Georgia
Using ecosystem services to evaluate future development scenarios in
coastal Georgia
Principal Investigator: Ronald Carroll, University of Georgia
Abstract
As the Georgia coast undergoes rapid changes from population growth and is
increasingly vulnerable to climate risks such as sea level rise, there is increasing
interest in planning for future scenarios that incorporate both economic and
environmental concerns. This proposal combines scenario-building by coastal
stakeholder groups with ecosystem service modeling to assist local communities
in their ability to make decisions regarding future growth on the coast. Using
McIntosh County as a case study, we will use the recently developed InVEST
(Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs) model to generate
maps, trade-offs, and economic balance sheets for stakeholders in the county
including local government officials, county planners, members of the
development community, regional planning agencies, and non-governmental
organizations. This stakeholder engagement process and model-making may
then be used as a template in other coastal counties as well as different scales
(e.g. individual developments or the entire Georgia coast). Partnerships with the
Georgia Coastal Ecosystems Long Term Ecological Research project (GCE) and
the Nature Conservancy ensure that the process and modeling template created
in this project will be sustained by both scientific data and stakeholder
engagement over time scales that extend well-beyond the current funding cycle.