title: Minimizing impacts of land use change on ecosystem services using multi-criteria heuristic analysis.
abstract: Development of natural landscapes to support human activities impacts the capacity of the landscape to provide ecosystem services. Typically, several ecosystem services are impacted at a single development site and various footprint scenarios are possible, thus a multi-criteria analysis is needed. Restoration potential should also be considered for the area surrounding the permanent impact site. The primary objective of this research was to develop a heuristic approach to analyze multiple criteria (e.g. impacts to various ecosystem services) in a spatial configuration with many potential development sites. The approach was to: (1) quantify the magnitude of terrestrial ecosystem service (biodiversity, carbon sequestration, nutrient and sediment retention, and pollination) impacts associated with a suite of land use change scenarios using the InVEST model; (2) normalize results across categories of ecosystem services to allow cross-service comparison; (3) apply the multi-criteria heuristic algorithm to select sites with the least impact to ecosystem services, including a spatial criterion (separation between sites). As a case study, the multi-criteria impact minimization algorithm was applied to InVEST output to select 25 potential development sites out of 204 possible locations (selected by other criteria) within a 24,000 ha property. This study advanced a generally applicable spatial multi-criteria approach for 1) considering many land use footprint scenarios, 2) balancing impact decisions across a suite of ecosystem services, and 3) determining the restoration potential of ecosystem services after impacts.
authors: Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, 3420 & 3418 Bren Hall, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, USA. Electronic address: keller@bren.ucsb.edu.
authors: Arturo A
authors: AA
authors: Keller
authors: Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, 3420 & 3418 Bren Hall, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, USA.
authors: Eric
authors: E
authors: Fournier
authors: Electric Power Research Institute, 3420 Hillview Avenue, Palo Alto, CA, 94304, USA.
authors: Jessica
authors: J
authors: Fox
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D044822:Biodiversity; D057965:Carbon Sequestration; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources / Q000379:methods; D017753:Ecosystem; D000066506:Heuristics; D006801:Humans; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D054817:Pollination
keywords: Decision making; Ecosystem services; InVEST; Land management; Modeling