ECOLOGICAL ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF LANDSCAPE CHANGE TO MONTANA'S FLATHEAD COUNTY

• Sponsoring Institution: National Institute of Food and Agriculture
• Project Status: COMPLETE
• Funding Source: NRI COMPETITIVE GRANT
• Reporting Frequency: Annual
• Accession No.: 0197009
• Grant No.: 2003-35101-13823
• Proposal No.: 2003-01843
• Project Start Date: Aug 1, 2003
• Project End Date: Jul 31, 2007
• Grant Year: 2003
• Program Code: [23.1]- (N/A)

Recipient Organization
UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI
(N/A)
COLUMBIA,MO 65211

Performing Department
SOCIAL SCIENCES

Non Technical Summary
Rapid population growth and development in Montana's Flathead County have yielded substantial economic benefits and dramatically changed landscapes. The latter has resulted in loss of old growth forests, hydrologic alteration of rivers, greater pollution of lakes and streams, degraded fish and wildlife habitat, lower native biodiversity, and increased air pollution. The purpose of the research is to enhance the capacity of stakeholders (planners, resource managers, citizens and policy makers) to identify ecological impacts of past changes in land cover and assess ecological economic impacts of future development in Flathead County, Montana, and determine the effectiveness of alternative conservation strategies in alleviating adverse ecological impacts of future development.

Animal Health Component

25%

Research Effort Categories

Basic

75%

Applied

25%

Developmental

(N/A)

Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)	Subject of Investigation (SOI)	Field of Science (FOS)	Percent
131	0199	2060	20%
131	0210	2060	10%
131	6199	2060	10%
605	0199	2060	10%
605	0210	2060	10%
605	6199	2060	10%
608	0199	2060	10%
608	0210	2060	10%
608	6199	2060	10%

Knowledge Area
605 - Natural Resource and Environmental Economics; 608 - Community Resource Planning and Development; 131 - Alternative Uses of Land;

Subject Of Investigation
6199 - Economy, general/other; 0210 - Water resources; 0199 - Soil and land, general;

Field Of Science
2060 - Geography;

Keywords

landscapes

economic impact

environmental impact

decision making

alternatives

land use

social economics

agricultural economics

geography

water resources

resource management

sustained use

economic development

forest products

farming

resource utilization

stakeholders

tourism

biodiversity

outdoor recreation

spatial analysis

resource planning

Goals / Objectives
Sustainable management of ecosystems requires managing landscapes to sustain economic development without impairing the provision of ecological goods and services that are essential to the welfare and existence of humankind. Achieving sustainable ecosystem management is especially challenging in Flathead County, Montana due to its heavy economic dependence on activities that compete for land and water resources, such as production of agricultural and forest products, nature-based tourism, outdoor recreation and conservation of biodiversity. A major goal of the project is to enhance the capacity of stakeholders (planners, resource managers, citizens and policy makers) to evaluate the ecological economic impacts of past and future landscape change in Flathead County and to manage landscapes in a sustainable manner. This will be accomplished by integrating geo-spatial analytical techniques (remote sensing, GIS and GPS), landscape ecology, ecological economic models and spatial decision support systems. The project has four objectives: 1) identify historical changes in land cover and habitat suitability in Flathead County, 2) develop a landscape model and economic model to evaluate how future development in Flathead County is likely to affect land cover, landscape structure and economic activity, 3) develop an ecological model to assess impacts of future development on habitat suitability in the county and one river corridor, and 4) create a Web-based spatial decision support system that facilitates stakeholder use of the landscape modeling system in Flathead County.

