Linking Land UseLand Cover and Ecosystem Services towards an operational approach

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Linking Land Use/Land Cover and Ecosystem
Services towards an operational approach

• Austin Troy, Matthew A. Wilson, Kenneth Bagstad
  and Shuang Liu

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Knowledge Transfer

• Ecosystem service-based decision making
  frequently relies on expert knowledge transfer,
  that is, using studies from other regions on
  resource types that are similar to those in the
  policy site in question.
• Economic value transfer is not the only method of
  knowledge transfer for assessing ecosystem
  services functions or models that describe
  ecosystem processes can also be transferred.

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Overview of Talk

• A Typology
• a framework of concepts and relationships
• in order to share common understanding of the
  structure of information
• Review of ecosystem service (ES) ontology
• Current trend be operational
• Looking to the future

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Review of ES ontology history

• Up until recently, ES are intuitively categorized
  by ecosystem functions
• 1st list in 1970, 9 services including pest
  control, insect pollination, fisheries, climate
  regulation, soil retention, flood control, soil
  formation, cycling of matter, and composition of
  the atmosphere (Mooney and Ehrlich 1997)
• 1997, Dailys book 13 services
• Costanza et al. 17 services
• Recently Millennium Assessment 21 services four
  groups.

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ES framework in MA
Separated supporting service
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Recent trend be operational

• Avoid double counting
• Primary vs. secondary values (Gren et al, 1994)
  separate supporting service and others (MA 2003)
• Intermediate vs. final (Boyd and Banzhaf 2006)
  (Fisher et al, in preparation)
• Deal with scale mismatch in management
• By spatial scales (e.g. Hein et al, 2006)
• By spatial pattern (Costanza et al.)
• Measure ecosystem functioning
• By production levels (Norberg 1999)
• Identify ESP ES providers (Kremen and Oftesld
  2005)

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Avoid doubling counting
Fisher et al. in preparation
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Deal with scale mismatch in management ES by
spatial scale
From Hein et al. 2006
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Deal with scale mismatch in management ES by
spatial behavior

• Omni-directional flow related
• global no horizontal movement such as carbon and
  existence
• local (dispersion) such as storm protection and
  waste treatment and pollination
• directional flow related flow to point of use
  such as water supply/regulation/flood protection,
  nutrient and sediment regulation
• in site point of use such as rangeland for
  livestock, nitrogen mineralization for ag
  production, soil formation raw materials.
• Recreation/cultural related flow of people to
  unique natural features features such as
  aesthetic/recreation potential

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Ecologists approach ES by production levels
Adapted from Norberg 1999
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Review on coastal and nearshore ocean valuation
studies (Wilson and Liu, in review)
Looking for the future

• Significant gaps in ecosystem service research
  invites operational ontology.

Total Studies 70 Observations 155
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Review on coastal and nearshore ocean
Total Studies 70 Observations 155 (Wilson and
Liu, in review)
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An operational ontology should

• Build bridges between our current knowledge and
  ecosystem services
• Take into consideration of the interdisiplinary
  nature of ecosystem service research
• Ideally allow us to facilitate benefit transfers
  and to predict ecosystem services
• Here is our proposal

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Ontology and ecosystem services

• Standards to improve value transfer

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Lack of common language Land use/land cover

• Traditional LU/LC
• Anderson (1976) Land Use Classification System
• Hierarchical systems (e.g., urban gtgt urban
  residential gtgt urban low density residential)
• Poorly suited for ecosystem service valuation

• Past global valuation studies
• Costanza et al. 1997 11 cover types, nested
  for coastal, forests, wetlands
• Boumans et al. 2002 11 cover types

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Limitations of value transfer

• Problems with Costanza et al. 1997, numerous
  other studies
• Forest ? forest ? forest

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Variation in studies
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Growth of ESV studies

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Proposed solution superclasses modifiers
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Important modifiers for forests
Ecological Socioeconomic

• Canopy cover
• Successional stage
• Vegetation turnover rate
• Aboveground woody biomass
• Coniferous/deciduous/mixed
• Fragmentation
• Tree age structure
• Landscape mosaic
• Soil age, type, fertility
• Fire-driven ecosystem
• Endemism level
• Riparian/non-riparian
• Native species dominance
• Climate zone
• Species diversity
• NPP
• Stage of recovery from disturbance

• Marquee status/uniqueness
• Urban-wild gradient
• Ownership status
• Size of unit area
• Human population size
• Per capita income
• Subsistence economy
• Urban pollution levels
• Watershed location
• Proximity to transportation markets
• View
• Crop type
• Legal and practical access status
• Religious and cultural value
• Wilderness area
• Congestion
• Plantation

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GrOWL Visual Language

• The blue thick arrows denote the relation of
  subclass.
• In OWL there is a special class owlThing which
  represent the class of all things
• The oval box with math sign (For
  All)WetlandType technically represent a class of
  all things that have values of property
  WetlandType within set tidal forested, tidal
  unforested, nontidal forested, nontidal
  unforested

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Class Hierarchy
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What weve done so far

• Hierarchical list of ecosystem services
• List of superclasses and modifiers (started at
  NCEAS)
• Working on a Pilot study for forests
• Working paper (Troy, Wilson, Liu and Bagstad) to
  be submitted on needs and limitations of existing
  framework

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Our vision for end of project

• Provide a Realistic basis for value transfer
• Key modifiers for different superclasses
• Identify research gaps
• Contribution and consensus-building from the ESV
  research community

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Where you come in

• Desired outcomes, by end of week
• Important modifiers and references (where
  available) for non-forest superclasses
• Desired outcomes, outside assistance by next
  conference?

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Translating into Ontology Language

• In ontology languages attribute, property, roles
  are interchangeable with modifiers
• It is common in the practice of Object Oriented
  programming to introduce a general superclass for
  classes that have common attributes. In LU
  ontology there is common property Wetland type
  which can be attributed to classes salt and fresh
  wetland.

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Example Wetland , FW, SW

• In LU ontology there is common property Wetland
  type which can be attributed to classes SW and
  FW.
• We thus can introduce a class Wetland with
  property Wetland type and declare SW and FW to be
  the subclasses of Wetland.

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GrOWL Visual Language

• The blue thick arrows denote the relation of
  subclass.
• In OWL there is a special class owlThing which
  represent the class of all things
• The oval box with math sign (For
  All)WetlandType technically represent a class of
  all things that have values of property
  WetlandType within set tidal forested, tidal
  unforested, nontidal forested, nontidal
  unforested

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Common Superclass

• There is a set of properties that appropriate for
  all ten basic categories of land use.
• All those properties could be assigned to a
  general class which will be the top class of the
  land use ontology.
• Provisionally, let us call it EcoClass. Here is
  the diagram that show EcoClass with some common
  attributes

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Class Hierarchy
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