Our key research objectives and hypotheses
The following research objectives apply to our ecosystem services of interest: food, timber, and water provisioning, water purification, and carbon sequestration.
- Determine the biophysical provision, use, and economic value of ecosystem services and habitat currently provided by the study landscape at various scales, from farm to landscape.
- Assess how the provision, use, and economic value of ecosystem services are expected to change in the study region due to land use/land cover (LULC) and climate change, separately and jointly, at multiple spatial scales. Further, analyze how these changes will affect animal species that rely on habitat in the study area.
- Determine what areas should be targeted for less intensive land management practice or conservation in order to best sustain ecosystem services provision, use, and value and habitat under a range of LULC change and climate change scenarios. We will use a cost-effectiveness criterion to identify these areas that can provide the greatest increase or maintenance of ecosystem service provision per dollar of economic opportunity cost will be ranked highly.
- Compare the outputs of two ecosystem service models – InVEST and COTE – and recommend improvements in each when possible used separately or jointly.
- Engage policy stakeholders to explore the interaction of ecosystem service science, scale, and complex policy negotiations.
- The extent, density, and spatial pattern of LULC affect the provision, use, and value of ecosystem services. (objective #1)
- Land development and climate change will cause the provision, use, and value of some services to increase while others will decrease compared to the reference condition (objective #2).
- The combined effects of LULC change and climate change on ecosystem service provision, use, and value will not be the same as the sum of their individual effects (objective #2).
- The economic value of ecosystem services is lower under spatially undifferentiated land management
and conservation approaches than under schemes that target parcels in order of their cost-
effectiveness of desired service provision (objective #3).
- The provision of ecosystem services is more costly to society if a protection approach does not
consider the opportunity cost of less intensive land management and conservation actions (objective
- Changes in LULC at one location in the landscape can shift ecosystem services provision and value at
other points on the landscape (objectives #2 and #4).
- Ecosystem services are produced and sensitive to LULC and climate change effects at different spatial
scales (objective #4). 8)Modeled results from the ecosystem service quantification methods vary in content and quality at different scales (objective #4)