You are here:
Providing High Resolution Ecosystem Goods and Services Assessment with the EnviroAtlas Community Component
Citation:
Lovette, J., L. Jackson, D. Pilant, AND A. Neale. Providing High Resolution Ecosystem Goods and Services Assessment with the EnviroAtlas Community Component. American Geophysical Union, Washington, District Of Columbia, December 10 - 14, 2018.
Impact/Purpose:
To convey geospatial research methods to develop fine-scale indicators of urban ecosystem services for public dissemination through the internet
Description:
The US EPA EnviroAtlas provides an interactive data hub for exploring the many benefits people can gain from their natural environment across multiple scales. These ecosystem goods and services (EGS) can be vitally important to human health, but extensive cataloging and analysis of these services has been lacking due to a paucity of information, especially at finer spatial resolutions. The Community Component of EnviroAtlas uses meter-scale urban land cover along with several other datasets to compute over 100 EGS-related metrics for more than 950 cities and towns in 24 US urbanized areas. Some of the datasets included represent metrics for proximity to parks, tree cover and green space along walkable roads, and educational facilities with minimal neighborhood green space. These data also complement coarser EGS metrics developed at the subwatershed scale (HUC 12), which are available nationwide through the EnviroAtlas. The numerous datasets are explorable and retrievable through a mature online mapping application along with a number of use case scenarios to assist municipalities and other users in implementing the data for EGS decision making. This mapping application also provides several demographic data layers that can help users explore the provisioning of EGS relative to differing age, racial, or socioeconomic groups. Here we present ongoing developments in the EnviroAtlas Community Component and discuss past and future uses for community decision-making. We also discuss the expansion of our use case scenarios to increase accessibility and interpretability for stakeholders. This abstract has been reviewed and approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory. Its contents do not necessarily reflect Agency views or policy.