College of Agriculture & Natural Resources
Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/1598
The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations.
Browse
4 results
Search Results
Item LEVERAGING FINE-SCALE GEOSPATIAL DATA TO ADVANCE BIODIVERSITY SENSITIVE URBAN PLANNING, WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT, AND GREEN CORRIDOR DESIGN: APPLICATION TO THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA(2023) Spivy, Annette Leah; Mullinax, Jennifer; Environmental Science and Technology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Typically, urban wildlife communities are made up of generalist species that are adept at utilizing human resources. However, many wildlife species struggle in the face of extensive urbanization and would benefit from increased conservation of urban green space, increased urban landscape connectivity, and proactive wildlife population management strategies. Unfortunately, maintaining and/or increasing the availability of quality habitat for biodiversity conservation in urban areas can be challenging as these conservation efforts are often influenced by the decreasing availability of critical resources and the challenges in allocating those resources among competing socioeconomic and environmental needs. Therefore, to improve the management and conservation of urban wildlife, accurate measurements of potential trade-offs between the environmental, economic, and social goals and management actions of a city’s sustainable development plan are needed. Until now, much of the effort in wildlife habitat modeling and biodiversity mapping has been across large geographic areas or broad spatial scales. Those efforts have provided valuable insights into overall biodiversity patterns, identifying key hotspots, and understanding large-scale ecological processes. However, in urban environments, the dynamics of wildlife, habitat availability, and ecosystem services operate differently than in natural or rural landscapes. As urbanization continues to expand, there is a growing need to focus on fine-scale factors to address specific conservation challenges in urban systems. This research seeks to address some of these challenges and demonstrates how new and traditional species-relevant geospatial datasets can be leveraged in urban planning and design to drive local-scale conservation decisions that put biodiversity in the forefront. This work links long-term, multi-taxon, wildlife survey data and high-resolution land use and land cover datasets (1m) to determine where high-quality, well-connected habitats exist, or could most easily be justified and acquired, within the District of Columbia. This work also evaluates the spatial patterns of ecosystem service provisions across the urban landscape to identify “win-win” areas for conservation or restoration that will benefit both biodiversity and human wellbeing. Finally, the work evaluates a local translocation effort of the vulnerable eastern box turtle (Terrapene carolina carolina) to inform mitigation strategies when a sudden loss of habitat in an urban environment is inevitable. This research is particularly relevant to wildlife managers and urban planners in highly urbanized areas, where large parcels of land with suitable habitat are minimal and municipal environmental departments are often under-resourced. Local policymakers interested in incentivizing conservation efforts to meet state or national goals can use this information for strategic urban conservation initiatives.Item The Eco-Techno Spectrum: Exploring Knowledge Systems’ Challenges in Green Infrastructure Management(Cogitatio Press, 2021-01-26) Matsler, A. Marissa; Miller, Thaddeus R.; Groffman, Peter M.Infrastructure crises are not only technical problems for engineers to solve—they also present social, ecological, financial, and political challenges. Addressing infrastructure problems thus requires a robust planning process that includes examination of the social and ecological systems supporting infrastructure, alongside technical systems. An integrative Social, Ecological, and Technological Systems (SETS) analysis of infrastructure solutions can complement the planning process by revealing potential trade-offs that are often overlooked in standard procedures. We explore the interconnected SETS of the infrastructure problem in the US through comparative case studies of green infrastructure (GI) development in Portland and Baltimore. Currently a popular infrastructure solution to a wide variety of urban ills, GI is the use and mimicry of ecological components (e.g., plants) to perform municipal services (e.g., stormwater management). We develop the ecological-technological spectrum—or ‘eco-techno spectrum’—as a framing tool to bridge all three SETS dimensions. The eco-techno spectrum becomes a platform to explore the institutional knowledge system dynamics of GI development where social dimensions are organized across ecological and technological aspects of GI, exposing how governance differs across specific forms of ecological and technological hybridity. In this study, we highlight the knowledge system challenges of urban planning institutions as a key consideration in the realization of innovative infrastructure crisis ‘fixes.’ Disconnected definition and measurement of GI emerge as two distinct challenges across the knowledge systems examined. By revealing and discussing these challenges, we can begin to recognize—and better plan for—gaps in municipal planning knowledge systems, promoting decisions that address the roots of infrastructure crises rather than treating only their symptoms.Item VALUING FOREST ECOSYSTEM SERVICES IN MARYLAND AND SUGGESTING FAIR PAYMENT USING THE PRINCIPLES OF SYSTEMS ECOLOGY(2012) Campbell, Elliott Thomas; Tilley, David R; Environmental Science and Technology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Forests provide a multitude of vital benefits to the ecosystems, economies and people of Maryland. Forests regulate atmospheric gas exchange, ameliorate micro-climates, stabilize coastlines and riverbanks, provide wildlife habitat, generate and maintain soils, improve water quality, dampen storm flows, abate air pollution, and provide food, fiber, fuel and shelter. While markets exist to set the price for an economic good like timber, many of the ecosystem services listed above are poorly valued, if at all. This research provides a connection between biophysical and economic methods for evaluating the environment. The hydrology, soil, carbon, air pollution, pollination and biodiversity of a forest are measured from a biophysical standpoint with emergy and converted to dollars using new emergy-to-dollar ratios; termed eco-prices. The functioning of the forest is compared to the most likely alternative land-use (suburbia) and biophysical value is assigned based on this difference. The novel method for assigning value to ecosystem services and the ability to link biophysical evaluation and economic valuation has the potential to be influential in how ecosystem services are incorporated into the economy and used to guide decision making in the future. This research seeks to value ecosystem services provided by forests in Maryland and proposes that an Ecological Investment Corporation (EIC) could be an additional tool for society to direct payments from consumers to land stewards to encourage the production of ecosystem services. To ensure that Maryland forests continue to produce ecosystem services at the current rate, land stewards should receive compensation between $178 and $744 million. On a per capita basis, a resident of Maryland enjoys $850 worth of ecosystem services from the forest as public value. On an area basis, the typical acre of forest in Maryland generates over $2000 of ecosystem services as public value. Based on our compensation estimates for ecosystem services, a land steward should receive a fair payment price of $71 to $298 per year per a typical acre of forest. This research is a step forward for emergy science, providing novel methods for quantifying ecosystem services, calculating ecological debt, and converting renewable emergy flows to dollars.Item Ecological Values and Ecosystem Services of Natural Forests: A Study of Prince William Forest Park, Virginia(2010) Dawson, Allen; Sullivan, Joseph; Plant Science and Landscape Architecture (PSLA); Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Abstract The Urban Forest Effects (UFORE) model developed by the USDA Forest Service quantifies the ecological benefits of urban forests. UFORE has been used to analyze many urban areas, including National Park land in Washington, D.C., but has not been applied to natural forests. We conducted a UFORE analysis of Prince William Forest Park for species composition and individual tree characteristics including tree height, DBH, canopy architecture, and general tree health, collecting data during the 2007 field season. The results show that the park contains over 6,287,000 trees and these trees store 394,000 tons of carbon with an annual net sequestration rate of 12,300 tons. This forest also abates 414 tons of air pollution annually. These results quantify and affirm to policymakers and the public the value and ecological importance of the forests managed by the National Park Service surrounding metropolitan Washington, D.C.