@article {169, title = {How do land-use legacies affect ecosystem services in United States cultural landscapes?}, journal = {Landscape Ecology}, year = {2017}, month = {2017//}, pages = {1 - 14}, abstract = {Landscape-scale studies of ecosystem services (ES) have increased, but few consider land-use history. Historical land use may be especially important in cultural landscapes, producing legacies that influence ecosystem structure, function, and biota that in turn affect ES supply. Our goal was to generate a conceptual framework for understanding when land-use legacies matter for ES supply in well-studied agricultural,urban, and exurban US landscapes. We synthesized illustrative examples from published literature in which landscape legacies were demonstrated or are likely to influence ES. We suggest three related conditions in which land-use legacies are important for understanding current ES supply. (1) Intrinsically slow ecological processes govern ES supply, illustrated for soil-based and hydrologic services impaired by slowly processed pollutants. (2) Time lags between land-use change and ecosystem responses delay effects on ES supply, illustrated for biodiversity-based services that may experience an ES debt. (3) Threshold relationships exist, such that changes in ES are difficult to reverse,and legacy lock-in disconnects contemporary landscapes from ES supply, illustrated by hydrologic services. Mismatches between contemporary landscape patterns and mechanisms underpinning ES supply yield unexpected patterns of ES. Today{\textquoteright}s land-use decisions will generate tomorrow{\textquoteright}s legacies, and ES will be affected if processes underpinning ES are affected by land-use legacies. Research priorities include understanding effects of urban abandonment, new contaminants, and interactions of land-use legacies and climate change. Improved understanding of historical effects will improve management of contemporary ES, and aid in decision-making as new challenges to sustaining cultural landscapes arise.}, keywords = {Agricultural ecosystems, Exurban ecosystems, Historical ecology, land-use change, Urban ecosystems}, isbn = {1572-9761}, doi = {10.1007/s10980-017-0545-4}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10980-017-0545-4}, author = {Ziter, Carly and Graves, Rose A. and Turner, Monica G.} } @article {126, title = {Alternative scenarios of bioenergy crop production in an agricultural landscape and implications for bird communities}, journal = {Ecological Applications}, volume = {26}, year = {2016}, month = {2016}, pages = {42 - 54}, abstract = {Increased demand and government mandates for bioenergy crops in the United States could require a large allocation of agricultural land to bioenergy feedstock production and substantially alter current landscape patterns. Incorporating bioenergy landscape design into land-use decision making could help maximize benefits and minimize trade-offs among alternative land uses. We developed spatially explicit landscape scenarios of increased bioenergy crop production in an 80-km radius agricultural landscape centered on a potential biomass-processing energy facility and evaluated the consequences of each scenario for bird communities. Our scenarios included conversion of existing annual row crops to perennial bioenergy grasslands and conversion of existing grasslands to annual bioenergy row crops. The scenarios explored combinations of four biomass crop types (three potential grassland crops along a gradient of plant diversity and one annual row crop [corn]), three land conversion percentages to bioenergy crops (10\%, 20\%, or 30\% of row crops or grasslands), and three spatial configurations of biomass crop fields (random, clustered near similar field types, or centered on the processing plant), yielding 36 scenarios. For each scenario, we predicted the impact on four bird community metrics: species richness, total bird density, species of greatest conservation need (SGCN) density, and SGCN hotspots (SGCN birds/ha >= 2). Bird community metrics consistently increased with conversion of row crops to bioenergy grasslands and consistently decreased with conversion of grasslands to bioenergy row crops. Spatial arrangement of bioenergy fields had strong effects on the bird community and in some cases was more influential than the amount converted to bioenergy crops. Clustering grasslands had a stronger positive influence on the bird community than locating grasslands near the central plant or at random. Expansion of bioenergy grasslands onto marginal agricultural lands will likely benefit grassland bird populations, and bioenergy landscapes could be designed to maximize biodiversity benefits while meeting targets for biomass production.}, keywords = {bioenergy crops, grass biomass, grassland birds, land-use change, landscape scenarios, row-crop agriculture, species of greatest conservation need}, isbn = {1939-5582}, doi = {10.1890/14-1490}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1890/14-1490}, author = {Blank, Peter J. and Williams, Carol L. and Sample, David W. and Meehan, Timothy D. and Turner, Monica G.} } @article {100, title = {Plausible futures of a social-ecological system: Yahara watershed, Wisconsin, USA}, journal = {Ecology and Society}, volume = {20}, year = {2015}, month = {2015}, abstract = {Agricultural watersheds are affected by changes in climate, land use, agricultural practices, and human demand for energy, food, and water resources. In this context, we analyzed the agricultural, urbanizing Yahara watershed (size: 1345 km\&$\#$178;, population: 372,000) to assess its responses to multiple changing drivers. We measured recent trends in land use/cover and water quality of the watershed, spatial patterns of 10 ecosystem services, and spatial patterns and nestedness of governance. We developed scenarios for the future of the Yahara watershed by integrating trends and events from the global scenarios literature, perspectives of stakeholders, and models of biophysical drivers and ecosystem services. Four qualitative scenarios were created to explore plausible trajectories to the year 2070 in the watershed\&$\#$8217;s social-ecological system under different regimes: no action on environmental trends, accelerated technological development, strong intervention by government, and shifting values toward sustainability. Quantitative time-series for 2010\&$\#$8211;2070 were developed for weather and land use/cover during each scenario as inputs to model changes in ecosystem services. Ultimately, our goal is to understand how changes in the social-ecological system of the Yahara watershed, including management of land and water resources, can build or impair resilience to shifting drivers, including climate.}, keywords = {alternative futures, climate, ecosystem services, eutrophication, governance, lakes, land-use change, phosphorus, scenarios}, doi = {10.5751/ES-07433-200210}, url = {http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol20/iss2/art10/}, author = {Carpenter, Stephen R. and Booth, Eric G. and Gillon, Sean and Kucharik, Christopher J. and Loheide, Steven and Mase, Amber S. and Motew, Melissa and Qiu, Jiangxiao and Rissman, Adena R. and Seifert, Jenny and Soylu, Evren and Turner, Monica and Wardropper, Chloe B.} }