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Landscape scale assessment of ecosystem goods and services and the extent, location, and magnitude of urban-suburban expansion
Citation:
Russell, M., A. Teague, J. Harvey, D. Dantin, J. Nestlerode, AND K. Murphy. Landscape scale assessment of ecosystem goods and services and the extent, location, and magnitude of urban-suburban expansion. US-IALE Annual Meeting, Asheville, NC, April 03 - 07, 2016.
Impact/Purpose:
There are few real world landscape scale demonstrations of assessments that have allowed the consideration of tradeoffs between development scenarios and the continued supply of valuable ecosystem goods and services. Therefore, we developed a landscape scale ecosystem goods and services assessment tool (EPA H20) that generates metrics of four different ecosystem goods and services and their values. With this tool we summarize tradeoffs related to several alternative futures in the Tampa Bay, USA watershed system as a demonstration of how the extent, location and magnitude of urban-suburban expansion can affect the value of ecosystem goods and services production at the landscape scale.
Description:
Human development adjoining coastal cities is the prevalent force changing the Anthropocene landscape. The extent, location, and magnitude of urban-suburban expansion can drastically modify how important features of ecosystems are effected. These effects are best summarized using ecosystem goods and services concepts since they present results in relatable and comparable terms to landscape managers. There are, however, few real world landscape scale demonstrations of assessments that have allowed the consideration of tradeoffs between development scenarios and the continued supply of valuable ecosystem goods and services. Ecosystem goods and services assessment tools can get quickly complicated when one begins to consider multiple ecosystems, multiple goods and services and their relative value to human beneficiaries. Many existing tools also don’t allow users to receive quick feedback from user-generated landscape change alternative scenarios. Therefore, we developed a landscape scale ecosystem goods and services assessment tool (EPA H2O) that generates metrics of four different ecosystem goods and services and their values. These include carbon sequestration into biomass as a metric of the maintenance of a more stable climate, denitrification as a metric of the production of usable water, atmospheric pollution removal as a metric of usable air, and water retention by soils as a metric of flood protection. With this tool we summarize tradeoffs related to several alternative futures in the Tampa Bay, USA watershed system as a demonstration of how the extent, location, and magnitude of urban-suburban expansion can affect the value of ecosystem goods and services production at the landscape scale.