Conservation of Ecosystem Services and Biodiversity in Vermont, USA

Supporting a growing human population while avoiding biodiversity loss is a central challenge towards a sustainable future. Ecosystem services are benefits that people derive from nature. People have drastically altered the earth’s land surface in the pursuit of those ecosystem services that have been ascribed market value, while at the same time eroding biodiversity and non-market ecosystem services. The science required to inform a more balanced vision for land-cover change in the future is rapidly developing, but critical questions remain unanswered regarding how to quantify ecosystem services and ascribe value to them, and how to coordinate efforts to safeguard multiple ecosystem services and biodiversity together. This dissertation addresses several of these challenges using Vermont as a model landscape. Specifically, we begin by estimating the economic value of flood mitigation ecosystem services and show that the externalized value of ecosystem services can be quite high. Second, we assess the role of demand from human beneficiaries in shifting the spatial distribution of ecosystem services, and address the biodiversity and human wellbeing implications of that shift. Third we analyze the tradeoffs and synergies inherent in pursing multiple ecosystem services and biodiversity through conservation, and show that overall ecosystem service conservation is more likely to boost biodiversity outcomes than to undermine them. Finally, I implement statewide scenarios of land-cover change and flood risk in order to assess our ability to quantify ecosystem service outcomes and identify spatial priorities for the future despite land-cover change dynamics that are complex and unpredictable

THE VALUE OF SOCIAL MEDIA: TOWARD MEASURING SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGIES

Embodying a new gestalt in firm-customer communication, social media is a nascent yet critical concern for researchers and practitioners alike. Organizations lack valid and reliable measures for social media effects, without which they remain unable to align their social media initiatives with organizational goals and ultimately create business value. This essay presents a “social media ecosystem” framework, explicating the social-media-enabled relationships among stakeholder groups and suggesting how future researchers can address research questions based on this model. Focusing on the customer/firm segment entitled the “B@C Social Media Dyad,” the article deconstructs the phenomenon of social media into multiple layers of firm-initiated and customer-initiated actions, and provides a theoretical understanding of what firms and customers accomplish using social media. It sets the stage for developing measures of those firm/customer social media activities with a critical bearing on firm performance

Explanation of Research

Explanation of Research for the Citizen Curator Project at UCF

Call for Participation

The Citizen Curator Project of Central Florida invites participants to create a series of exhibitions in spring and summer 2017 focused on the theme Eliminationism and Resilience. A particularly potent example of eliminationism, defined as discourses, actions, and social policies that seek to suppress, exile, or exterminate perceived opponents, is the recent Pulse nightclub attack, whereas the Orlando United campaign may be viewed as an act of resilience

Budget Justification

This document contains the budget justification for the Citizen Curator Project at UCF

Spatial and temporal dynamics and value of nature-based recreation, estimated via social media

Conserved lands provide multiple ecosystem services, including opportunities for naturebased recreation. Managing this service requires understanding the landscape attributes underpinning its provision, and how changes in land management affect its contribution to human wellbeing over time. However, evidence from both spatially explicit and temporally dynamic analyses is scarce, often due to data limitations. In this study, we investigated nature-based recreation within conserved lands in Vermont, USA.We used geotagged photographs uploaded to the photo-sharingwebsite Flickr to quantify visits by in-state and outof- state visitors, and we multiplied visits by mean trip expenditures to show that conserved lands contributed US $1.8 billion (US$0.18\u2720.2 at 95% confidence) to Vermont\u27s tourism industry between 2007 and 2014.We found eight landscape attributes explained the pattern of visits to conserved lands; visits were higher in larger conserved lands, with less forest cover, greater trail density and more opportunities for snow sports. Some of these attributes differed from those found in other locations, but all aligned with our understanding of recreation in Vermont.We also found that using temporally static models to informconservation decisions may have perverse outcomes for nature-based recreation. For example, static models suggest conserved land with less forest cover receive more visits, but temporally dynamic models suggest clearing forests decreases, rather than increases, visits to these sites. Our results illustrate the importance of understanding both the spatial and temporal dynamics of ecosystem services for conservation decision-making

Effects of human demand on conservation planning for biodiversity and ecosystem services

Safeguarding ecosystem services and biodiversity is critical to achieving sustainable development. To date, ecosystem services quantification has focused on the biophysical supply of services with less emphasis on human beneficiaries (i.e., demand). Only when both occur do ecosystems benefit people, but demand may shift ecosystem service priorities toward human-dominated landscapes that support less biodiversity. We quantified how accounting for demand affects the efficiency of conservation in capturing both human benefits and biodiversity by comparing conservation priorities identified with and without accounting for demand. We mapped supply and benefit for 3 ecosystem services (flood mitigation, crop pollination, and nature-based recreation) by adapting existing ecosystem service models to include and exclude factors representing human demand. We then identified conservation priorities for each with the conservation planning program Marxan. Particularly for flood mitigation and crop pollination, supply served as a poor proxy for benefit because demand changed the spatial distribution of ecosystem service provision. Including demand when jointly targeting biodiversity and ecosystem service increased the efficiency of conservation efforts targeting ecosystem services without reducing biodiversity outcomes. Our results highlight the importance of incorporating demand when quantifying ecosystem services for conservation planning