Identifying priority sites for low impact development (LID) in a mixed-use watershed

AbstractLow impact development (LID), a comprehensive land use planning and design approach with the goal of mitigating land development impacts to the environment, is increasingly being touted as an effective approach to lessen runoff and pollutant loadings to streams. Broad-scale approaches for siting LID have been developed for agricultural watersheds, but are rare for urban watersheds, largely due to greater land use complexity. Here, we introduce a spatially-explicit approach to assist landscape architects, urban planners, and water managers in identifying priority sites for LID based exclusively on freely available data. We use a large, mixed-use watershed in central Oklahoma, the United States of America, as a case-study to demonstrate our approach. Our results indicate that for one sub-catchment of the Lake Thunderbird Watershed, LID placed in 11 priority locations can facilitate reductions in nutrient and sediment loading to receiving waters by as much as 16% and 17%, respectively. We had a high rate of correctly identified sites (94±5.7%). Our systematic and transferable approach for prioritizing LID sites has the potential to facilitate effective implementation of LID to lessen the effects of urban land use on stream ecosystems

Ecosystem Services across US Watersheds: A Meta-Analysis of Studies 2000–2014

Despite increasing awareness on the importance of rivers in maintaining human wellbeing, there has not been a comprehensive inventory of watershed-scale ecosystem services across the USA. Here, we analyze and summarize the scientific literature within the context of the supply and demand for ecosystem services across 18 major watersheds of the continental US. We reviewed 305 articles and found that 68 provided information on both the biophysical delivery (supply) and the sociocultural and economic values (demand) of ecosystem services. Maintaining populations and habitats, water filtration, and nutrient sequestration/storage were the most extensively assessed services, while educational and aesthetic values were the least frequently studied. Biophysical assessments were the most frequent valuation followed by economic approaches. The majority of the studies were conducted in the eastern US, while the region least studied was the southwest. In addition to identifying the knowledge gaps in watershed-scale ecosystem services, we highlight the need for a common framework for assessing ecosystem services that includes both the assessment of the supply and demand of ecosystem services provided by US watersheds. There is an urgent need to incorporate the role that cultural services and values can play in water resources management and planning in the USA

A conceptual framework to evaluate human-wildlife interactions within coupled human and natural systems

Landscape characteristics affect human-wildlife interactions. However, there is a need to better understand mechanisms that drive those interactions, particularly feedbacks that exist between wildlife-related impacts, human reaction to and behavior as a result of those impacts, and how land use and landscape characteristics may influence those components within coupled human and natural systems. Current conceptual models of human-wildlife interactions often focus on species population size as the independent variable driving those interactions. Such an approach potentially overlooks important feedbacks among and drivers of human-wildlife interactions that result from mere wildlife presence versus absence. We describe an emerging conceptual framework that focuses on wildlife as a driver of human behavior and allows us to better understand linkages between humans, wildlife, and the broader landscape. We also present results of a pilot analysis related to our own ongoing study of urban rodent control behavior to illustrate one application of this framework within a study of urban landscapes

Identifying priority sites for low impact development (LID) in a mixed-use watershed

Low impact development (LID), a comprehensive land use planning and design approach with the goal of mitigating land development impacts to the environment, is increasingly being touted as an effective approach to lessen runoff and pollutant loadings to streams. Broad-scale approaches for siting LID have been developed for agricultural watersheds, but are rare for urban watersheds, largely due to greater land use complexity. Here, we introduce a spatially-explicit approach to assist landscape architects, urban planners, and water managers in identifying priority sites for LID based exclusively on freely available data. We use a large, mixed-use watershed in central Oklahoma, the United States of America, as a case-study to demonstrate our approach. Our results indicate that for one sub-catchment of the Lake Thunderbird Watershed, LID placed in 11 priority locations can facilitate reductions in nutrient and sediment loading to receiving waters by as much as 16% and 17%, respectively. We had a high rate of correctly identified sites (94. ±. 5.7%). Our systematic and transferable approach for prioritizing LID sites has the potential to facilitate effective implementation of LID to lessen the effects of urban land use on stream ecosystems