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USEPA'S FINAL ECOSYSTEM AND SERVICES (FEGS) CLASSIFICATION SYSTEM: Concept to Implementation and Links with EnviroAtlas
Citation:
Landers, D., A. Nahlik, C. Rhodes, AND A. Neale. USEPA'S FINAL ECOSYSTEM AND SERVICES (FEGS) CLASSIFICATION SYSTEM: Concept to Implementation and Links with EnviroAtlas. Presented at ACES IV Ecosystem Services Conference, San Jose, COSTA RICA, September 08 - 12, 2014.
Impact/Purpose:
The FEGS classification system described in this presentation fulfills a long sought solution to the question of how to define ecosystem services so that they can be routinely measured and quantified, while avoiding double counting. The FEGS approach has received broad initial acclaim from reviewers and others that have been briefed on the approach. It is being incorporated into research and demonstration studies within and external to EPA, thus facilitating greater awareness of the effects of decision making on environmental parameters.
Description:
For the last decade ecosystem services have received increasing focus, yet the natural and social scientists working on mainstreaming these concepts are still struggling with the basic issues. One of such issue is developing a framework that avoids double counting, provides guidance on what should be measured and connects to human well being. FEGS (Final Ecosystem Goods and Services) are an informative and useful concept as it embodies both biophysical components of nature and human beneficiaries. We present a FEGS Classification System (FEGS-CS), that explicitly links the goods and services produced by the environment with potential human beneficiaries. We explore approaches to demonstrate application of FEGS to several place-based community studies implemented by the USEPA Office of Research and Development. The current FEGS-CS web site can link defined environmental classes with potential beneficiaries and provisional FEGS. We intend to add a geospatially explicit component by linking the FEGS-CS with the EnviroAtlas which contains a wealth of spatially explicit ecosystems services indicator data. By integrating and using the two products together, a user may benefit from a standardized classification framework which can be connected to spatially explicit information relating to a particular place. EnviroAtlas data includes percentages of area in different land cover classes, condition of stream buffer areas, water consumption, demographic (beneficiary) data, as well as many other ecosystem services related data. We expect the products of these efforts to more precisely identify and measure who uses which ecosystem services in what places than we have seen previously in the ecosystem services literature.