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A methodology for the preliminary scoping of future changes in ecosystem services, with an illustration from the future midwestern landscapes study
Citation:
BRUINS, R. J., S. E. FRANSON, W. E. FOSTER, F. B. DANIEL, AND P. B. Woodbury. A methodology for the preliminary scoping of future changes in ecosystem services, with an illustration from the future midwestern landscapes study. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, EPA/600/R-09/134, 2009.
Impact/Purpose:
This new methodology offers a well-defined procedure for managing ecological complexity and improving study design. Without this scoping methodology, ecosystem service assessments may suffer from lack of rigor in the design process, and therefore default to approaches of convenience. Results of this analysis will guide analyses for the next four years for the Future Midwestern Landscapes place-based study by identifying where the largest changes in services are likely to occur, where the largest gaps exist in our knowledge base, and where the greatest ucertainties lie in quantifying changes in ecosystem service supply and demand as a function of land use choices in the Midwest.
Description:
The product is a white paper defining a methodology for the preliminary scoping of future changes in ecosystem services, with an Illustration from the Future Midwestern Landscapes Study. The scoping method develops a hierarchy of relevant societal values, identifies the ecosystem services that support those values, and then cross-links these services to a list of critical environmental elements that are sensitive to the drivers of change. Researchers then use best professional judgment (based on experience and supported by scientific literature) to rate these expected effects one by one in a large matrix. Ratings are then combined and graphically arrayed to create snapshots of the kinds of changes the researchers hypothesize to be most likely. These findings are then used to answer a set of scoping questions that can help ensure that studies focus on important changes, using appropriate models. The paper enumerates the many pathways of influence whereby land-use or land cover changes in the Midwest (such as changes in crops grown, cropping practices used, or land conversion from one major use category to another) in response to land use policies and other major drivers of change can affect the ecosystem services provided by Midwestern landscapes. It will then describe two alternative future scenarios for the Midwest - a Biofuel Targets (BT) scenario representing current policies focusing on increases in biofuel production, and a multiple services (MS) scenario in which a hypothetical policy encourages production of a wider range of ecosystem services. It hypothesizes the directions and orders-of-magnitude of potential changes in land use patterns, environmental stressors and ecosystem services for each future scenario in the Midwest.