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Status of the US EPA’s National Atlas of Ecosystem Services
Citation:
NEALE, A. C. AND J. D. WICKHAM. Status of the US EPA’s National Atlas of Ecosystem Services. Presented at Conference on Ecosystem Services, Naples, FL, December 08 - 11, 2008.
Impact/Purpose:
Presentation
Description:
The US Environmental Protection Agency’s (USEPA) Ecosystem Services Research Program (ESRP) is focused on transdisciplinary research to develop tools to enable decision-makers at all levels of governance to proactively conserve ecosystems services. A major product from the ESRP will be a National Atlas of Ecosystem Services. This Atlas will use principles of landscape ecology to extend the frontiers of ecoregional assessment and spatial analysis in order to display the sources and beneficiaries of ecosystem services. Services to be included in the Atlas are water quality and quantity, carbon sequestration, services provided by wetlands, food and fiber, soil regulation, and aquatic and terrestrial habitat. We anticipate that this Atlas will eventually provide national coverage of these multiple ecosystem services. This Atlas will be a product developed by EPA's ESRP in collaboration with many other organizations, notably the National Geographic Society and the USGS. The Atlas will be a digital product, will be available for multiple spatial units, will include a historical perspective, and will be updated as new spatial data become available and as ecosystem services science matures. This presentation provides a status of the Atlas design and implementation.