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Assessment of ecosystem services impacts from urbanization
Citation:
Fulford, R., M. Russell, J. Bousquin, AND M. Jackson. Assessment of ecosystem services impacts from urbanization. A Committee on Ecosystem Services (ACES) 2018 Annual Meeting, Arlington, VA, December 03 - 06, 2018.
Impact/Purpose:
This presentation focuses on community research to develop approaches for decision support based on ecosystem goods and services. This is a part of a theme session on tools specifically designed to estimate the impact of decisions on the provision and delivery of ecosystem services to beneficiaries. This presentation will demonstrate the H20 tool and its application to a novel watershed in Mobile Bay currently under management by the National Estuary Program. The outcome will be increased knowledge of both the tool and its utility for informing restoration decision making in coastal watersheds.
Description:
Coastal watersheds have become increasingly urbanized resulting in declines in ecosystem goods and services (EGS) to community beneficiaries. Urbanization includes increases in impervious surface, decreases in access to greenspace, and declines in both air and water quality. The result is a negative impact on human well-being. Restoration efforts in such watersheds need to account for the impacts of urbanization both in prioritizing restoration targets and in the development of restoration assessment metrics. Here we take a quantitative EGS approach to examine the impacts of both urbanization and watershed restoration on the production and delivery of key ecosystem services to people. The EPA H2O tool was used to evaluate change through time in land use/landcover and to examine the interaction of this change with small-scale restoration projects implemented as a part of the Mobile Bay National Estuary Program comprehensive management plan. Model analysis with the H2O tool indicated that EGS services are impacted by both landcover change and watershed restoration focused on reducing stream damage from large rain events and increasing user access. However, there are important differences in both beneficiaries and spatial scale of restoration impacts that need to be considered in prioritizing restoration targets. The intent of this analysis is to inform restoration planning and decision making from an EGS perspective and to place restoration in the spatial context of longer-term issues such as watershed urbanization.
URLs/Downloads:
https://conference.ifas.ufl.edu/ACES/prior/aces18/Presentations/Salon%20DE/Thursday/0835%20Fulford%20Y.pdf