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Ecosystem Services Research Program, Pollutant Specific Studies: Nitrogen Regulations Services Implementation Plan
Citation:
COMPTON, J. E., R. L. DENNIS, H. A. WALKER, W. B. MILSTEAD, S. J. JORDAN, B. H. HILL, K. M. FRITZ, R. DEVEREUX, B. R. JOHNSON, J. BEAULIEU, J. S. LATIMER, J. Lynch, R. WAITE, AND C. Davis. Ecosystem Services Research Program, Pollutant Specific Studies: Nitrogen Regulations Services Implementation Plan. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, EPA/600/R-09/091, 2009.
Impact/Purpose:
The overall goal of the ESRP is to transform the way decision-makers understand and respond to environmental issues, making clear the ways in which their policy and management choices affect the type, quality, and magnitude of services we receive from ecosystems.
Description:
The Ecosystem Services Research Program (ESRP) is a new, multi-year research initiative under development by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The overall goal of the ESRP is to transform the way decision-makers understand and respond to environmental issues, making clear the ways in which their policy and management choices affect the type, quality, and magnitude of services we receive from ecosystems. The ESRP has chosen to focus on reactive Nitrogen (Nr) for stressor specific ecosystem research. Reactive nitrogen includes all biologically, chemically, and radiatively active nitrogen compounds in the atmosphere and biosphere. The amount of nitrogen (N) applied to the nation’s landscape and released to the nation’s air and water has reached unprecedented levels, and these levels of Nr pollution will continue to influence air, land and water for the foreseeable future. Reactive Nitrogen (Nr) affects ecosystem services in both positive and negative ways, enhancing the production of food and fiber, but having adverse effects on other ecosystem services such as provision of drinking water, air quality, forest health, climate regulation, fisheries and aquatic habitat. Developing an approach for quantifying and comparing these effects is a key gap which this plan will fill. This work is being done through collaboration with other projects within ESRP, and also through coordination across EPA, with the National Center for Environmental Assessment (NCEA), Office of Water (OW) and Office of Air and Radiation (OAR) playing key roles in providing input and review to ensure that the ESRP-Nitrogen research is useful for their work. The ESRP-N effort will involve multiple place-based studies addressing a range of ecosystem types and mechanisms of impact in order to develop relationships between Nr and ecosystem services for a range of systems. It will also include a national effort, using data layers for the entire nation in order to quantify ecosystem services affected by and affecting Nr. The overall goal of the ESRP-N program is to connect the impacts of nitrogen on ecosystem services in order to inform and improve EPA’s management and policy related to nutrients.