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PROTECTING ECOSYSTEM SERVICES IN THE TAUNTON RIVER WATERSHED, MASSACHUSETTS, USA
Citation:
Copeland, J., A. Kuhn, AND M. Charpentier. PROTECTING ECOSYSTEM SERVICES IN THE TAUNTON RIVER WATERSHED, MASSACHUSETTS, USA. Esri International Users Conference, San Diego, CA, July 08 - 12, 2019.
Impact/Purpose:
Healthy and resilient coastal watersheds are essential to human well-being and environmental health. A resilient watershed is one that can adjust to stresses and disturbances while still being able to provide valuable ecosystem services and functions, such as clean and plentiful water, flood protection,and essential habitat. Coastal watersheds and communities are experiencing the combined effects of increasing threats from development and climate change. To strengthen ecological and economic resiliency, these communities need to address these threats and make decisions that will minimize risk and help protect, maintain, and restore important ecosystem services. This research provides a basis for informed decision making, and adaptive management techniques and tools, to both maintain our healthy waters and to improve degraded coastal systems
Description:
Healthy and resilient watersheds are essential to human well-being and environmental health. Coastal watersheds and communities are experiencing the combined effects of increasing threats from development and climate change. Communities need to address these threats and make decisions that will minimize risk and help protect, maintain and restore the ecosystem services (ESs) provided by these watersheds. We are developing an integrated assessment framework to help watershed managers, coastal communities and other stakeholders strengthen coastal resiliency by identifying and prioritizing conservation and restoration efforts within coastal communities. We've developed an associated Decision Support System (DSS) that allows for analysis of individual ecological units and their associated ESs at multiple scales. This poster describes how the DSS is being applied to the Taunton River Watershed, MA, USA. The Taunton River is the longest undammed coastal river in New England and is the largest freshwater contributor to the Narragansett Bay. The most downstream 18-mile section of the Taunton River is tidal which allows the river to support both fresh and salt-water aquatic and riparian species including the most productive river herring run in Massachusetts. It has been designated as a National Wild and Scenic River by the National Park Service. We defined 6 habitat types within the Taunton River watershed that provide important ecosystem services: freshwater riparian wetlands, upland wetlands, saltwater wetlands, riparian forests, upland forests and streams. This poster will demonstrate how our DSS allows decision managers to identify freshwater riparian wetlands that are important for protection. There are approximately 37,000 acres of freshwater riparian wetlands in the Taunton River watershed. Some of the ecosystem services provided by freshwater riparian wetlands are: protection from flooding and extreme weather events, water quality protection, habitat/biodiversity protection and preservation of open space. Our DSS helps identify features in the watershed that are most important for the protection of these ESs. In addition, it allows for the development of scenarios that weigh one or more ESs more heavily in order to optimize protection and strengthen watershed resiliency.