Maintaining ecological resilience in regional landscapes: Scenario analysis tools to assist environmental conservation and planning decisions

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The landscapes we inhabit support species and ecosystems that contribute to human well-being by providing important ecological services and resilience to disturbances and environmental change. Human and ecological systems are thus intricately intertwined, and these relationships should be considered in environmental planning and resource management. In multi-functional landscapes, maintaining ecological resilience will require careful planning and assessment of the trade-offs inherent in different land use decisions. This research will provide tools and approaches to inform practitioners about the complex interactions between human and ecological processes at the landscape scale and the trade-offs in different policy and planning decisions. Over the next five years, the Okanagan Basin in British Columbia will serve as a case study. The Okanagan is an area of exceptional biodiversity and is also one of Canada's most endangered ecoregions, largely due to habitat loss. Human population growth projections suggest that the region will continue to undergo development pressure over the next decades and difficult decisions will need to be made regarding the trade-offs inherent in different land use change scenarios. The proposed research will quantify these trade-offs, and make recommendations on how to maintain an ecologically resilient landscape that conciliates human land use (agriculture, timber harvest and built environments) with biodiversity conservation (area and connectivity of natural habitats). The specific objectives are to: 1.) Document how current and historical land use and land cover in the Okanagan have modified the total area and connectivity of natural habitats; 2.) Quantify the potential impacts of future land use scenarios for the Okanagan on biodiversity; 3.) Identify critical thresholds in the total area and connectivity of natural habitats after which the Okanagan landscape may no longer be ecologically resilient, and 4.) Propose conservation and land-use planning scenarios to conserve native biodiversity and ecological resilience in the Okanagan. The research will be carried out in close collaboration with land use planners and scientists from the three Okanagan Regional Districts as well as relevant federal and provincial government ministries. Through the development of decision-support tools to inform integrated, landscape scale management and planning, and the demonstration of their effectiveness through the Okanagan case study, this research has the potential to significantly influence environmental policy in Canada and particularly in British Columbia. By developing the concept of ecological resilience at the landscape scale, the results will also be broadly significant to management and planning of multifunctional landscapes, contributing to the growing need for tools and approaches that conciliate social and ecological objectives.