Project Methods
Objective 1. A three-step procedure will be used to identify ecological impacts of historical changes in land cover. The first step creates land cover maps for the county and two river corridors for 1982, 1992 and 2002 by applying supervised maximum likelihood, artificial neural network and a knowledge-based classifier to Landsat TM images. The second step delineates protection, resource management and development zones for the county. The third step quantifies historical changes in land cover between 1982 and 1992 and 1992 and 2002 using a post classification algorithm, which are used to estimate transition probabilities. The latter will be used in simulating future changes in land cover (see objective 2). Landscape structure metrics will be calculated by applying FRAGSTATS and Simmap to the land cover maps. Objective 2. Land cover change will be modeled in two stages. The first stage estimates changes in land cover in management zones and the second stage allocates those changes within a zone. Three different schemes will be used to spatially allocate land cover changes to specific pixels (cells) within each management zone. Economic impacts will be assessed by entering the scenario-based changes in final demands in 2010 and 2020 specified for a development scenario in the 2002 IMPLAN model for Flathead County and running the model to determine the changes in total economic output, household income, and employment. Objective 3. Ecological impacts and associated changes in land cover from future development in Flathead County will be assessed using an ecological model that operates at the county and river corridor scale. The river corridor selected for assessment is the main stem of the Flathead River between Columbia Falls and Kalispell. Ecological impacts of future land cover changes at the county scale will be assessed by applying FRAGSTATS and Simmap to simulated land cover maps for 2010 and 2020 developed in objective 2. Ecological changes in the river corridor will be assessed by applying a hydrogeomorphic model of functional assessment of wetlands to simulated land cover changes in the river corridor for 2010 and 2020. Objective 4. An Internet-based SDSS will be developed that allows stakeholders to identify ecological impacts of past changes in land cover and assess ecological economic impacts of future development and evaluate the effectiveness of alternative conservation strategies in alleviating adverse ecological impacts of future development in Flathead County. A variety of server and client software technologies will be used to create the Web-based interfaces for the landscape, economic and ecological and policy models, wherein the client (user) makes a request to the server and the server gives the results back to the client. On the client side, various web languages will be used to create user interfaces for the models that will make them highly accessible to users having no special knowledge of modeling. On the server side, all the models will be incorporated in the SDSS using ArcGIS and other software.

Progress 08/01/03 to 07/31/07

Outputs
OUTPUTS: The project was completed in 2007. The year was spent writing publications for peer-reviewed journals on various aspects of the project. In addition, final results have been included on the project website. A workshop was held with stakeholders to describe and discuss the results of the project and how they can be used in community planning activities and in implementing the new long-run growth policy for Flathead County. The most significant outputs of the project are: (1) the articles published in peer-reviewed journals and book chapters; (2) the presentations made at professional conferences; (3) the training of a Ph.D. student in modeling and evaluation of land use change; (4) the interactions with various individuals and groups in the study area; and (5) making the results of the project available to community planners and natural resource managers. PARTICIPANTS: Tony Prato, Professor, University of Missouri; Anthony Clark, former Ph.D. student, University of Missouri; Dan Fagre, USGS BRD Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center; Ric Hauer, Flathead Lake Biological Station, The University of Montana; Ramanathan Sugumaran, Department of Geography, University of Northern Iowa; Yan Barnett, Center for Agricultural, Resource and Environmental Systems, University of Missouri; and Chris Dolle and Dan Zerr, formerly with the Center for Agricultural, Resource and Environmental Systems, University of Missouri TARGET AUDIENCES: The target audience includes other researchers at universities and government agencies, planning and natural resource managers in the study area, and the residents of Flathead County, Montana. PROJECT MODIFICATIONS: There were no major changes in the project.

Impacts
A primary outcome of the project was the development of the Ecosystem Landscape Modeling System (ELMS). ELMS simulates the potential impacts of future economic growth scenarios and land use policies on residential and commercial/institutional/industrial development in Flathead County, Montana, and the impacts of that development on total output (values of goods and services produced), employment, land use, and wildlife habitat suitability in Flathead County. ELMS allows users to identify tradeoffs between economic growth/land development and wildlife habitat as well as land use policies that alleviate the adverse impacts of economic growth/development on wildlife habitat. Another outcome is a spatial decision support tool, which is on the project website (http://www.cares.missouri.edu/montana/) that allows users to easily access the results of the simulations produced by ELMS. Another outcome was a workshop held in the county in which stakeholders learned more about the nature and results of the project. Another possible outcome is that the county might use ELMS to implement certain aspects of Flathead County's long-range growth policy adopted in 2007.

