Analyzing land-use change scenarios for trade-offs among culturalecosystem services in the Southern Rocky Mountains

Ecosystem Services
By: , and 

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Abstract

Significant increases in outdoor recreation participants are projected over the next 50 years for national forests across the United States, with even larger increases possible for forests located in the Southern Rocky Mountains. Forest managers will be challenged to balance increasing demand for outdoor recreation with other ecosystem services. Future management needs could be better anticipated with information describing how and where stakeholders value these forests’ cultural ecosystem services, as well as how management might impact these values. We analyzed land-use change scenarios to quantify changes in aesthetic and recreational ecosystem service values and assessed trade-offs between these values relative to forest stakeholder groups defined by their attitudes regarding motorized recreation. We adapted the GIS tool, Social Values for Ecosystem Services (SolVES), for scenario analysis and applied it to two national forests in the Southern Rocky Mountains to examine impacts of road-network expansion on stakeholder values. Our approach allowed us to quantify changes in the spatial distribution and intensity of aesthetic and recreation values. Trade-off assessments between the two values indicated that areas of conflicting value changes were limited, even when accounting for different user groups. However, this approach could be an important means of conflict resolution for multi-use management.

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Publication type Article
Publication Subtype Journal Article
Title Analyzing land-use change scenarios for trade-offs among culturalecosystem services in the Southern Rocky Mountains
Series title Ecosystem Services
DOI 10.1016/j.ecoser.2017.02.003
Volume 26
Issue B
Year Published 2017
Language English
Publisher Elsevier
Contributing office(s) Geosciences and Environmental Change Science Center
Description 14 p.
First page 431
Last page 444
Country United States
State Colorado, Utah, Wyoming
Other Geospatial Rocky Mountains
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