Project Work Plan

Study Title: A GIS-Based Decision-Support Tool to Evaluate Land Management Policies in South Florida
Study Start Date: October 1, 2005   Study End Date: September 30, 2009
Web Sites:
Location (Subregions, Counties, Park or Refuge): Biscayne Bay/Everglades land bridge, see Appendix 1.
Funding Source: USGS Greater Everglades Priority Ecosystems Science (GE PES) and ENP Critical Ecosystems Studies Initiative (CESI)
Other Complementary Funding Source(s): USGS Science Impact Program (SI)
Funding History:
Principal Investigator(s): Richard Bernknopf, Paul Hearn
Study Personnel: Paul Amos, David Brookshire, Nina Burkardt, Tom Daniels, Ilse Frank, Kevin Gillen, Caroline Hermans, Dianna Hogan, Lynne Koontz, William Labiosa, Berton Lamb, Tony Smith, David Strong, Alicia Torregrosa, Susan Wachter, Anne Wein
Supporting Organizations: University of Florida Fort Lauderdale Research and Education Center, University of New Mexico Economics Department, and University of Pennsylvania Department of City and Regional Planning, Electrical and Systems Engineering Department, and Wharton School of Business
Associated / Linked Studies:

Overview & Objective(s): The primary objective of the project is to develop an ecosystem portfolio model (EPM) for resource managers and decision makers to evaluate land use decisions that attempt to maintain a balance between the ecological health of South Florida parks and refuges and the increasing pressures of urban development. The EPM, a Geographic Information System based decision support tool, will integrate natural science and economic information to support land use planning, land acquisition strategies, and regulatory decisions. The EPM will contribute to improved public understanding and awareness of the importance of protecting South Florida ecosystem functions and their socioeconomic implications.

Specific Relevance to Major Unanswered Questions and Information Needs Identified:

The project is designed to address the following questions and needs in the DOI Science Plan (2005):

• What are the socioeconomic consequences of development and preservation/restoration decisions associated with critical components of the South Florida ecosystem?
• Are there ways to increase sustainable compatibility of the built environment with natural system needs of national parks and refuges - especially, relevant to water-related challenges?
• Conduct studies to estimate the economic value of key environmental and ecological resources affected by development and preservation/restoration decisions;
• Aggregate and quantify the large uncertainties associated with these decisions;
• Develop a GIS-based decision framework in a decision support system (DSS) that will provide land managers and local officials with a clearer idea of the economic consequences of various courses of action.

Status: New project.

Recent Products: Not applicable.

Products: A broad based decision support tool based on the Land Use Portfolio Model (LUPM) (Bernknopf et al., 2005) will be developed. The Ecosystem Portfolio Modeler (EPM) has two components: (1) maintain ecological viability of parks and refuges, and (2) minimize the adverse economic impacts on land values and economic externalities that affect community ecological and economic wealth by appropriating land, development rights, or other forms of intervention to minimize environmental impacts. Specific applications of the EPM will be undertaken within the Greater Everglades Restoration area. GIS databases will be created to organize EPM inputs and outputs and to display model results in an understandable and useful way.

WORK PLAN

Title of Task 1: Design, Develop, and Implement the EPM
Task Funding: See above
Task Leaders: Richard Bernknopf, William Labiosa
Phone: 650-329-4951
FAX: 650-329-4710
Task Status (proposed):
Task priority: High
Time Frame for Task 1: FY06-FY09
Task Personnel: Richard Bernknopf, Nina Burkardt, Caroline Hermans, William Labiosa, Anne Wein
Task Summary and Objectives: are the elements of this task. This task is about model development and implementation. Elements of this task include the conceptual and empirical EPM framework development, integration of the natural and socioeconomic data into the decision framework, integration of estimated land values, and integration of estimated socioeconomic impacts (pecuniary externalities) on communities. Define the concept of community wealth. Also, we will implement the framework in a working model for a land acquisition strategy in southern Miami-Dade County by the end of FY 2006. The dynamic version of the EPM and case studies will be developed following the implementation of the initial working version of the model.

