NCEAS Working Groups
SNAPP: Land-use change and conservation policy in Brazil and the U.S. for biodiversity, ecosystem services and economic returns
Project Description
There are tradeoffs and synergies between biodiversity conservation, ecosystem services, and economic productivity that are not usually considered when decisions are made about land use or investments in land protection or policy. Overlooking such tradeoffs often results in low return-on-investment for conservation expenditures and unintended consequences of policy decisions. This project will develop and apply spatially explicit, integrated models of land-use change, habitat for biodiversity, ecosystem service provision and economic productivity in up to five decision contexts in Brazil and the United States. In Brazil, the project has identified pathways to implementation that would help inform the Amazon Region Protected Areas program, certification initiatives regarding Brazil’s forest code, and policies to guide agricultural development in the Brazilian Pantanal. In the U.S., they have identified pathways to implementation in agricultural policy in the Northern Great Plains and the Sage Grouse Initiative. By simultaneously considering multiple objectives and alternative spatial arrangements of land use, we will chart a path towards maximizing benefits for both human well-being and nature conservation.
This project will build off of existing land-use change models developed by working group members in both the U.S. and Brazil, and use these models to evaluate alternative scenarios and optimize conservation investments in specific decision-making contexts in both countries. A distinguishing feature from the U.S. models is the explicit incorporation of net economic returns to land for alternative land-uses (crops, forestry, urban, pasture) as a driver of land-use change. In addition, the will incorporate price feedback effects from large-scale land-use changes to account for the fact that such changes (e.g., from forest to crops) will likely shift the supply of key commodities and therefore shift both commodity prices and net economic returns to land. Dollar measures of net returns to land and price feedbacks from land-use changes are not typically incorporated in geographically-based methods. Further, the project will link the land-use change model with ecosystem service provision models (including carbon storage, water provision, water quality, non-timber forest products) as well as habitat for biodiversity.
Principal Investigator(s)
Stephen Polasky, Carlos C. Durigan, Joseph E. Fargione, Derric Pennington, Andrew Plantinga
Project Dates
Start: December 8, 2014
End: December 15, 2017
completed
Participants
- Mario Barroso
- World Wildlife Fund, Brazil
- Leandro Baumgarten
- The Nature Conservancy
- Gilberto Camara
- Centro de Previsão de Tempo e Estudos Climáticos (CPTEC/INPE)
- Michael T. Coe
- Woods Hole Research Center
- Carlos C. Durigan
- Wildlife Conservation Society
- Don Eaton
- Wildlife Conservation Society Brazil
- Joseph E. Fargione
- The Nature Conservancy
- Kate Helmstedt
- University of California, Berkeley
- Justin Johnson
- University of Minnesota
- Alexine Keuroghlian
- Wildlife Conservation Society Brazil
- Ashley E. Larsen
- University of California, Berkeley
- Joshua J. Lawler
- University of Washington
- David Lewis
- Oregon State University
- Ruben Lubowski
- Environmental Defense Fund
- Sebastián Martinuzzi
- University of Wisconsin, Madison
- Aline Mosnier
- International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)
- David E. Naugle
- University of Montana
- Erik Nelson
- Bowdoin College
- Michael Obersteiner
- International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)
- Edegar Oliveira
- World Wildlife Fund, Brazil
- Derric Pennington
- World Wildlife Fund
- Andrew Plantinga
- University of California, Santa Barbara
- Stephen Polasky
- University of Minnesota
- Volker Radeloff
- University of Wisconsin, Madison
- Fernando Ramos
- Centro de Previsão de Tempo e Estudos Climáticos (CPTEC/INPE)
- Claire Runge
- University of California, Santa Barbara
- Brian Stenquist
- Meeting Challenges
- Meg Symington
- World Wildlife Fund
- John Withey
- Florida International University
- Alexandre X Ywata Carvalho
- Institute for Applied Economic Research (IPEA)
Products
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Journal Article / 2018
Comparative terrestrial feed and land use of an aquaculture-dominant world
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Journal Article / 2018
Unintended habitat loss on private land from grazing restrictions on public rangelands
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Journal Article / 2019
Single species conservation as an umbrella for management of landscape threats
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Journal Article / 2019
Expanding the Soy Moratorium to Brazil's Cerrado