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Key Elements and challenges of USEPA’s developing ecological services research program
Citation:
LINTHURST, R. A., T. J. CANFIELD, D. H. LANDERS, J. K. SUMMERS, AND I. A. GOODMAN. Key Elements and challenges of USEPA’s developing ecological services research program. Presented at The 19th Annual SETAC Meeting, Goteborg, SWEDEN, May 28 - June 04, 2009.
Impact/Purpose:
The program seeks to ascertain the relationships among environmental stressors, ecological condition/function and eco-services while targeting the development of decision tools (models, mapping analyses, indices of well being, valuation approaches) for decision makers and managers at variable scales.
Description:
Over the past year, EPA’s Office of Research and Development (ORD) has redirected research within the Ecological Services Research Program (ESRP) to focus on ecosystem services and their associated benefits to human well-being. By 2009, all of EPA/ORD’s Ecological Services Research Program will be directed toward developing the scientific understanding of ecosystem services, their relationship to human well being, and producing a decision support framework (DSF) that will provide tools permitting decision-makers to examine the impacts of alternative futures on ecosystem services and their human constituency. While this new direction may appear very anthropocentric, it is simply treating humans as part of ecosystems rather than a stressor on them. The new trans-disciplinary research program applies landscape ecology, monitoring and modelling toward the assessment of ecosystem services from whole ecosystems aggregated on a national/regional basis to place-based eco-services at regional, watershed and local scales. The program seeks to ascertain the relationships among environmental stressors, ecological condition/function and eco-services while targeting the development of decision tools (models, mapping analyses, indices of well being, valuation approaches) for decision makers and managers at variable scales.
