Citation:

CAI, T., T. OLSEN, AND D. E. CAMPBELL. ECOLOGICAL AND SOCIALECONOMIC BENEFITS OF RESTORING AND-IMPAIRED STREAMS: EMERGY-BASED VALUATION. In Proceedings, 4th Bienniel International Workshop "Advances in Energy Studies" , Compinas, BRAZIL, June 16 - 19, 2004. UNICAMP, Campinas, Brazil, 207-216, (2006).

Impact/Purpose:

To present an emergy analysis for restoring impaired streams

Description:

Sound environmental decisions require an integrated, systemic method of valuation that accurately accounts for environmental and social, as well as economic, costs and benefits. More inclusive methods are particularly needed for assessing ecological benefits because these are so poorly signaled by the market-derived or -modeled estimates of value, such as the standard willingness-to-pay and consumer-surplus measures of environmental economists, that currently inform environmental decisions. We are currently assessing the potential of supplementing current economic analyses with emergy-based valuations to provide more realistic measures of ecological benefits from water quality restoration. We report here on our analysis of the emergy flows associated with four small streams (in West Virginia, USA) that are impaired by acid mine drainage. Preliminary results indicate that fishing and wildlife watching account for the greatest benefits of the stream systems to the socioeconomic system in terms of emergy contributions. Fish species diversity provides the greatest identified benefit from restoration in the form of an emergy accumulation within the streams. Ranking restoration options for these streams will require additional emergy analyses of costs and of less directly realized benefits.

Record Details: