EPA Tools & Resources Training Webinar: Visualizing Ecosystem Land Management Assessments (VELMA)
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Land managers and stakeholders face many challenges as competing objectives and a rapidly changing climate affect watersheds and the ecosystem services they provide – clean drinking water, flood control, food and fiber, habitat for fish and wildlife, recreation, and others vital to human health and well-being. EPA developed VELMA (Visualizing Ecosystem Land Management Assessments) to assist land and water managers in evaluating how alternative watershed management decisions will impact ecosystem services and trade-offs affecting multiple stakeholders. VELMA is a spatially explicit ecohydrological watershed model applicable to a wide range of environmental challenges in varied ecosystems supporting land-water resources of interest. This flexibility has made VELMA extremely valuable for environmental decision making by communities, tribes, state and federal agencies, NGOs, and others who have learned how to use the model and are applying it applying it in various locations across the U.S. This training webinar is open to the public and will provide an overview of VELMA, work through an example application of the tool, and share available training resources and methods.