Publications

• Prato, T., and D. Fagre. 2007. The Crown of the Continent: Striving for ecosystem sustainability. Pp. 3-16, in T. Prato and D. Fagre (eds.), Sustaining Rocky Mountain Landscapes: Science, Policy and Management of the Crown of the Continent Ecosystem, RFF Press, Washington, DC.
• Prato, T. 2007. Evaluating land use policies under uncertainty. Land Use Policy 24:165-174. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2006.02.003.
• Prato, T., A.S. Clark, K. Dolle, and Y. Barnett. 2007. Evaluating alternative futures for Flathead County, Montana. Landscape and Urban Planning 83:327-339.
• Prato, T., D. Fagre, and R. Sugumaran. 2007. Economic growth and landscape change. Pp. 55-66, in T. Prato and D. Fagre (eds.), Sustaining Rocky Mountain Landscapes: Science, Policy and Management of the Crown of the Continent Ecosystem, RFF Press, Washington, DC.
• Prato, T., and D. Fagre (eds.). 2007. Sustaining Rocky Mountain Landscapes: Science, Policy and Management of the Crown of the Continent Ecosystem. RFF Press, Washington, DC.
• Prato, T. 2007. Adaptive ecosystem management. Pp. 249-259, in T. Prato and D. Fagre (eds.), Sustaining Rocky Mountain Landscapes: Science, Policy and Management of the Crown of the Continent Ecosystem, RFF Press, Washington, DC.
• Prato, T., and D. Fagre. 2007. Achieving ecosystem sustainability. Pp. 302-311, in T. Prato and D. Fagre (eds.), Sustaining Rocky Mountain Landscapes: Science, Policy and Management of the Crown of the Continent Ecosystem, RFF Press, Washington, DC.

Progress 01/01/05 to 12/31/05

Outputs
First, a preliminary procedure was developed for assessing the wildlife habitat impacts of land cover changes using landscape pattern metrics derived from the 1985 and 2002 land cover maps and literature-based information on habitat requirements for different species. Second, further refinements were made to a land use change model for simulating land use changes (i.e., conversion of undeveloped land to developed uses) for nine alternative futures (i.e., combinations of three economic growth rates and three land use policies) for Flathead County for 2004 to 2014 and 2014 to 2024. Third, economic growth rates specified in the alternative futures were used in the IMPLAN model to estimate changes in total output and employment for industries and associated increased demands for residential housing and commercial units in Flathead County from 2004 to 2014 and 2014 to 2024.Fourth, attributes describing the suitability of undeveloped land parcels for residential and commercial development were quantified. Fifth., a land use map was developed for 2004, which is being used to simulate future changes in land use for the nine alternative futures. Sixth, previously collected hyperspectral imagery was georectified and aggregated (mosaic) into a single image used for land cover classification based on vegetation types and human disturbance that could be characterized by reflectance signature. A combination of supervised and unsupervised classifications was used to produce a land cover map for the reach. Mean spectral signatures were calculated for each cover type and subsequently used in a supervised classification. For the entire river reach, a final land cover map was produced consisting of dominant cover types (i.e., water, cobble, cottonwood, conifer, parafluvial herbaceous, pasture/exurban lawns, and roads/residential).

Impacts
Results are too preliminary to assess social, economic and environmental impacts. Results are expected to help planners, developers, and other stakeholders evaluate such impacts for alternative futures. The Montana Department of Environmental Quality has expressed interest in using the results of the project for a water resource assessment they are doing in the region.

Publications

• Prato, T. 2005. A fuzzy logic approach to ecosystem sustainability. Ecological Modelling 187: 361-368.
• Prato, T. 2005. Accounting for uncertainty in making species protection decisions. Conservation Biology 19: 806-814.
• Prato, T. 2005. Modeling ecological impacts of landscape change. Environmental Modelling & Software 20: 1359-1363.
• Prato, T. 2005. Bayesian adaptive management of ecosystems. Ecological Modelling 183: 147-156.