Future Land Use, Scenarios 1 - 3

The PFLCC Scenario Impact Assessment Project In 2014, the PFLCC science team collaborated to generate a set of spatially-explicit future land use and climate scenarios for Florida. In 2015, the PFLCC requested that we study the impact of these scenarios on some of Florida's most valued natural resources. Methods We used GIS overlay modeling to determine the likely impact of scenarios on a wide set of species for which FWC has previously created spatial habitat models (FWC 2009). For initial screening, we treated all development and permanent inundation from sea level rise as a uniform negative impact. We similarly treated all conservation, whether by acquisition or easement, as a uniform positive impact. We also created a straightforward measure of sustainability we called "balance", in which we subtract negative impacts from positive ones. This gives an overview of how a species is fairing, when it is experiencing conservation, development and sea level rise simultaneously. In order to make this impact modeling as widely accessible as possible, we elected to use a web-based platform. Since existing commercial or open source services did not support the interactive generation of such a large set of impacts, we created a specialized system which we have christened the Scenario Planning and Sharing System, or "SPLASH". For offline use, the system generates a series of printable reports, including impacts by species or by scenario.