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Modeling the effects of climate change on
multiple ecosystem services
Marc Conte, Josh Lawler, Erik Nelson, and Sarah Shafer
Marc Conte
Stanford University
Natural Capital Project
Ecosystem services
• Ecosystems provide a wide array of goods and services
of value to people (ecosystem services)
– Provision entails foregone intensive land-use
– Tradeoff between social value of provision vs private payoffs
• Service supply is determined by biophysical properties,
based on land cover
• Realized supply is a function of service supply and
demand for services from society
Welfare impacts of climate change
Research questions
• How will ecosystem services change as climate regimes
shift?
• How will land-use decisions that ignore climate change
impact the provision and value of different services?
• How would landowners alter land-use decisions if the
impacts of climate change were considered?
Approach -- InVEST
• GIS-based tool that uses biophysical and economic
models to quantify and value a suite of ecosystem
services
• InVEST converts user-provided data into spatiallyexplicit outputs of service provision and valuation
– Scenario-based model relevant for policymakers
– Capacity to address biodiversity and multiple services
• Tiered models provide outputs at varying spatial and
temporal resolutions given data availability
• Product of The Natural Capital Project
Approach -- Methodology
• We compare provision under different climate regimes
on predicted future landscapes in the Willamette Basin
– Climates
• 2000 (observed)
• 2055 (estimated from Hadley GCM)
– Landscapes (Hulse et al., 2002)
• Planned Trend
• Conservation
• Development
• We consider the impact of altered climate on
– Water available for irrigation
– Carbon storage and sequestration
– Biodiversity
Approach -- Climate data
• Future climate regime derived from the UKMO-HadCM3
coupled atmosphere-ocean GCM simulation under the
A2 emissions scenario
– Total monthly precipitation
– Mean monthly temperature
• The predicted climate variables were downscaled
spatially to a 30-second grid covering the Willamette
Basin (Lawler et al., in press)
Approach -- Irrigation
• We focus on five different agricultural products
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Blackberries/Raspberries
Blueberries
Strawberries
Wine grapes
• CropWat 4.0 (FAO, 1992) predicts crop-specific irrigation
demand based on local climate regime
Irrigation -- InVEST
Change in irrigation demand
Approach -- Carbon
• Changes in carbon storage and sequestration are driven
by changes in vegetative cover due to climate change
– We track carbon stored in biomass and soil
• Given timber harvest in the area, we consider the extent
to which management might moderate predicted veg
change
– Unmanaged scenarios -- maps show all changes predicted by
cover model
– Managed scenarios -- maps identify changes that cannot be
mitigated by society
Carbon -- InVEST
Approach -- Biodiversity
• Calculate a marginal biodiversity value for each parcel
(500 ha hexagon)
• MBV~proportion of total biodiversity contained on parcel
– Function of number of species with potential range overlapping
the parcel
– Function of fraction of each species’ compatible habitat area
contained by the parcel (breeding or foraging)
• Consider change in MBV from 2000 to 2050 climates
– In 2000, data on 190 native species
– Allow movement into/out of Basin under future climate regime
Biodiversity
Concluding thoughts
• Climate change will impact social welfare through effects
on ecosystem-service provision
• Land-use plans can be adjusted to mitigate welfare
impacts of climate change
• Land management may help offset welfare impacts of
climate change
• http://invest.ecoinformatics.org