Integrated Ecological Modeling and Decision Analysis Within the Everglades Landscape

Abstract

Planning for complex ecosystem restoration projects involves integrating ecological modeling with analysis of performance trade-offs among restoration alternatives. The authors used the Everglades Landscape Model and Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis to explore the effect of simulated ecosystem performance, risk preferences, and criteria weights on the ranking of three alternatives to restoring overland sheet flow in the Everglades. The ecological model outputs included both hydrologic and water quality criteria. Results were scored in the decision analysis framework, highlighting the trade-offs between hydrologic restoration and water quality constraints. Given equal weighting of performance measures, the alternative with more homogenous sheet flow was preferred over other alternatives, despite evidence of some localized eutrophication risk.

KEYWORDS:

• decision analysis
• Everglades
• hydrology
• integrated model
• phosphorus
• restoration
• sheet flow

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Development of the regional ELM v2.8 update was supported by a grant from the U.S. Geological Survey, Priority Ecosystem Science Program, and in collaboration with the Florida Coastal Everglades Long-Term Ecological Research program under National Science Foundation Grant No. DEB-9910514. The manuscript greatly benefited from the comments by three anonymous reviewers.