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Ecosystem services Linking People to Coastal Habitats.
Citation:
Littles, C., Ted DeWitt, M. Harwell, AND C. Jackson. Ecosystem services Linking People to Coastal Habitats. Coastal & Estuarine Reserch Federation 2017, Providence, RI, November 05 - 09, 2017.
Impact/Purpose:
EPA scientists at NHEERL/WED and GED have developed a framework for assessing the vulnerability and resilience of coastal final ecosystem goods and services (FEGS) to environmental change. Understanding how environmental change will alter the availability of coastal final ecosystem goods and services (FEGS; such as food provisioning from fisheries, property protection, and recreation) has significant implications for coastal planning and the development of adaptive management strategies to maximize sustainability of natural resources. The dynamic social and physical settings of these important resources means that there is not a “one-size-fits-all” model to predict the specific changes in coastal FEGS that will occur as a result of climate change. Thus, the framework that WED and GED has developed is a hypothesis-driven approach that builds on available literature to understand the likely effects of climate change on FEGS across coastal regions of the United States. In this presentation, we discuss a literature review-based meta-analysis that documents the evidence for the use of habitats by people to obtain specific FEGS. By linking the habitats to mappable habitat-units, particularly those used nationwide (e.g., the Coastal & Marine Ecological Classification Standard, CMECS), this approach provides the basis for mapping the use of FEGS across coastal landscapes, such as a bay or estuary. Subsequently, ecological models forecasting changes to the distribution of coastal habitats could then be used as a means to forecast the effects of environmental change on the availability of FEGS to coastal communities. This research was conducted as a part of SHC Project 2.61, Task 3: Ecological Production Functions for Quantifying Final Ecosystem Goods and Services.
Description:
Given the growing desire to incorporate ecosystem goods and services (EGS) considerations into coastal planning efforts, it is imperative that stakeholders understand how coastal habitats affect the availability and delivery of those EGS. Nonetheless, methods requiring long-term data, funding and/or unique expertise may limit the use of that material by coastal communities with fewer resources. To make the linkages between habitats and EGS more apparent, we evaluated the relationship between habitat class (per the Coastal & Marine Ecological Classification Standard, CMECS) and EGS beneficiaries (per the Final Ecosystem Goods & Services Classification System) using a “weight of evidence” approach that synthesized results from published literature, then assessed CMECS habitat classes most relevant to each beneficiary group. Approximately 2,800 unique articles were identified by search engines using terms including “ecosystem service” or “ecosystem good”, along with “coast,” “nearshore,” and/or “habitat.” After an initial filtering process using titles and abstracts, approximately 16% of journal articles addressed linkages between habitats and EGS beneficiaries and were retained for subsequent analysis. Recreational (83%) and industrial (35%) beneficiary groups were most cited in literature, with experiential-users/hikers and commercial fishermen the most prominent users represented in each category, respectively. Recreational users were also linked to the widest diversity of CMECS habitat subclasses (i.e., 22 of 26). Forested and scrub-shrub wetlands (e.g., mangroves) and emergent wetlands, were most relevant for property owners, frequently cited as providing protection from storm surge. Results provide an overview of coastal habitats most utilized by various beneficiary groups to obtain EGS, and this information may assist in efforts to prioritize restoration or evaluate how development scenarios may affect ecosystem service delivery in coastal communities.