&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
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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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