Work to be undertaken during the proposal year and a description of the methods and procedures: The principal components of Task 1 include:

1. Development of the User Needs Assessment
2. Development of the Decision Framework
3. Development of an Ecosystem Portfolio Model
4. Integration of Ecological Favorability and Socioeconomic Indices (joint with Task 3)
5. Development of a working Ecosystem Portfolio Model

a. Development of the User Needs Assessment - Conduct preliminary user needs and stakeholder analyses. The user needs assessment is to clarify the users' decision context, identify key ecological and economic functions, ecological/economic indicators and targets that are key to decision-making assisted by the EPM.

b. Development of the Decision Framework - This component captures the important relationships between conservation/ development actions and the ecological/environmental and socioeconomic outcomes of interest to decision-makers and stakeholders. This framework will be developed as an influence diagram, a type of decision model that relates decisions, uncertainties, and outcome values. This influence diagram will model decisions as choosing between possible land use scenarios and the uncertain community wealth resulting from scenario choices.

c. Development of an Ecosystem Portfolio Model - This component will develop the conceptual framework and working model for modifying and adapting the LUPM for use in environmental and land use decisions. The conceptual EPM has 2 objectives: (1) ensure the ecological viability of parks and refuges by maintaining necessary environmental conditions in contiguous areas and appropriating land and/or development rights, and (2) preserve the communities, their built environment, and economic functions by minimizing the adverse economic impacts on land values and other factors that affect community wealth.

d. Integration of Ecological Favorability and Socioeconomic Indices (joint with Task 3) - This component will integrate ecological/environmental and socioeconomic information that have been converted to quantitative indices translated from scientific studies by experts from the Park Service, USGS, Univ. of Florida, etc. for predicting the changes in ecological favorabilities (the likelihood of a natural setting containing an ecosystem target or desired outcome), environmental attributes of the land cover, and economic outcomes in the form of socioeconomic indices that include prediction uncertainty estimates into the EPM. These models of change are probability distributions over possible future states and outcomes.

e. Development of a working EPM - The working version of the EPM will include the expected value and uncertainty parameters for a land acquisition strategy for the "land bridge" nearby Biscayne National Park. It will contain the following:

1. An estimate of the regional ecological impact
2. An estimate of land values in alternative land uses in South Miami-Dade County
3. An estimate of the economic externalities (other factors) associated with a scenario land acquisition strategy
4. An estimate of the community wealth for the ecosystem portfolio of the Biscayne Bay/Everglades land bridge region

Specific Task Product(s): [List and include expected delivery date(s).]
Draft probabilistic sub-models implemented in spreadsheets or other computer environment: September 30, 2006. Draft probabilistic sub-models integrated into a working decision framework: September 30, 2006. This draft model will be refined and integrated into the EPM in subsequent years.

Title of Task 2: Design, populate, implement, and manage the EPM GIS Database
Task Funding: See above
Task Leaders: Paul Hearn
Phone: 703-648-6287
FAX: 703-648-4603
Task Status (proposed):
Task priority: High
Time Frame for Task 2:
Task Personnel: David Strong, Paul Amos
Task Summary and Objectives: This task is the development of the EPM GIS Database.

Work to be undertaken during the proposal year and a description of the methods and procedures:
Changing land use within the land bridge separating BNP and ENP will alter surface and ground water quality and quantity, and affect the ecological sustainability of the protected areas. A GIS analysis allows the compilation of land use, land cover, and management actions within the land bridge to be considered in the context of their effects on BNP and ENP. Estimates of multiple forcing functions (e.g., altered hydrology, species habitat, impervious cover, and nutrient inputs) will be included in the GIS.

