Potential Land-use Intensity, Aridification Trends, Overlap, and Impact Scenarios, Geospatial Data, Colorado Plateau, USA

These geospatial data characterize the potential for geographic overlap among areas likely to experience climate drying (aridification) and high intensity land-use with population growth, recreation tourism, agriculture, energy development, and mining on the Colorado Plateau. Spatial overlap between areas of high land-use intensity and aridification were used to create scenarios and corresponding consensus maps for areas with high potential to experience detrimental effects to ecosystem attributes (recreation economy, water availability, vegetation and wildlife habitat, and spiritual and cultural resources). This analytical framework for assessing the potential impacts of overlapping land-use and climate change could be applied with other drivers of change or to other regions to create scenarios at various spatial scales in support of natural resource planning efforts.