The human population is rapidly urbanizing, creating dramatic changes in local land use and land cover, unprecedented species loss, and a society increasingly disconnected from nature. Nature, specifically biodiversity, has been shown to provide benefits and enhance well-being to humans. Living in an environment with reduced opportunity to interact with or experience biodiversity has increasingly been recognized as both a public health and environmental issue, whereby separation from nature can negatively impact human well-being and how humans value nature, diminishing interest in and understanding of nature and its conservation. Because urban living reduces contact with nature, it is imperative to understand how urban residents perceive and benefit from urban nature to better manage urban biodiversity to both support human well-being and conservation efforts. This study examines how urbanites perceive and benefit from two types of urban nature, trees and birds, by combining surveys of local residents with tree and bird data collected in two Midwestern agricultural cities, Cedar Rapids and Iowa City, Iowa from neighborhoods of varying urban intensity. A residential survey was distributed to these neighborhoods during the summer of 2018 to assess resident perceptions of neighborhood biodiversity and its benefits. In general, residents were not able to assess relative levels of biodiversity compared to other neighborhoods, except in the case of high tree species richness. There was a strong relationship between perceived biodiversity and actual biodiversity, as well as reported knowledge of a given taxon, but only residential perceptions of biodiversity, not actual biodiversity, were strongly related to reported benefits. Respondent perceptions of the influence of trees on their well-being exhibited strong relationships with a person’s connection to trees. Reported influence of birds on well-being was strongly related to a person’s connection to trees, connection to birds, and landscaping practices to support wild species in their yards. Actual bird species richness was significantly negatively related to perceived influence of birds on well-being. Perceived nuisances associated with trees were significantly negatively related to perceived tree species richness, while a person’s connection to trees was strongly positively related to tree nuisances. These results indicate that reported perceptions of the benefits from biodiversity are most heavily influenced by resident perceptions of biodiversity itself and orientation toward nature. This finding also implies that residents benefit from the presence of biodiversity, but that perceived benefits are only related to respondent perceptions of biodiversity, not to actual biodiversity. Further research is necessary to understand why and how this paradox occurs, yet this study provides reason to support efforts to increase knowledge of species as well as provide biodiverse environments that create opportunities for interaction with urban nature. Providing both would strengthen urban resident well-being and support biodiversity and conservation initiatives within cities.

Land Use Land Cover (LULC) changes can take place at the expense of degrading environmental conditions and undermining ecosystem’s capacity to deliver benefits to people. In the Appalachian region, surface mining for coal is a major driver of LULC change. The Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA) of 1977 requires mine site reclamation but typical reclamation practices often result in land cover dominated by grass and shrubs. The Forestry Reclamation Approach (FRA) is a promising reclamation strategy but not in widespread use by industry. Assessing ecosystem services that can be obtained from a forest landscape may help policy-makers and other stakeholders fully understand the benefits of forestry based reclamation. The objectives of this study are to 1) identify how surface mining and reclamation changed the LULC of a watershed encompassing the north fork of the Kentucky River 2) assess the biophysical value of four major ecosystem services under the contemporary LULC condition and 3) assess the benefits of the FRA scenario in the provision of ecosystem services. Geographic Information System (GIS) was used to study the LULC change and InVEST software models for ecosystem services assessment. The results indicate that watershed’s forest area has decreased by 7,751 hectares from 2001 to 2011 and mining activity may have contributed 75% of the change in LULC. Barren and grassland land covers provide less carbon storage, yield more water, and export more sediments and nutrients than forests. At the watershed level, the FRA modeled scenario increased carbon storage (13%) and reduced water yield (5%), sediment export (40%) and nutrient export (7%). This study provides critical information regarding the ecological benefits of Forestry Reclamation Approach to assist policy and decision making in this region even considering the modeling and data limitations.

Productive, resilient and sustainable agricultural systems are required to meet the immediate needs of a burgeoning human population, while avoiding ecosystem collapse. Agriculture provides food, fiber, fuels and other products for our current population of 7 billion and is still the major livelihood for 40% of people worldwide. By replacing natural habitat and employing chemical inputs, agriculture also negatively impacts biodiversity and impairs the provision of ecosystem services. This poses a challenge for agriculture as these impacted services are often those required for high yielding and high-quality crop production. Evidence is accumulating that agricultural management can safeguard biodiversity and ecosystem services while maintaining production, but critical questions remain concerning how management actions are shaped by broader landscape pattern and how these actions influence service-providing organisms across space and time. Through a combination of observational, experimental and modeling approaches, my dissertation examines relationships between management actions, landscape pattern and service-providing organisms using crop pollination by wild bees as a model system. First, I investigate how local management and landscape pattern interact to affect pollination services and the abundance and diversity of native bees in Vermont, USA. I then use two established models of pollinator foraging to investigate whether one popular intervention, enhancing floral resources, improves crop visitation, and whether pollinator traits and landscape pattern influence this effect. Next, I use a national data set of native bee diversity to test whether habitat enhancements increase taxonomic and functional diversity of native bee communities. Finally, I investigate whether resource continuity provided by consecutively blooming crops benefits wild bee communities. These four chapters contribute ecological knowledge of plant-animal interactions in anthropogenic landscapes. My findings also provide land managers with clear information about the effects of landscape conservation and farm management on crop pollinators.

