The Impact of Projected Land Use Changes on the Availability of Ecosystem Services in the Upper Flint River Watershed, USA

Abstract

The conversion of forestlands to alternative land uses is a growing worldwide concern, given the wide range of provisioning and regulating ecosystem services (ES) provided by forests. We applied a scenario-based land-use/land-cover (LULC) projection technique integrating societal preferences, conservation policies, and socio-economic factors to the Upper Flint River Watershed in the Atlanta, Georgia (USA) metropolitan area. We employed the InVEST modeling toolset to assess the impact of anticipated LULC changes on ES under each development scenario. Our simulations projected a consistent conversion from Deciduous/Mixed Forests to either Urban or Evergreen forests across all scenarios, leading to a significant decline in ES. We quantified the economic impacts of this ES loss, conservatively estimated as representing millions of dollars per year under a Business as Usual scenario in just carbon and water services alone. Integrating social and policy drivers into our projection approach yielded policy-relevant results and identified the need for conservation policy instruments to protect forested ecosystems with higher conservation values. Existing conservation policies are unlikely to stem the loss of important ES, and there may be a need to consider more aggressive policies to prevent further degradation of watersheds, such as the one analyzed here.