Can we adequately represent the spatial interplay between humans and nature?
Citation:
Russell, M. Can we adequately represent the spatial interplay between humans and nature? US-IALE, Chicago, IL, April 08 - 12, 2018.
Impact/Purpose:
Present and receive feedback from landscape ecologists on spatial pathway methodology and existing datasets that might help mainstream assessments that include a consideration of natural capital resources and the human welfare benefits derived from them. By representing the spatially specific interplays between natural capital production and human use we are able to move towards incorporation of realized human benefits derived from nature into decisions involving potential changes in both production of supply and how accessible that production is to human beneficiaries and away from a consideration of ecosystem changes without coupling them to information on human use/demand. This should result in decisions that lead to more impactful human welfare results.
Description:
One of the challenges remaining before ecosystem services assessments can become part of mainstream decision making is how to spatially represent the interplay of nature as a whole and humans. Nature’s ecosystems act as natural capital by producing things (i.e. stocks and or conditions) that are beneficial to human welfare in the same way that machinery produces traditional economic goods. Here we refer to those things, which represent the point of handoff between ecosystems and human economic processes, as final ecosystem services (FES). While at course scales there appears to be some FES that are produced by nature and used by humans in the same spatial area (e.g. recreational viewing of flowering trees, canopy cover shade reduced temperatures, wild picked berries), these and other FES rely on specific spatial pathways (e.g. sightlines; hydrologic, atmospheric, transportation or knowledge networks etc.), to connect to human users. Here we review existing geospatial methods for connecting an ecosystem to its resulting FES and human users to those locations where they access them. We then compare which of those connections are adequately represented by datasets available to the public via EPA’s EnviroAtlas application and postulate on what layers could be added with future data availability or analytical capability to complete a set that would allow spatial assessment of ecosystem service production, delivery and use. By representing the spatially specific interplays between natural capital production and human use we are able to move towards incorporation of realized human benefits derived from nature into decisions involving potential changes in both production of supply and how accessible that production is to human beneficiaries and away from a consideration of ecosystem changes without coupling them to information on human use/demand. This should result in decisions that lead to more impactful human welfare results.