Abstract
We demonstrate a novel, spatially explicit assessment of the current condition of aquatic ecosystem services, with limited sensitivity analysis for the atmospheric contaminant mercury. The Integrated Ecological Modeling System (IEMS) forecasts water quality and quantity, habitat suitability for aquatic biota, fish biomasses, population densities, productivities, and contamination by methylmercury across headwater watersheds. We applied this IEMS to the Coal River Basin (CRB), West Virginia (USA), an 8-digit hydrologic unit watershed, by simulating a network of 97 stream segments using the SWAT watershed model, a watershed mercury loading model, the WASP water quality model, the PiSCES fish community estimation model, a fish habitat suitability model, the BASS fish community and bioaccumulation model, and an ecoservices post-processer. Model application was facilitated by automated data retrieval and model setup and updated model wrappers and interfaces for data transfers between these models from a prior study. This companion study evaluates baseline predictions of ecoservices provided for 1990–2010 for the population of streams in the CRB and serves as a foundation for future model development.
Highlights
Watersheds, streams and river basins provide multiple ecosystem services, or ecoservices, that benefit human health and well-being and contribute to the sustainability of our economic and social systems (Costanza et al 2012; MEA 2005)
We demonstrated and verified a spatially explicit, watershed-scale capability of the Integrated Ecological Modeling System (IEMS) for a baseline, uncalibrated simulation in the Coal River Basin (CRB) in support of the problem statement forecasting alternative future states of aquatic ecoservices in response to changing landuse and climate
The addition of stream segment level detail has increased the utility of the approach to address the cumulative impacts of multiple stressors, which more fully supports the assessment of multiple stressors on stream networks
Summary
Watersheds, streams and river basins provide multiple ecosystem services, or ecoservices, that benefit human health and well-being and contribute to the sustainability of our economic and social systems (Costanza et al 2012; MEA 2005). Land use and regional development affect stream and riverine ecoservices through water withdrawals for agricultural, industrial, and residential uses; inputs of sewage effluents, increased nonpoint source pollution from urban and agricultural runoff; atmospheric deposition of contaminants; and alteration of hydrologic cycles (Auerbach et al 2014; Vidal-Abarca et al 2014). The assessment of the impacts of multiple stressors poses a significant challenge to environmental decision making and requires modeling approaches beyond single media (e.g., soil, surface water, atmosphere, etc.) that unifies expert knowledge across modeling domains, namely an Integrated Ecological Modeling System (IEMS) (Johnston et al 2000; USEPA 2008). Sustainability assessment requires the integration of social, economic and environmental systems, this study focuses on environmental system integration of biological, ecological, physical and chemical processes of lotic, freshwater ecoservices to develop system understanding and facilitate experimentation (Kiker et al 2005)
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