Developing an Ecosystem Services Online Decision Support Tool to Assess the Impacts of Climate Change and Urban Growth in the Santa Cruz Watershed; Where We Live, Work, and Play

Norman, Laura M.; Tallent-Halsell, Nita G.; Labiosa, William; Weber, Matt; McCoy, Amy; Hirschboeck, Katie; Callegary, James B.; Riper, Charles van; Gray, Floyd

doi:10.3390/su2072044

Cited by 24 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…This model is being applied at the Santa Cruz Watershed to investigate the costs and benefits of binational land-use and water management practices (SCWEPM; Norman et al, 2010). Inputs to the SCWEPM include biophysical and socio-economic models, as well as climate and land-use change scenarios.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Developing spatially explicit footprints of plausible land-use scenarios in the Santa Cruz Watershed, Arizona and Sonora

Norman

Feller

Villarreal

2012

Landscape and Urban Planning

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h i g h l i g h t sThe SLEUTH model is applied to a binational dryland watershed to develop future scenarios. Three scenarios simulate changing spatial patterns to help guide planning for the future. Limit growth beyond cross-border commerce areas, protects forests and wildlife habitat. Trade-offs between urban area, the economy, and environmental impacts can be realized. a b s t r a c tThe SLEUTH urban growth model is applied to a binational dryland watershed to envision and evaluate plausible future scenarios of land use change into the year 2050. Our objective was to create a suite of geospatial footprints portraying potential land use change that can be used to aid binational decision-makers in assessing the impacts relative to sustainability of natural resources and potential socio-ecological consequences of proposed land-use management. Three alternatives are designed to simulate different conditions: (i) a Current Trends Scenario of unmanaged exponential growth, (ii) a Conservation Scenario with managed growth to protect the environment, and (iii) a Megalopolis Scenario in which growth is accentuated around a defined international trade corridor. The model was calibrated with historical data extracted from a time series of satellite images. Model materials, methodology, and results are presented. Our Current Trends Scenario predicts the footprint of urban growth to approximately triple from 2009 to 2050, which is corroborated by local population estimates. The Conservation Scenario results in protecting 46% more of the Evergreen class (more than 150,000 acres) than the Current Trends Scenario and approximately 95,000 acres of Barren Land, Crops, Deciduous Forest (Mesquite Bosque), Grassland/Herbaceous, Urban/Recreational Grasses, and Wetlands classes combined. The Megalopolis Scenario results also depict the preservation of some of these land-use classes compared to the Current Trends Scenario, most notably in the environmentally important headwaters region. Connectivity and areal extent of land cover types that provide wildlife habitat were preserved under the alternative scenarios when compared to Current Trends.Published by Elsevier B.V.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Developing spatially explicit footprints of plausible land-use scenarios in the Santa Cruz Watershed, Arizona and Sonora

Norman

Feller

Villarreal

2012

Landscape and Urban Planning

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“…Through this process, it is easy to identify where "non-capable" areas can be eliminated and also to display an ordinal assignment of suitability to "capable" areas. In the fall of 2009, the EPA's Ecosystem Services Research Program (ESRP) joined the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to develop the EPM to examine alternative scenarios of ecosystem service provisioning for the binational Santa Cruz Watershed [23]. Figure 4 is a conceptual graphic of the three sub-models of the SCWEPM, attributes and ecosystem services.…”

Section: Santa Cruz Watershed Ecosystem Portfolio Model (Scwepm)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The Ecosystem Portfolio Model, an online decision support GIS tool, uses the concepts of the three "pillars" of sustainability as sub-models: the Ecological-Value Submodel (EVM), the Human Well-Being Submodel (HWB) and the Market Land-Price Submodel (MLP), which can be analyzed under various scenarios [23,27,28]. The EPM approach embraces traditional geospatial map overlay analysis for regional ecological planning, originally introduced by McHarg [29], and provides for multiple scenarios of ecosystem services provisioning to be visualized for suitability/capability analysis.…”

