A collaboration by
   John Gowdy & Jon Erickson, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
   Karin Limburg, SUNY-ESF
   their graduate students
   Glenn-Marie Lange, New York University
Sponsored by the Hudson River Foundation, 2000-2003

Watersheds throughout the Hudson Valley are experiencing rapid transformations of land usage.  The pressure is particularly severe in the lower and mid-sections of the Valley, where suburban sprawl is proceeding at a sometimes frightening pace.  In this exciting study, we are an interdisciplinary team of ecologists and economists trying to trace the causal linkages between economic activity, land use change, and ecosystem integrity.  Our study focuses on Dutchess County, in the mid-Hudson Valley.  Dutchess, formerly an agricultural idyll, has become heavily suburbanized in its southern reach and this activity is spreading northward.  County planners are facing the difficult task of managing further growth while sustaining environmental quality.  We are fortunate to be collaborating with the Dutchess County Environmental Management Council, which has already been studying one of our focal watersheds, the Wappingers Creek, for a number of years.

Our approach: we are developing a social accounting matrix input-output model (SAM) of the county's economy.  We are linking this to a Geographic Information System, and using this to develop a model of land use change.  We are also using a number of different methodological approaches to assess ecosystem "health" or integrity.  We focus here on the two largest watersheds in the county, the Wappingers and Fishkill Creeks.  The latter is undergoing intensive development at present, due both to within-county (microchip industry) and exogenous (NYC and Westchester) forces. Both watersheds reflect disturbance at different levels.

Click here to see some photos from our study.                                 (return to KL's main page)