Rural Roots

Quantifying Ecosystem Services Derived from Wetlands: The Integrated Landscape Modeling Partnership

March 15th 11 am PST

By: Dave Mushet, U.S. Geological Survey

Presentation Summary and Speaker Bio

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Presentation Summary:
The Integrated Landscape Modeling (ILM) partnership is an effort by the U.S.
Geological Survey and U.S. Department of Agriculture to identify, evaluate, and
develop models to quantify services derived from ecosystems, with a focus on
wetland ecosystems and conservation effects. The ILM partnership uses the
Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs (InVEST) modeling
platform to facilitate regional quantifications of ecosystem services under various
scenarios of land-cover change that are representative of differing conservation
program and practice implementation scenarios. To date, the ILM InVEST
partnership has resulted in capabilities to quantify carbon stores, amphibian
habitat, plant-community diversity, pollination services and grassland-bird habitat
quality. Initial InVEST modeling has been focused on the Prairie Pothole Region
of the United States; future efforts will encompass other regions as data availability and knowledge increase as to how functions affecting ecosystem services
differ among regions.

Biography
David (Dave) Mushet is a Research Wildlife Biologist, and Chief of the Climate
and Land-use Branch at the Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center in
Jamestown, ND. Dr. Mushet’s research is focused principally on prairie-pothole
wetland ecosystems of the northern Great Plains and has included topics such as
the provisioning of ecosystem services, the development of complex systems
models, and the influences of changing environmental drivers (e.g., climate and
land-use) on wetland ecosystem processes. In his role as Chief of the Climate and
Land-use Branch, Dave supervises several other research scientists working
together to meet the science information needs of the Department of the Interior,
and other partner agencies and organizations.