Section: Santa Cruz Watershed Ecosystem Portfolio Model (Scwepm)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Costs of maintaining instream flow and off-channel use include monetary expenses needed to expand, operate and maintain the wastewater treatment plants and delivery infrastructure, as well as non-monetary expenses associated with the potential for effluent to degrade environmental and drinking-water quality. As future pressures of climate and population change increase, it is important to consider the costs and benefits of different scenarios of managing binational resources using terminology that can be acceptable to all stakeholders [23].…”

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confidence: 99%

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Framing Scenarios of Binational Water Policy with a Tool to Visualize, Quantify and Valuate Changes in Ecosystem Services

Norman

Villarreal

Niraula

et al. 2013

Water

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Abstract:In the Santa Cruz Watershed, located on the Arizona-Sonora portion of the U.S.-Mexico border, an international wastewater treatment plant treats wastewater from cities on both sides of the border, before discharging it into the river in Arizona. These artificial flows often subsidize important perennial surface water ecosystems in the region. An explicit understanding of the benefits of maintaining instream flow for present and future generations requires the ability to assess and understand the important trade-offs implicit in water-resource management decisions. In this paper, we outline an approach for modeling and visualizing impacts of management decisions in terms of rare terrestrial and aquatic wildlife, vegetation, surface water, groundwater recharge, real-estate values and socio-environmental vulnerable communities. We identify and quantify ecosystem services and model the potential reduction in effluent discharge to the U.S. that is under scrutiny by binational water policy makers and of concern to stakeholders. Results of service provisioning are presented, and implications for policy makers and resource managers are discussed. This paper presents a robust ecosystem services assessment of multiple

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“…Such tools range from standalone mapping applications (e.g. Norman et al, 2010;Pert et al, 2013) to online tools or tools tightly coupled to GIS or other software types (Roberts et al, 2010). Yet the exponential increase of the number of these tools allows users to create maps "easily" with all the risks such an approach entails, like not considering errors or uncertainties, when using this information for decision making (Jacobs et al, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

A visualization and data-sharing tool for ecosystem service maps: Lessons learnt, challenges and the way forward

et al. 2015

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a b s t r a c tA plurality in methods, models, terminologies is used to assess, quantify, map and communicate ecosystem services (ES). The Thematic Working Groups on Mapping (TWG4) and Modeling ES (TWG5) of the Ecosystem Service Partnership (ESP), recent literature and expert workshops, have highlighted the need for developing a platform that systematically organizes, visualizes and shares ES maps and related information. This led to the development of the Ecosystem Services Partnership Visualization Tool (ESP-VT), an open-access interactive platform that hosts a catalogue of ES maps with information on indicators, models and used data. Users can upload or download ES maps and associated information. ESP-VT aims at increasing transparency in ES mapping approaches to facilitate the flow of information within the ES community from academics to policy-makers and practitioners. Populating the ESP-VT with ES maps from different geographic locations, across different spatial scales, using different models and with various purposes, leads to a diverse and heterogeneous ES map library. The scientific community has not yet agreed on standards for ES terminology, methodologies and maps. However we do believe that populating and using the ESP-VT can set a basis for developing such standards and serve towards achieving interoperability among the varying ES related tools.

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Developing an Ecosystem Services Online Decision Support Tool to Assess the Impacts of Climate Change and Urban Growth in the Santa Cruz Watershed; Where We Live, Work, and Play

Cited by 24 publications

References 29 publications

Developing spatially explicit footprints of plausible land-use scenarios in the Santa Cruz Watershed, Arizona and Sonora

Developing spatially explicit footprints of plausible land-use scenarios in the Santa Cruz Watershed, Arizona and Sonora

Framing Scenarios of Binational Water Policy with a Tool to Visualize, Quantify and Valuate Changes in Ecosystem Services

A visualization and data-sharing tool for ecosystem service maps: Lessons learnt, challenges and the way forward

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