Alternative Scenarios for the New England Landscape

Scenario planning is a rigorous way of asking “what if?” and it can be a powerful tool for natural resource professionals preparing for the future of socioecological systems. Planners often engage with stakeholders to codesign alternative scenarios of land-use change to help plan for an uncertain future.  The collaborators working on the New England Landscape Futures (NELF) project published a paper in the journal Earth’s Future that describes their transparent and reproduceable method for translating participatory scenarios to spatial simulations of future land-cover change. These simulations are the heart of the NELF Explorer—an online mapping tool designed to meet the needs of diverse stakeholders who are interested the future of the land and in using scenarios to guide land-use planning and conservation priorities. 

Contributed by: Jonathan Thompson

Paper Citation:

Thompson, J. R., Plisinski, J. S., Lambert, K. F., Duveneck, M. J., Morreale, L., McBride, M., Graham MacLean, M., Weiss, M. Lee L. (2020). Spatial Simulation of Codesigned Land Cover Change Scenarios in New England: Alternative Futures and Their Consequences for Conservation Priorities. Earth's Future, 8, e2019EF001348. https://doi.org/10.1029/2019EF001348