The Upper Chattahoochee Watershed (UCW) supplies most of the drinking water that the Atlanta Metropolitan Area (AMA) consumes. However, due to the fast urban growth taking place at the AMA, the natural ecosystems of the UCW are threatened. The research in this dissertation is intended to assist decision-makers and professionals in analyzing the importance of protected areas in keeping or improving the provision of ecosystem services (ESs) within the watershed. It accomplishes this through the use of a variety of spatial models and economic valuation techniques. The second chapter compares the provision of selected ESs by protected areas, with particular attention to conservation easements, which sets permanent restrictions on developing private properties and other protected and non-protected areas within the UCW. The third chapter projects the land cover of the watershed in the next two decades using four different land use policies to guide urban development through time. First, the Baseline scenario projects land cover based on past development trends. Second, the Urbanization scenario uses similar spatial development trends than the Baseline but assumes higher urban growth. For the third scenario, I used the guidelines of the Atlanta Regional Commission Plan 2040 for projecting the land use. Fourth, the Conservation scenario uses the same development trends as the Baseline but adds larger riparian buffer areas and assures that no development occurs within those buffer areas. The fourth chapter uses integer linear programming to specify a series of optimization models to select cost-effective parcels for conservation. The economic values of ESs are assigned using value transfer based on the literature. A series of boundary penalties are added to analyze the economic trade-offs of selecting more connected parcels rather than scattered ones. A budget is set based on the willingness to pay for watershed conservation based on previous studies. Overall, results show that protected areas provide higher levels of ESs than non-protected areas. Moreover, preserving riparian buffer areas would increase the sustainability of the UCW. Finally, scattered parcels would provide the highest economic values, but more connected parcels could improve other ESs and benefit wildlife populations.