsequent impacts on both ecosystem function and human welfare. This is especially imperative along the U.S-Mexico border where economics and population growth present major challenges to both environmental management and natural resource planning. Wildlife habitat provides a keen example of an ecosystem service which can be categorized in a variety of ways, i.e. supportive, regulating, provisioning, and cultural aspects of the environment. In this study, deductive habitat models developed under the USGS Southwest Regional Gap Analysis Program (SWReGAP) and landscape metrics developed via the USEPA Analytical Tools Interface for Landscape Assessments were combined to assess biological complexity over a large international watershed in southeast Arizona and northeast Sonora, Mexico. The information was analyzed using both a course-level vegetation classification system via the National Land Cover Dataset and a finer-level SWReGAP ecological classification system. Total species richness was determined at 30m pixel resolution and then later partitioned among the major terrestrial vertebrate groups, i.e. mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians, and for selected taxonomic orders and families as a measure for mapping this ecosystem service. Further we analyzed these data using subwatersheds and ecological systems as comparative assessment units.