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Methods
Data
The first step of our analysis is to understand and characterize the drivers of historic urbanization in Rhode Island. Using the most recent versions of the National Land Cover Datasets (NLCD), we create a probit model that estimates the likelihood of urbanization from 2001 to 2011 for all forest and agricultural cells (30m) in the state. Our model includes a number of environmental, landscape, and policy variables that are hypothesized to influence the probability that a particular undeveloped cell converted to an urban use over the ten-year time period.
InVEST Model
Next, we simulated the changes in delivery of multiple ecosystem services for each scenario. By assessing changes in ecosystem service delivery across multiple policy scenarios, we were able to illustrate how different policies mitigate or amplify the overall loss of ecosystem service delivery as a result of urbanization. The flow of ecosystem services were simulated using Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs (InVEST) software. InVEST is an open-source tool developed by the Natural Capital Project that can be used to map and simulate the value of ecosystem goods and services to human communities. It has been applied across the world for a multitude of different ecosystem services.
Ecosystem Services
In our analysis, we consider three main ecosystem services:
- habitat quality for three species of stakeholder interest, including the threatened Bobolink, Eastern Red Bat, and Wood Frog;
- carbon storage; and
- water purification (Nitrogen and Phosphorus).
These ecosystem services were identified as of high significance for the state by stakeholders in state and federal agencies and ecologists.
Scenarios
We then use the results from this model to project where urbanization might happen in the future. This process is repeated for multiple growth scenarios (1, 5, 10, and 20% increases in urbanization) across different land use planning policies (“urban service boundary expansion” and “growth center-oriented development”). These scenarios were developed based on consultation with stakeholders in multiple government agencies and studies published in peer-reviewed journals (see Table 1 for a brief description of each scenario group).
