While farm-scale models provide valuable information about economic-environmental tradeoffs at the farm-forest scale, watershed-scale (regional) modeling is needed to quantify impacts on receiving waters. In the PMP, the project team and stakeholders collaboratively defined a suite of scenarios to assess tradeoffs and synergies of alternative climate, land use, cropping system and BMP adoption scenarios on water quality, quantity and the regional economy. Nine regional scenarios were developed for Florida and seven for Georgia. A summary of the scenarios are included in the images below. Click on the images to view full description of each scenario.
The scenarios should not be interpreted as recommendations for management. They were designed by the PMP stakeholders and modelers collaboratively to explore the response of the system to various types of interventions. In some cases, the scenarios are designed to reflect “extreme” conditions that would never be realistically implemented as defined in the scenario. They were selected to understand the limits or “bookends” of a system’s response to various interventions.
SWAT-MODFLOW was used to aggregate impacts of these alternate scenarios on groundwater, spring water and river water quality and quantity at the watershed scale in the Santa Fe River Basin in Florida and the Lower Flint River Basin in Georgia. Both are ecologically sensitive, predominantly agricultural/silvicultural watersheds with land uses representative of the study region, and both have significant challenges in addressing competing priorities for water resource management. Thus, these watersheds serve as valuable test beds for addressing the challenge of meeting diverse water needs while maintaining environmental quality.
IMPLAN software was used to estimate the economic contributions of agriculture, forestry and supporting industries in the study region for the alternative scenarios.
