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Toward a standard lexicon for ecosystem services
Citation:
Munns, Jr., Wayne R., Anne W. Rea, Marisa J. Mazzotta, L. Wainger, AND K. Saterson. Toward a standard lexicon for ecosystem services. Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management. Allen Press, Inc., Lawrence, KS, 11(4):666-673, (2015).
Impact/Purpose:
The complex, widely dispersed, and cumulative environmental challenges currently facing society require holistic, transdisciplinary approaches that promote sustainability. The concept of ecosystem services provides a framework to foster a broader systems perspective of sustainability, and to help make science more responsive to the needs of decision makers and the public. Standardization is lacking in the terms and definitions associated with the ecosystem services concept, hindering scientific progress and application of advancements in that science to policy and decision making. A standard lexicon of ecosystem service terminology is offered to promote scientific advancement and the use of ecosystem services knowledge in sustainability policy and management decisions.
Description:
The complex, widely dispersed, and cumulative environmental challenges currently facing society require holistic, transdisciplinary approaches to resolve. The concept of ecosystem services (ES) has become more widely accepted both as a framework that cuts across the dimensions of human existence to foster a broader systems perspective of sustainability, and to make science more responsive to the needs of decision makers and the public. One requirement for successful transdisciplinary approaches is a common language and understanding of key concepts that provide a basis for shared meaning and understanding. The primary objective of this communication is to encourage the ES research and policy communities to standardize ES terminology and definitions to facilitate their mutual understanding by the multidisciplinary and multiple organizational contributors to ES research and policy. As an important step toward standardization, we present a lexicon developed to inform ES research conducted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and its partners. We describe a straightforward conceptualization of the relationships among environmental decisions, their effects on ecological systems and the services they provide, and human well being, which provides a framework for common understanding and use of ES terminology. We encourage challenges to these definitions and attempts to advance standardization of a lexicon in ways that might be more meaningful to our ultimate objective: informing environmental decisions in ways that promote the sustainability of the environment upon which we all depend.
