&EPA
    www.epa.gov/ord
science   in   ACTION
BUILDING A SCIENTIFIC FOUNDATION FOR SOUND ENVIRONMENTAL DECISIONS
                                                                   ECOLOGICAL
                                                                   RESEARCH PROGRAM
                                                                   In cooperation 'with Regions 5, 7 and 8
FUTURE MIDWESTERN LANDSCAPES STUDY
FOCUSES ON  ECOSYSTEM SERVICES
Issue:
EPA's Ecological Research Program
(ERP) in the Office of Research and
Development (ORD) is focused on the
study of ecosystem services, or the
benefits to human well-being provided
by ecological systems. The ERP is
initiating studies of ecosystem services
in a number of specific places in the
United States to better understand
these services, and to develop
analytical tools that enable decision-
makers to take these benefits into
account.

One study will be conducted in the
Midwest. The Midwest region is
critically important in supplying
national and global demand for food,
fiber, and fuel. Midwestern landscapes
also play essential roles in the supply
of water to homes and farms,
recreation, flood control, and a host of
other benefits essential to the quality
of life.

The rapid growth of the biofuels
industry, which uses crops and other
biomass to make liquid fuel, is causing
changes in agricultural practices and
land uses across the U.S., and most
strikingly in the Midwest. EPA's
        Regional offices are
        interested in the long-term
        environmental implications
        of these changes. Therefore
        one component of the ERP,
        the Future Midwestern
        Landscapes (FML) Study,
        will examine projected
        changes in landscapes and
        ecosystem services in the
        Midwest. Given its
        immediate influence, biofuel
        production  will be studied as a
        primary driver of landscape change.
|  | Study Area
   Bioethanol plants under construction
   Bioethanol plants in production
lewable Fuels As;
 May. 2007
 Figure 1. Bioethanol plants in the U.S. as of May, 2007
 and proposed ecosystem services study area
        Scientific Objectives:
        The study goals are to:
          • Understand how current and
           projected land uses affect the
           ecosystem services provided by
           Midwestern landscapes.
          • Provide spatially explicit
           information that will enable EPA
           Regions and Programs to articulate
           sustainable approaches to
           environmental management.
          • Develop web-based tools depicting
           alternative futures so users can
           evaluate trade-offs affecting
           ecosystem services.
       Application and Impact:
       For a large area of the Midwest,
       researchers will work with decision
       makers and use economic and spatial
       modeling tools to construct alternative
       landscapes that reflect different
       assumptions about biofuels policy,
       technology, and landscape
       management over the next 10-20
       years. Some of these will be at the
       scale of the entire study region, others
       at subregional or watershed scales.
       Two distinct types of future scenarios
       will be created, differing in how
       landscape change is approached:

       Policy-driven scenarios will use
       forecasting tools to project the
       landscapes that would be expected to
        U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
        Office of Research and Development
                                                                              continued on back

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       c/EPA
       www.epa.gov/ord
science   in  ACTION
BUILDING A SCIENTIFIC FOUNDATION FOR SOUND ENVIRONMENTAL  DECISIONS
             ECOLOGICAL  RESEARCH  PROGRAM
            continued from front

result from current or potential energy
and agricultural policies. These
landscapes will be analyzed to
evaluate the regional-scale impacts on
ecosystem services as well as
implications to national-scale issues
such as chemical runoff into the
Mississippi River and Lake Erie and
loss of critical  migratory bird habitat.

Landscape design-driven scenarios
will entail a suite of landscapes that
seek to maximize all ecosystem
services by placing crops according to
soil erodability and productivity,
opportunities to provide wildlife
habitat, protection of drinking water,
etc.  These scenarios will help users to
explore what is possible and to identify
goals at the local or regional level.

The ecosystem services associated
with each alternative landscape will be
described and compared. A base year
of 2005 also will be analyzed to
capture a realistic, yet recent "pre-
biofuels" landscape as a baseline;
earlier years also may be examined to
identify crop rotations in use.  For
some ecosystem services, descriptions
are expected to be highly quantitative
and include estimates of monetary
value; for others only rough
approximations will be possible. Many
ecosystem services will require that we
draw upon the  expertise of other
federal agencies.

Ecosystem services we will seek to
assess include:
• Carbon balance  (affects climate)
          Soil productivity (affects
           food and energy security)
          Hydrology and water
           quality (affect water
           supply, flooding,
           downstream aquatic
           ecosystems, recreation)
          Wildlife habitat and other
           natural areas (affect
           biodiversity and
           recreation)
          Air quality (affects health)
   Scenario Definition
   •  Stakeholder meetings will explore values
     related to alternative futures for the Midwest;
   Scenario Construction
   •  Future economic drivers and land cover will be
     modeled for each scenario
   Scenario Analysis
   •  Ecosystem services will be modeled and
     compared to baseline conditions
   Scenario/Risk Assessment
   •  Web-based tools will be developed to
     visualize and present results
   Risk Management
   •  Decision makers using these tools will be
     better informed when choosing courses of
     action
Figure 2. Overview of Research Approach (Liu et al. 2007)
        The landscape analysis methods
        developed for the FML Study will be
        implemented as a web-based
        environmental decision toolkit (EDT),
        similar to other toolkits previously
        created under EPA's Regional
        Vulnerability Assessment Program
        (ReVA). We anticipate that the future
        FML-EDT will allow users to compare
        alternative Midwestern futures by
        examining trade-offs - that is, changes
        in the provision of a wide variety of
        ecosystem services - at both local and
        regional scales.

        For local-scale decision-makers, we
        will also investigate the feasibility of
        incorporating ecosystem services into
        two existing software applications.
        The first is I-FARM, a popular, online
        integrated crop and livestock
        production and biomass planning tool
        that is operated by the Leopold Center
        for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa
        State University, and provides a
        profitability  analysis of different crops.
        The second is Purdue University's
        Long-Term Hydrologic Impact
        Assessment / Environmental Quality
          Incentives Program (L-THIA/EQIP),
          which offers decision-support on best
          management practices to protect water
          quality.

          General References:
          Liu, Y., M. Mahmoud, H. Hartmann, et al., 2007.
          Formal scenario development for environmental
          impact assessment studies, in Jakeman, A., A.
          Voinov, A. E. Rizzoli, and S. Chen (eds), Sfafe
          of the Art and Futures in Environmental
          Modeling and Software. Elsevier (accepted).

          USDA, 2007. An Analysis of the Effects of an
          Expansion in Biofuel Demand on U.S.
          Agriculture.  USDA, ERS. 69 pp.

          Westcott, P.C., 2007. Ethanol Expansion in the
          United States: How Will the Agricultural Sector
          Adjust? USDA FDS-07D-01. 20pp.
          Contacts:

          ORD:


          Region 7:


          Region 5:


          Region 8
Randy Bruins
bruins.randy@epa.gov
513-569-7581
Brenda Groskinsky
qroskinskv.brenda@epa.gov
913-551-7188
David Macarus
macarus.david@epa.gov
312-353-5814
Suzanne Stevenson
stevenson.suzanne@epa.gov
303-312-6030
         September 2007
          U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
          Office of Research and Development

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