PARENT SESSION
Contributed Oral Session 162: Landscape Ecology: Management; Vegetation Dynamics
Friday, August 12, 8:00 AM - 11:30 AM, Meeting Room 520 A, Level 5, Palais des congrès de Montréal

Scaling Ecological Services for Analysis of Proposed Actions.

Goran, William^*,1, Balbach, Harold¹, Holst, Robert², Pitts, Donald¹, ¹ Engineer Research and Development Center, Champaign, IL² Strategic Environmental Reseach and Development Pgm., Arlington, VA

ABSTRACT- Effectively understanding the potential impacts of proposed actions on either public or private lands requires an improved ability to quantify these impacts in terms of ecological services provided on these lands. There are a diverse set of services provided by a landscape, and our view of these services changes as the spatial and temporal scales of consideration increase or decrease. A suite of ecological services such as micro-climatic modifications, providing for biological diversity, generated total biomass, enhanced water retention, enhanced soil quality, filtered surface waters from sediment and excessive nutrients, sequestered carbon, species habitat provided and flood protection provided are examples. As our ability to understand, describe and quantify these ecological services improves, specific proposed actions (e.g. new suburban development, increase or decrease in off-road vehicle traffic on public land, designation of portion of national forest as wilderness area, change in use of land from animal grazing to bombing range) will be evaluated in terms of the anticipated changes or impacts related to each of these services. In addition, these examinations will need to consider changes at the micro or plot, management unit, watershed and regional scales and at multiple temporal scales. The maturity of each of the selected ecological services is examined in terms of the feasibility of their use within the next five to ten years to evaluate proposed actions, primarily on public lands.

Key words: eco-services