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THE USE OF SCENARIO ANALYSIS TO ASSESS FUTURE LANDSCAPE CHANGE ON WATERSHED CONDITION IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST (USA)
Citation:
KEPNER, W. G., M. HERNANDEZ, D. J. SEMMENS, AND D. GOODRICH. THE USE OF SCENARIO ANALYSIS TO ASSESS FUTURE LANDSCAPE CHANGE ON WATERSHED CONDITION IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST (USA). Chapter 5, I. Petrosillo, F. Müller, K.B. Jones, G. Zurlini, K. Krauze, S. Victorov, B.-L. Li, and W.G. Kepner (ed.), Use of Landscape Sciences for the Assessment of Environmental Security. Springer Netherlands, , Netherlands, , 237-261, (2008).
Impact/Purpose:
The primary objectives of this research are to:
- Provide information on the variability in water supply that can be expected under varying climatic conditions. Early efforts will be focused on assembling regional databases for at least two counties (Mecklenberg County and York County) within SEQL region that can be used for water supply generation and model development.
- Develop tools that will help improve our ability to evaluate, study, and model linkages between different types of environmental systems: hydrologic, geomorphic, ecological, and climatic.
- Explore the use of annual and seasonal measurements of large lake surface temperatures as a new ecological indicator of the overall thermal content of those lakes, and construct an estimator of seasonal large lake heat budgets.
Description:
The traditional definition of security has been broadened to include environmental threats resulting from resource degradation and scarcity related to anthropogenic development. This paper examines the use of landscape indicators to identify the susceptibility of the U.S. state of Oregon to resource and water-related conflict. It then applies hydrological process models to examine the consequences and benefits of three plausible build-out options relative to their impact on the availability and quality of water resources of the Willamette River basin. The hydrological outputs were estimated for a baseline year circa 1990 and projected to the year 2050; they were provided as an alternative futures analysis for integrating a scientific framework into decision-making processes for determining present and future policy relative to land use, management, and development.