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Modeling ecosystem service tradeoffs for alternative land use and climate scenarios
Citation:
Mckane, Bob, A. Brookes, K. Djang, J. Halama, AND P. Pettus. Modeling ecosystem service tradeoffs for alternative land use and climate scenarios. ACES Conference, Washington, DC, December 08 - 12, 2014.
Impact/Purpose:
This abstract is for an invited symposium talk at the ACES 2014 Conference, December 8-12, 2014, in Washington, D.C. The focus of the conference is to link science, practice, and sustainable decision making by bringing together the ecosystem services community from around the United States and the globe. ACES 2014 will bring together leaders in government, NGOs, academia, Native American communities, and the private sector to advance the use of ecosystem services science and practice in conservation, restoration, resource management, and development decisions. Thus, the conference is an excellent opportunity for EPA-WED to describe and demonstrate our ecological modeling and decision support tools and applications in several regions where ecosystem services are undergoing rapid change, including the Chesapeake Bay, Pacific Northwest, and Central Plains.
Description:
Scientists, policymakers, community planners and others have discussed ecosystem services for decades, however, society is still in the early stages of developing methodologies to quantify and value the goods and services that ecosystems provide. Essential to this goal are highly integrated models that can be used to inform policy and management strategies for entire ecosystems, not just individual components. We developed the VELMA ecohydrological model to help address this need. VELMA – Visualizing Ecosystem Land Management Assessments – links a land surface hydrologic model with a terrestrial biogeochemistry model in a spatially-distributed framework to simulate the integrated responses of vegetation, soil, and water resources to changes in land use and climate. Here we briefly describe watershed-scale applications of VELMA conducted in the Pacific Northwest and Chesapeake Bay. Our goal is to evaluate how alternative policy, land use and climate scenarios affect tradeoffs among ecosystem services – specifically, provisioning services (water; food; fiber), supporting services (cycling of water and nutrients; habitat for wildlife), regulating services (climate; peak and low flows), and cultural services (recreational and spiritual pursuits). Products of this work include (1) alternative-future scenarios capturing stakeholder-relevant choices and drivers of change; (2) a well-validated model for mapping production of ecosystem goods and services under current and projected conditions; and (3) stakeholder-friendly visualization tools for summarizing and communicating modeled ecosystem service tradeoffs for alternative decision scenarios. We discuss how these products are being applied in a participatory planning approach that integrates researchers, stakeholders and decision makers in the process of identifying drivers, ecosystem services of concern, and solutions for a more sustainable future. For example, can optimal “decision paths” be identified for restoring the ecosystem services needed to sustainably support communities dependent on resource-based economies and traditions, such as agriculture, forestry, and fishing?