A large part of the environmental restoration required by the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan calls for more water-storage on lands south of Lake Okeechobee in order to restore the natural water flows of the Everglades watershed. The Everglades Agricultural Area (EAA) can be used for increased water storage in order to relieve coastal estuaries of excess water in the rainy season. This water storage can deliver additional ecosystem services of soil retention and reduced CO2 emissions that could compensate farmers for the cost of water storage by increasing long term farm profitability. The goals of this study were 1) to quantify the environmental and economic trade-offs of different water storage scenarios using water-tolerant sugarcane cultivars, and 2) to quantify the amount of water storage possible in the EAA under different water storage scenarios. A mathematical model was developed to calculate soil depth, soil subsidence, depth to the water table, sugarcane production, farm return, water storage and carbon loss for three different sugarcane cultivars with different water-tolerances. A GIS tool is also developed to estimate the amount of water storage possible in the EAA. The study found that even though water-tolerant sugarcane cultivars experience higher yields and net returns than non-water-tolerant cultivars the water storage costs with these water tolerant cultivars was greater. Raising water tables on farm lands did have the environmental benefits of reduced soil subsidence, extended farm life and increased years of water storage. However total CO2 emissions rise from 14 to 136%. Results of the GIS analysis revealed that water storage capacity for a DWT of 61 cm is 1,404,562 ac-ft, 1,417,400 ac-ft for DWT 45 cm and 1,474,692 ac-ft for DWT 20 cm. The GIS analysis was also able to identify flow ways that could possibly carry water south from Lake Okeechobee and ultimately to the WCAs south of the EAA. These results show that raising water tables in the EAA to deliver the ecosystem service of expanded water storage is overall more costly, but yearly costs are very low. Therefore water storage on farmlands is an affordable interim method of water storage.

<p>Water governance in South Africa is challenged by natural as well as socially constructed water scarcity. 15 years after the transition from Apartheid to the new democratic era, this paper shows that water resources are still distributed along racial lines. Based on a case study in rural KwaZulu Natal, results indicate that outcomes of water policies which aimed at redressing historic inequalities have not yet been able to create the expected benefits for the disadvantaged black farming community. This paper uses an ecosystem service (ESS) approach to assess how those benefits that are derived from different water-related ecosystem services (WES) developed in the smallholder community and its adjacent commercial farming area. The change in the distribution of water for household use, water for irrigation, water flow regulation and water for scenic beauty is further discussed in regards to its response to water policies on local and national level. Hereby, the paper addresses the research need to provide insight into ESS responses to policy outcomes, which in turn is expected to reveal challenges and opportunities for policy makers to incorporate the complex yet important interactions between social and ecological systems into their decision making. Practically, this paper contributes by making gaps in ESS utilization between smallholder and commercial farmers explicit. Focusing on the material aspects of equality, i.e. the redistribution of water resources is argued to be neither feasible nor unequivocally desirable in the near future. Rather, I encourage capacity building to increase possibilities of the smallholder farmers to effectively use existing resources.</p>

Despite considerable expansion in the scope and function of the state with respect to environmental protection, the world’s biological diversity and ecosystem services continue to deteriorate. Finding ways to better govern human-nature relations in cities is an important part of addressing this decline. The aim of this thesis is to explore the potential of social-ecological resilience to inform urban governance in theory and practice, through a focus on strategic spatial planning. Resilience has become an increasingly important urban policy discourse and much hope is placed in its potential to improve urban governance. However, there is an acknowledged gap between social-ecological resilience as an ideal and the ability to govern towards it in practice. At the time this doctoral research commenced there had been no engagement with social-ecological resilience in the planning theory literature and minimal engagement by empirical planning research. It is to this gap the thesis contributes. Social-ecological resilience scholarship is found to offer planning theory a partly new way of understanding complex human-nature relations. This is relevant to calls by planning theorists for more attention to matters of substance, including ecological processes. With respect to practice, planners see potential for social-ecological resilience to critically inform strategic spatial planning, including through the framing of problems, tools for analysis/synthesis and governance options. There are also however, lessons for social-ecological resilience scholarship that emerge from the detailed empirical research which suggests that attention to the politics of the everyday activities of administrators, elected officials, planning officials, conservationists and citizens operating within the so-called ‘mangle of practice’ is critical to explaining the gap between the ideal of governing for urban resilience, and what happens in practice. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 4: Manuscript. Paper 5: Manuscript.</p>

