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Ecosystem Services: Priority strategic focus for U.S. EPA’s Ecological Research Program
Citation:
CANFIELD, TIM. Ecosystem Services: Priority strategic focus for U.S. EPA’s Ecological Research Program. Presented at Prairie Chapter SETAC Meeting , Gray Summit, MO, July 14 - 16, 2008.
Impact/Purpose:
The ERP will develop tools that enable planners and decision-makers at local, regional, and national levels to better understand how society’s choices affect the provisions of ecosystem services.
Description:
U.S. EPA’s Office of Research and Development has made ecosystem services the new strategic focus for its Ecological Research Program (ERP). Understanding that the protection and enhancement of ecosystem services can help maintain and improve human health, economic vitality, and overall well-being, the ERP will develop tools that enable planners and decision-makers at local, regional, and national levels to better understand how society’s choices affect the provision of these services. The ERP will use a three pronged approach to address research needs on ecosystem services. The first programmatic focus area will be a set of place-based studies, conducted at watershed or regional scales, that will serve as test-beds for development of analysis methods and web-based, decision-support tools. With these tools alternative-future scenarios, reflecting local, regional, national or global drivers of change, will be used to examine potential ecological, human-health, and economic outcomes. The second programmatic focus area will be wetland ecosystems, with the goal of understanding what bundled ecosystem services are provided by wetlands and how these can best be protected, enhanced or restored. The third programmatic focus area will be nitrogen, with the goal of understanding how this pollutant affects the delivery of desired ecosystem services at multiple (local, regional, national, global) scales. These emphases will be supported by core research on ecosystem processes, modeling, and restoration. The Office of Research and Development will form partnerships with economists and health scientists, within and outside EPA, to develop approaches for quantifying services and to conduct research on valuation and restoration approaches that adequately describe the trade-offs involved when multiple decision options are available.