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Document: Linking ecosystem services supply to stakeholder concerns on both land and sea: An example from Guanica Bay watershed, Puerto Rico (Doc-338)

338
Authors
Amelia Smith, Susan Harrell Yee, Marc Russell, Jill Awkerman and William S. Fisher
Year
2017
Title
Linking ecosystem services supply to stakeholder concerns on both land and sea: An example from Guanica Bay watershed, Puerto Rico
Document Type
Journal Article
Publisher
Elsevier
Journal
Ecological Indicators
Volume
74
Pages
371-383
Abstract
Policies to protect coastal resources may be more effective when they consider potential co-benefits and trade-offs on land. In Guánica Bay watershed, Puerto Rico, deforestation and drainage of a large lagoon have led to sediment, contaminant, and nutrient transport into the bay, resulting in declining quality of coral reefs. A watershed management plan is currently being implemented to restore reefs through a variety of proposed actions, including reducing upland erosion in coffeegrowing regions, reducing sediment transport from reservoirs, and restoring filtration by restoring a historic lagoon. However, recent stakeholder workshops indicated there is still uncertainty on the degree to which proposed actions could benefit the local community beyond protecting coral reefs, including potential consequences for agriculture, tourism, drinking water, human health, and the ecological integrity of non-reef ecosystems. After the workshops, fifteen indicators of terrestrial ecosystem services in the watershed and four indicators in the coastal zone were identified to reflect the wide range of stakeholder concerns that could be impacted by management decisions. Ecosystem service production functions were applied to quantify and map ecosystem services supply in the Guánica Bay watershed, as well as an additional highly engineered upper multi-watershed area connected to the lower watershed via a series of reservoirs and tunnels, and compare them to 22 other watersheds in Puerto Rico. Relative to other watersheds, the upper Guánica watershed had high air pollutant removal rates, forest habitat area, biodiversity of charismatic and endangered species, but low farmland quality and low sediment retention. The lower Guánica watershed had high rates of denitrification and high levels of marine-based recreational and fishing opportunities compared to other watersheds, but moderate to low air pollutant removal, carbon sequestration, sediment and nutrient retention, and terrestrial biodiversity. An analysis of the relative production of ecosystem services can help provide a more holistic characterization of the potential impacts of coastal management decisions on stakeholders in the watershed.
URL Exit
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1470160X16306744
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