Citation:

Landers, D., A. Nahlik, P. Ringold, AND J. Powers. A Binary Approach to Define and Classify Final Ecosystem Goods and Services. To be Presented at A Community of Ecosystem Services III Conference, Fort Lauderdale, FL, December 12, 2012.

Impact/Purpose:

This research has resulted in a rigorously defined set of Final Ecosystem Goods and Services defined by a specific environmental class and the beneficiaries whom use or value the specific ecosytem services. This type of framework is essential in order to further develop, apply and integrate the concept of Final Ecosystem Goods and Services into agency decision making.

Description:

The ecosystem services literature decries the lack of consistency and standards in the application of ecosystem services as well as the inability of current approaches to explicitly link ecosystem services to human well-being. Recently, SEEA and CICES have conceptually identified Final Ecosystem Goods and Services (FEGS) as the preferred approach to make the ecosystem services concept functional. For the past several years the Office of Research and Development of EPA has been working to develop an approach suitable for using FEGS as an organizing concept for an ecosystem services classification system. We believe that implementation of Ecosystem Services begins with a FEGS framework composed of definitions, principles and a binary classification approach which specifies 1) the specific beneficiary and 2) the biophysical aspects of the environment with which the specific beneficiary interacts. This approach requires the definition of environmental classes that tessellate the earth and specific beneficiaries that discretely identify the biophysical attributes of environmental classes that contribute to human well-being. To develop this approach, it has been essential that natural scientist and socials scientists work in concert. Our FEGS classification approach presently defines 3 environmental classes and 14 subclasses that describe a total of 240 unique beneficiaries. The tables or matrices we have created allow a user to enter the matrix from either the beneficiary or environmental class perspective. Definitions and principles used are also provided along with detailed definition of beneficiaries for each environmental sub-class and the nature of the FEGS we believe that they would value. We view our work as a collection of hypotheses regarding the beneficiaries and the environmental attributes that they seek, consume or appreciate. This FEGS classification approach will be ready for testing and evaluation by October 2012.

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