The principal components of Task 2 include:

1. Collection and organization of relevant socioeconomic and spatial data in the GIS incuding:
1. Land use and land cover
2. Future land use, proposed land bridge development information
3. Parcel data and property values
4. Chemical, physical, and biologic data: nutrients, sediments, hydrology, and habitats
5. Roads/streets
6. Municipal, park, development, protected area boundaries
7. Orthoimagery
8. Population - current and future projections
9. Elevation
10. Estimates of land bridge mitigation costs
11. GIS output from hydrological and ecological modeling prediction efforts
12. Other data as needed
2. Development of EPM GIS software including user interface(s) for calculating results, observing model inputs and results, and exploring conservation/development compatibilities and trade-offs over time and space. Methods include approaches from the economics and decision analysis disciplines. This software will be developed as a modification of the Land Use Portfolio Model.
3. Setup of central repository of GIS data and software for remote access by project contributors and users.

Specific Task Product(s): [List and include expected delivery date(s).]
GIS includes data and user interface(s) to EPM procedures and reports for ecological and economic analysis in South Florida. Delivery Date: September 30, 2006

Title of Task 3: Develop ecological favorabilities and socioeconomic indices
Task Funding: See above
Task Leaders: Richard Bernknopf, Paul Hearn
Phone: 650-329-4951, 703-648-6287
FAX: 650-329-4710, 703-648-4603
Task Status (proposed):
Task priority: High
Time Frame for Task 3:
Task Personnel: David Brookshire, Tom Daniels, Ilse Frank, Kevin Gillen, Dianna Hogan, Lynne Koontz, Tony Smith, Alicia Torregrosa, Susan Wachter
Task Summary and Objectives:
This task focuses on the development and estimation of indices of ecological favorability and socioeconomic impact that may respond to land use decisions, and are key to decision-making. For an index of ecological favorability, the EPM uses an attribute ranking approach to convert maps of physical attributes into domains of ecological and environmental favorability. These statistics provide input to measures of efficiency, productivity, benefits, and risk. Indices and favorabilities (as affected by decisions) will be utilized to produce a representation of community wealth subject to meeting targets. These indicators will be ecological and economic with targets defined using stakeholder requirements.

Work to be undertaken during the proposal year and a description of the methods and procedures:
The principal components of Task 3 include:

1. Development of Ecological Favorability Indices
2. Development of Socioeconomic Indices
3. Development of Ecosystem Portfolio Risk Indices

a. Development of Ecological Favorability Indices - Land use decisions (e.g., development, agriculture, preservation, restoration, or mitigation) within the Biscayne Bay/Everglades land bridge affect incoming water quality (levels of nutrients, sediments, metals, pesticides, herbicides, etc.) and quantity (the depth, timing, flow, duration of inundation, and location of waters), along with other physical impacts. Alteration of the hydrologic regime affects the environmental conditions and wildlife habitat in BNP and ENP and the water resources available to the human population.

b. Development of Socioeconomic Indices - This component will integrate external forcing factors, including demographic factors; develop demographic projections; develop socioeconomic indices as estimates of land values in alternative land uses, economic externalities (other impacts on communities) associated with a land acquisition strategy. Scenarios for externalities will depend on the user/stakeholder needs assessment in task 1, projected population, ecological favorability indices, and other socioeconomic factors.

c. Development of an Ecosystem Portfolio Risk Indices - This component will develop indices of societal risk associated with sustaining the parks and refuges and encroaching human population from urban development. Based on a regional land use strategy, the indices estimate the need for and amount of investment in land acquisition and protection to offset the ecosystem risk and potential environmental impacts of development patterns.

Specific Task Product(s): [List and include expected delivery date(s).]
Favorability indices for key ecological and economic functions, ecological indicators and targets, and potential socioeconomic outcomes are key to decision-making specific to the Biscayne Bay/Everglades land bridge and are of interest to decision-makers and stakeholders. September 30, 2006.

Appendix 1: Source http://www.sfrestore.org/documents/land_acquisition_strategy_dec2004.pdf
(now http://www.sfrestore.org/documents/work_products/land_acquisition_strategy_dec2004.pdf)

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