September 5, 2024 - Cascadia CoPes Hub / RCN Monthly Seminar Series

Optimizing Nonmarket Ecosystem Service Flows from Coastal Landscapes Under Climate Change

Speaker: Steven Dundas (Oregon State University)

Abstract: Globally, climate change is driving rising sea levels and increasing erosion in populated coastal areas. One of the key hurdles to designing welfare-improving land-use policies is the integration of ecosystem services and their nonmarket values into spatial planning. This is especially important in dynamic environments that are subject to changing conditions from natural hazards and the impacts of climate change. We develop an integrated transdisciplinary spatial model that combines primary nonmarket economic values from revealed and stated preference studies that estimate willingness-to-pay for coast protection, recreation and safe beach access, dune restoration, and carbon storage with ecological and geomorphological production functions and underlying landscape conditions to estimate the overall flow and value of ecosystem services under current conditions. We then estimate benefit stock and flow changes across future scenarios, adjusting the quantity of the services provided in response to climate change and public and private land-use adaptation strategies (e.g., shoreline armoring, habitat restoration areas). We search for “coast-use” scenarios that maximize the social net benefits of alternative land management options under projected future ocean conditions. A main contribution of this work is directly addressing nonmarket service flows and developing tradeoff scenarios among multiple services. The overall goal is to create a generalizable framework, fitted using the Tillamook County coastline in Northwest Oregon as a case study. The model and results can be used to inform policy makers on optimal land-use policies across various management goals (e.g., maximizing biodiversity or carbon storage in dune ecosystems) and future climate conditions.