Grantee Research Project Results
2019 Progress Report: Human health, ecosystem services, and their economic value as part of sustainability assessment for the Sacramento region
EPA Grant Number: R836938Title: Human health, ecosystem services, and their economic value as part of sustainability assessment for the Sacramento region
Investigators: Huber, Patrick , Hollander, Allan , Lange, Matthew , Miller, Daphne , Quinn, Jim , Riggle, Courtney , Srivastava, Lorie , Baker, Matthew , Tomich, Thomas
Current Investigators: Huber, Patrick , Hollander, Allan , Lange, Matthew , Miller, Daphne , Quinn, Jim , Riggle, Courtney , Srivastava, Lorie , Baker, Matthew
Institution: University of California - Davis
EPA Project Officer: Hahn, Intaek
Project Period: August 1, 2017 through July 31, 2019 (Extended to July 31, 2020)
Project Period Covered by this Report: August 1, 2018 through July 31,2019
Project Amount: $593,348
RFA: Integrating Human Health and Well-Being with Ecosystem Services (2016) RFA Text | Recipients Lists
Research Category: Human Health
Objective:
Systematic land use planning for sustainability does not typically include human health and well-being as explicit inputs. In this project, we test the effects of including issues related to human health, ecosystem services, and community wellbeing on the outputs of a standard land use planning process which is primarily focused on environmental variables.
This project convenes a new group of stakeholders that will augment the current group (focused on natural resources) to provide input on which issues and metrics are of greatest salience given the regional context. Ontologies are being developed that link these health and human wellbeing issues and metrics to existing ontologies describing links between agricultural and land use data types. Data will be gathered to support these metrics where available and gaps in data availability tracked. These data will be used to undertake spatially-explicit land use optimization assessments using Marxan software under multiple future land use scenarios. Outputs from these assessments will be compared to those currently being developed as well as to existing general land use plans. Economic valuations of appropriate ecosystem services will be used to quantify these comparisons. A workflow is being developed to track the proposed project and to make the methods available throughout California. We will work with stakeholders to apply our findings to a range of local use cases that could benefit from “health sensitive” land use planning and sustainability strategies.
The project will result in a regional stakeholder group that includes human health and well-being experts and advocates. The team will collaborate with the stakeholders to produce health-agriculture-environmental ontologies. A comparison between optimized land use patterns will be enabled across future land use scenarios and sets of sustainability issues analyzed. Economic valuation of ecosystem services will be assessed for the region under the land use modeling outputs. A generalizable workflow will be created enabling use of the methods developed here in other regions and states. Post-project use cases will also be identified for future funding opportunities.
Progress Summary:
Marxan analysis. We conducted Marxan analyses across four scenarios in the Sacramento region. One scenario described a natural resource only-based assessment of priority management areas for sustainability within the region, while the other three took into account various aspects of human health that can be directly tied to environmental conditions. Comparisons were then calculated and mapped between each pair of scenarios to identify areas of tradeoffs between the scenarios.
Figure 1. Example Marxan output.
Urban greening analysis. Urban tree cover provides multiple health benefits. We assessed the urban areas within the six-county region to identify locations in the greatest need of additional greening. The variables used were pollution levels, community vulnerability scores, existing canopy cover, and existing public open space. Results then identified areas with higher pollution levels, vulnerable populations, lack of tree cover, and distance to open space.
Figure 2. Urban greening needs analysis output.
Economic analysis. Each of the four Marxan outputs was assessed using two modeled economic values: potential carbon sequestration and human health effects due to air contaminants. The total regional value of carbon and health impacts were compared to provide further insights when comparing Marxan scenarios.
Stakeholder workshop. The team hosted a stakeholder workshop June 10, 2019. Approximately 25 invitees chosen from thought leaders in varying regional stakeholder communities, attended, and included both natural resource and human health practitioners. The team presented the work completed to date and solicited feedback from the attendees that was then recorded and incorporated where possible into the project’s next steps.
NSF proposal. We drafted and submitted a proposal to National Science Foundation that, if funded, would provide supplemental funding to our ongoing NSF Research Coordination Network. The proposed work would serve to explicitly link energy generation and distribution with natural resources and human health in the Sacramento region, effectively serving as an extension to this EPA STAR project. We are waiting to hear whether it is selected for funding under this NSF program.
Working with EnviroAtlas. One goal of our project is to link different types of sustainability information using ontologies. We crosswalked the EnviroAtlas data layers to our ontologies using the Issues data type. We are in the process of working with EPA staff (led by Anne Neale) to associate usage statistics of EnviroAtlas with our issues in order to assess the similarities and differences of important issues across the United States.
Tagged other STAR projects with issues/indicators. In an effort both to enhance our efforts in understanding how sustainability differs between contexts and to explicitly link the STAR projects, we tagged the information used by the other projects with our issue and indicator controlled vocabulary. As more examples are added to our growing database a clearer pattern of sustainability should be elucidated.
PPOD ontology. We developed the “PPOD” (people, projects, organizations, datasets) ontology and populated it with stakeholder information from the Sacrament region. This ontology formalizes the relationships between the different classes of objects and allows for querying and other analytic activities through the database. Below are both the conceptual scheme and an example of one stakeholder:
Figure 3. Concept map of PPOD ontology.
Figure 4. Sample PPOD instance.
Omeka S website. We have started to use the web platform Omeka S to catalog and display semantic linkages between information resources in the Sacramento region and have begun to populate it with PPOD-related elements such as directories of stakeholders and datasets. The Omeka S platform has emerged from the digital library community and is designed to easily make resources available as linked open data.
California conservation ontology. We have begun the conceptual development of an ontology to describe the various attributes of conservation planning in California. This includes the ontologies that the team has already developed under this and other funding, which build on previous efforts to standardize environmental and planning controlled vocabularies among agencies and other major California actors This ontology will highlight linkages between factors and threats and how these affect resources of conservation interest. In addition, it will include information on legislation, regulations, and guidelines that influence conservation decisions as well as funding streams, data flows, and conservation actions.
Meeting with State Treasurer. The team met with Fiona Ma (California State Teasurer) and her staff to discuss the potential nexus between our work and the effort to create a “green bonds” program for state infrastructure development. Discussions are ongoing but may lead to a formal link between the natural resource and human health dimensions currently featured in our study and infrastructure development.
Final report. We are in the process of completing a final report documenting the methods and results of our work. We are nearing the completion of a first draft of this report.
Future Activities:
Final report. We will complete a final draft of the report in the first half of 2020.
Use cases. We will work with the natural resource and human health stakeholders and others to identify future use cases based off the current work. We will use a use case template developed under funding from the National Science Foundation that is linked to the work described here.
Online access. We will finish the process of making data structures, input data, and results publicly available online.
Journal Articles on this Report : 1 Displayed | Download in RIS Format
Other project views: | All 5 publications | 2 publications in selected types | All 2 journal articles |
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Hollander AD, Hoy C, Huber PR, Hyder A, Lange MC, Latham A, Quinn JF, Riggle CM, Tomich TP. Toward smart foodsheds:using stakeholder engagement to improve informatics frameworks for regional food systems. Annals of the American Association of Geographers 2019:1-2. |
R836938 (2019) |
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Supplemental Keywords:
sustainability, indicators, ontology, ecosystem services, Marxan, land use, health, human well-beingRelevant Websites:
Progress and Final Reports:
Original AbstractThe perspectives, information and conclusions conveyed in research project abstracts, progress reports, final reports, journal abstracts and journal publications convey the viewpoints of the principal investigator and may not represent the views and policies of ORD and EPA. Conclusions drawn by the principal investigators have not been reviewed by the Agency.