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Integrated Monitoring, Modeling and Mapping for Managing and Valuing Bundled Services in the US – Ecosystem Services Research and Development at the EPA
Citation:
JOHNSTON, J. M., A. C. NEALE, M. E. MCDONALD, K. Reckhow, AND D. Ames. Integrated Monitoring, Modeling and Mapping for Managing and Valuing Bundled Services in the US – Ecosystem Services Research and Development at the EPA. Presented at CAU/GFO Workshop: Ecosystem Services - Solution for Problems or a Problem that Needs Solution, Kiel, GERMANY, May 13 - 15, 2008.
Impact/Purpose:
The fundamental strategy is that monitoring and modeling share a common conceptualization for ecosystem dynamics and the delivery of bundled services. As implemented in this program, these components also have a shared architecture, such that data inform model development and verification needs, and models facilitate data needs across scales, filling gaps and providing information that cannot be cost-effectively sampled for a national program, for all services at all areas and times of interest.
Description:
The Ecological Research Program (ERP) of the EPA Office of Research and Development has the vision of a comprehensive theory and practice for characterizing, quantifying, and valuing ecosystem services, and their relationship to human well-being for environmental decision making. This vision of future environmental decisionmaking is planned as an innovative, online decision support platform with a full range of data exploration methods, models and decision options, and is intended to be a dynamic connection between managers and policy developers and their ecosystems and bundled services of interest, from local to regional and national scales. Essential to the success of this ambitious goal is the application of systems thinking that is both structured and comprehensive.