You are here:
Final Ecosystem Goods and Services for Use by National Estuary Program Stakeholders to Inform Management and Restoration Planning Decisions
Citation:
Yee, S., K. Williams, G. Cicchetti, Ted DeWitt, R. Fulford, M. Harwell, L. Sharpe, B. Branoff, AND R. Rossi. Final Ecosystem Goods and Services for Use by National Estuary Program Stakeholders to Inform Management and Restoration Planning Decisions. NCER2021: National Conference on Ecosystem Restoration, Virtual, July 26 - August 05, 2021.
Impact/Purpose:
A document analysis of National Estuary management plans is used to identify final ecosystem goods and services and their beneficiaries potentially impacted by estuary management. Though developed here for estuarine management, the final ecosystem goods and services approach has broad applicability and transferability to restoration of other ecosystems.
Description:
Widespread assessment of ecosystem services has been limited because of perceptions of being too technical, too expensive, or requiring special expertise. For example, estuary management programs have used ecosystem services concepts to frame management goals and communicate with stakeholders. Yet, indicators assessed, monitored, and reported in estuarine management or restoration projects still have traditionally focused on ecological condition, with little connection, if any, to social or economic outcomes. Approaches are needed that expand the range of ecosystem services considered, link ecosystem services explicitly to different stakeholder groups, facilitate effective communication with economists and other social scientists, and expand the array of available techniques for measuring the effectiveness of restoration in achieving desired goals. We applied the concept of final ecosystem goods and services (FEGS) to review the suite of ecosystem services relevant to management of National Estuary Programs (NEP) and the National Estuarine Research Reserve System (NERRS), and explicitly link them to the beneficiaries who use them. We conducted a document analysis of management plans to assess the degree to which these programs consider ecosystem services, their beneficiaries, and habitats within both the estuary itself as well as the broader watershed. The list of final ecosystem goods and services generated from document analysis serves as a tool for defining management goals, identifying stakeholders, developing meaningful indicators, and conducting valuation studies in estuarine management and restoration planning efforts. Though developed here for estuarine management, the keyword hierarchy and final ecosystem goods and services approach have broad applicability and transferability to restoration of other ecosystems. The information gleaned from the document analysis and the final ecosystem goods and services approach are being used to engage a number of estuarine management programs to demonstrate how ecosystem services can be used as a measure of restoration effectiveness by 1) identifying metrics that are directly relevant to human beneficiaries, 2) applying quantitative models to link changing ecological condition to changes in ecosystem services, 3) understanding the levels of restoration that are needed to achieve desired levels of ecosystem services, 4) considering the potential tradeoffs across restoration alternatives, and 5) monitoring the progress of restoration.
