Spatially explicit landscape analyses are a central activity in research on the relationships between people and changes in natural systems. Using geographical information systems and related tools, the Pacific Northwest Ecosystem Research Consortium depicted historical (pre‐EuroAmerican settlement, circa 1850), current (circa 1990), and three alternative future (circa 2050) landscapes for western Oregon's Willamette River Basin. These depictions were used to better understand and anticipate trajectories of change in human occupancy and natural resource condition. During a 30‐month period, we worked with lay and professional citizen groups to create, map, and refine a set of value‐based assumptions about future policy in three scenarios concerning land and water use. The Plan Trend 2050 scenario represents the expected future landscape in 2050 if current policies are implemented as written and recent trends continue. Development 2050 reflects a loosening of current policies, to allow freer rein to market forces across all components of the landscape, but still within the range of what citizen stakeholders considered plausible. Conservation 2050 places greater emphasis on ecosystem protection and restoration, still reflecting a plausible balance among ecological, social, and economic considerations as defined by the stakeholders. For the Conservation scenario, natural resource managers and scientists provided estimates for the area of key habitats required to sustain, in perpetuity, the array of dependent species. Spatially explicit analyses identified locations biophysically suited to meet the area targets. These locations, titled the Conservation and Restoration Opportunity Areas, were mapped and then reviewed by a series of groups regarding the political plausibility of conserving or restoring them to the indicated vegetation types. The three alternative 2050 futures, as well as the 1850 past conditions, were then evaluated by an array of evaluation models described by others in this issue. The Conservation and Restoration Opportunities map from the Conservation 2050 scenario has been adopted by the group charged with salmon recovery in the basin as the centerpiece of its restoration strategy.

No abstract

No abstract

Effective, sustainable management of urban water systems, including drinking water, stormwater, wastewater, and natural water systems, is critical to the health and well-being of people in urban areas and the ecosystems that encompass them. The demands of human population growth, aging infrastructure, and changing climate will increase pressure on these systems and require future innovations in water management. Planning for urban water systems will increasingly require collaborations between water professionals and researchers to imagine, design and model the response of novel urban water systems to future conditions. We highlight benefits and challenges of transdisciplinary projects for integrated urban water management; organized broadly into: (1) engagement of water managers and planners; (2) transdisciplinary design of innovative systems, and once designed; (3) modeling and evaluation of urban water system response to various innovations. We describe the development of a multi-scale approach to design and evaluation of innovative urban water systems, and illustrate its application using examples from the Willamette River Basin and Portland, Oregon. The scenario-based approach described here offers several key contributions to the design and modeling of innovation. First, this process provides the opportunity to convene professionals and researchers, who do not typically collaborate, as participants in a collaborative process. Second, it engages participants in thinking together across land and water management sectors to develop plausible futures at multiple spatial extents and multidecadal time horizons. Third, it helps to identify critical gaps in extant water modeling capabilities, and thus helps define the near-term research agenda for modelers.