Market land prices ignore the non-market value of ecosystem goods and services; hence, too much agricultural land may be developed. Correct land valuation must include these non-market values. Values of ecosystem services provided by the Richland-Chambers constructed wetlands are assessed through meta-analysis to derive confidence intervals for the willingness-to-pay (WTP) for wetland services. Replacement costs are also used to estimate cost savings of creating wetlands to cleanse river water instead of constructing a conventional wastewater treatment facility. Benefit transfer is used to estimate WTP for non-market agricultural land amenities. Ecosystem services of runoff in the western and recharge in the eastern part of Comal County based on hydrological models are also calculated. Finally, seemingly unrelated regression is used to quantify the effects of growth on current agricultural land values in Texas. Using two different meta-analysis transfer functions, mean WTP for the Richland-Chambers wetlands are $843 and $999 / acre / year. Estimated 95% confidence interval is $95 to $7,435 / acre / year. This confidence interval clearly indicates the uncertainty associated with valuing ecosystem goods and services. The replacement cost of the Richland?Chambers constructed wetlands is estimated to be $1,688 / acre / year. Aggregate WTP to preserve farm and ranchland non-market amenities in Comal County is estimated to be $1,566 / acre. Using hydrologic models, the runoff is valued at $79 / acre, whereas, recharge value is $1,107 / acre. Development will cause a change in recharge, runoff, and pollution which will decrease societal welfare by $1,288 / acre. Seemingly unrelated regression results show that a percentage increase in population growth in the closest metropolitan statistical area (MSA) is associated with increases in land values of approximately $2 / acre. A one-mile increase in distance from the nearest MSA decreased land values by $4 / acre in 1997, $6 / acre in 2002, and $8 / acre in 2007. The diversity of studies illustrates that a cookbook type of methodology is not appropriate for valuing ecosystem goods and services. On the other hand, development contributes positively to land values through encroachment on agricultural lands.

This study explores the non-monetary values assigned by designers, planners, developers, and policy makers in integrating ecosystem services into the design and development of urban transit-oriented development (TOD). This thesis also investigates the theoretical and practical design strategies that incorporate ecosystem services into Urban TODs. Methods used for research and data collection included reviewing existing literature relevant to the subject matter, conducting interviews with policy makers, academics, and design professionals, and exploring two specific examples of progressive, urban, “green,” TODs in the Pacific Northwest. This study concludes with ideas for future research into the integration of ecosystem services into urban TOD planning, and potential urban environmental policies that can be adopted by municipalities to maintain and strengthen the ecosystem services of the growing metropolis. / text

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Rangelands are a major type of land found on all continents. Though they comprise around 70% of the world's land area, knowledge of rangelands is limited and immature. Rangelands supply humans with food and fiber at very low energy costs compared to cultivated lands. They are inherently heterogeneous, highly variable in time and space. Rangeland management needs to consider the impacts of long-term vegetation transition. It needs a conceptual framework defining potential vegetation communities, describing the management induced transition of one vegetation community to another, and documenting the expected benefits provided by the various potential vegetation communities. The most widely used conceptual unit in the rangeland discipline is the "ecological site". Ecological sites can be an effective unit that should respond to management consistently and can help managers understand the site's potential to meet human needs. A state and transition model (STM) brings ecological sites and their potential vegetative states together to build a conceptual framework showing the major causes of transitions between states of an ecological site and thus helping make adaptive management decisions. Within the STM there is a need for an indicator of ecosystem health. Ecosystem services can be important to evaluate alternative states. Ecosystem services do not pass through a market for valuation, though often the cost would be very high if, through mismanagement, the ecosystem is no longer capable of providing those services. Vegetation communities are constantly facing reversible or irreversible transitions triggered by natural events and/or management actions. The framework generated in this study is significant in using remote sensing to generate state and transition models for a large area and in using ecosystem services to evaluate natural and/or management induced transitions as described in the STM. This dissertation addresses the improvement of public rangelands management in the West. It applies geospatial technologies to map ecological sites and states on those sites, characterizes transitions between states and selects a desired state to manage towards based on a systematic assessment of the value of flows of environmental services. The results from this study are an evaluation of improved draft ecological site maps for a larger area using remote sensing images, a simplified state-and-transition model adapted to remote sensing capabilities to study transitions due to climatic events and management practices, and a constrained optimization model that incorporates ecosystem services and the simplified STM to evaluate management costs and conservation benefits. The study showed that brush treatment is the most effective management practice to cause state transitions. The highest increase in the high cover state was by 24%. Areas under grazing and drought show slow transitions from brush to grass and also after prescribed fire vegetation take at least two years to recover.