Manually going from RIOS IPA to return on investment using InVEST ----------------------------------------------------------------- Essentially what you need to do is embed the final RIOS activity portfolio into your landcover map, create a new InVEST biophysical table that includes the transitions from original LULC -> activity, then run InVEST with the new portfolio LULCs and biophysical table. None of this is hard, but it is a bit time-consuming. Step 1: Create new landcover maps, which include the RIOS activity portfolio. These new landcover maps will be inputs to InVEST. You'll need your original land use/land cover (LULC) raster and the RIOS output activity_portfolio_total.tif. We need to make two resulting layers that combine the activity portfolio and the LULC - one where the protected areas are actually protected (so retain their original land cover type, like native forest), and the other where protected areas are degraded (so change to a degraded land cover type, like pasture.) This allows us to calculate not only the benefit of doing restoration, but also the marginal benefit from not allowing the protected areas to degrade. Of note, you will be creating two different output rasters, one where grid cells that have a 'protection' activity retain their original LULC class, the other where the 'protection' cells are changed to have the LULC code of a user-selected class in the original LULC raster that represents the degraded class that these protected cells are likely to transition to if these cells are not protected. So the first thing to do is make a copy of activity_portfolio_total.tif (let's call it activity_portfolio_total_protected.tif), and set the 'protection' cells to NoData, so you'll have a starting point for each of the two processes. Overlay activity_portfolio_total_protected.tif with your original LULC raster. Where activities are done, create new LULC classes that combine the activity with the original LULC class, giving them new land use codes and descriptions. This combination can be done using something like the CombinatorialAnd tool in ArcGIS. Make new fields to hold the new LULC codes and descriptions for the new LULC->activity transitions and populate them. For LULC codes, you need to make unique integer values, and one way to make those values informational is to include the LULC code for the original LULC class and the RIOS code for the activity. So you could assign the new LULC code for these activity areas to look like 0 For example, if you're doing reforestation (with an activity_portfolio_total_protected.tif value of 1) on the LULC class degraded forest (with an original LULC code of 23), you'll end up with a new activity/LULC code of 2301. For LULC descriptions, do a similar process as was done with the codes, creating results that look something like ->. For example: degraded forest->reforestation. Now combine this LULC->activity raster with your original LULC map, such that the grid cells in the original LULC where activities are selected get changed to this new transition mapping, while the grid cells that do not have activities on them retain their original LULC class. (You could do this with the Con tool in ArcGIS, just note that NoData cells will need to be assigned to 0 or -999 or some other value not included in your LULC codes for it to produce a resulting raster that covers the whole area of interest.) Make sure that the resulting raster has a Value field where original LULCs retain their original LULC class value and the new activity areas are assigned their new LULC->activity code (like 2301 above.) Also make sure that the result has a field containing the descriptions for both original LULCs and LULC->activity mappings (it just makes visualizing this layer easier.) This will give you an LULC portfolio where protected areas are protected (retain their original LULC) - let's call this 'portfolio_protected.tif'. To create the version where protected areas are unprotected, so change to a 'degraded' LULC type, you could do something like this: From activity_portfolio_total.tif, extract only the cells where 'protection' is done, setting the rest of the study area to 0 (or -999 or whatever.) Reclassify these cells to have the LULC code of a 'degraded' class that these areas would turn into if left unprotected. Combine this degraded raster with portfolio_protected.tif, such that grid cells in portfolio_protected.tif that correspond to cells that are degraded get the new degraded LULC code, while the grid cells that are not degraded retain their portfolio_protected.tif class value. (You could do this with the Con tool in ArcGIS.) Make sure that the resulting raster has appropriate LULC codes in the Value field as well as descriptions. Let's call this result 'portfolio_unprotected.tif'. Step 2: Update the InVEST biophysical table with new LULC-activity combinations and values Make a copy of your original InVEST biophysical CSV table. Add new rows corresponding to the new LULC->activity mappings defined in the portfolio_protected.tif raster above. Make sure that the 'lucode' field in the biophysical table contains the correct new LULC->activity Value found in portfolio_protected.tif (which is defined as 0.) Alternately, you could export the attribute table for portfolio_protected.tif to a .dbf, open it in Excel and copy and paste the coefficients contained in your original biophysical CSV table. Fill in the appropriate biophysical coefficients for these new LULC->activity entries. You'll need to decide how much each activity changes the coefficient from its original LULC value, given the time span that you're looking at. For example, how much is sediment retention expected to increase as a result of doing reforestation on degraded forest, over a 10-year time span? A literature search may provide assistance here. Another option is to consider the original LULC coefficient value, and the coefficient value for the land cover type that closely matches what you expect to see after the activity is implemented. For example, let's say your current land cover map (and accompanying biophysical table) contains both 'degraded forest' and 'forest' classes, and you expect that doing the activity reforestation in 'degraded forest' will get you 1/4 of the way to 'forest' in 10 years. If the sedret_eff value for 'degraded forest' is .4 and the value for 'forest' is .6, the difference is .2. So you could take .2 * (1/4) = .05, and .4 + .05 = .45 for the new sedret_eff value. For more information on this method, see the section RIOS Portfolio Translator, pages 18-22 in the RIOS User Guide. Step 3: Run InVEST sediment and/or nutrient and calculate return on investment Now do 3 InVEST runs for each model of interest: One using the baseline (original) land cover map as the InVEST Land Use input, the second using portfolio_protected.tif and the third using portfolio_unprotected.tif. Make sure you are also using the updated biophysical CSV. You can look at the resulting rasters and shapefiles to see the difference between baseline and each of the portfolios. To calculate return on investment (ROI) for Nutrient in the watershed, use the export values for each of the baseline/protected/unprotected scenarios found in the InVEST result 'output\watershed_outputs.shp'. Use p_exp_tot or n_exp_tot depending on which nutrient you're modeling. To calculate ROI for Sediment, use the sed_exp field in 'output\watershed_outputs.shp' for each of the scenarios. Then: Total benefit = (protection export - baseline export) + (protection export - unprotected export) This values both the direct benefit of doing restoration, and the marginal benefit of protected areas not degrading.