Citation:

Nahlik, A., C. Phifer, J. Kline, Paul L Ringold, A. Gray, Tim Canfield, AND K. Schuerger. Biophysical Metrics for Quantifying Nonuse Values: Examples from Three Ecosystem Types in the United States. A Community on Ecosystem Services Conference, Washington, DC, December 03 - 07, 2018.

Impact/Purpose:

Nonuse values are the value people place on the existence of an ecosystem. These values describe the ecosystem they don’t expect to directly use or enjoy such as mining or bird watching. Nonuse values are much discussed in economic literature and have been shown, in many instances, to be large enough to change the outcome of benefit cost analyses. Despite their importance and an extensive literature on how to assign weights to these values, the literature on the biophysical metrics underpinning these values is not well developed. Biophysical metrics are features that describe the status of an ecosystem. Examples could be the presence of invasive fish, the index of biotic integrity, or the total suspended solids concentration. Uncertainty about these metrics weakens the foundations of benefits analyses as there is doubt over the “good” that people actually value. This research aids EPA in beginning to provide more certainty to the specification of those metrics leading to more certain analysis of the benefits of proposed policy options. This work is part of an ongoing collaboration between natural and social scientists to delineate those biophysical metrics.

Description:

Nonuse values are the values people place on nature’s goods and services that they do not directly use, appreciate, or enjoy now or in the future. Metrics of nonuse aspects are an essential part of the total economic valuation of ecosystem goods and services. However, there is little agreement on what biophysical metrics from the environment can or should be used to quantify nonuse values from many ecosystems. The lack of accepted metrics for ecosystems limits analysts’ ability to quantify changes in benefits resulting from policy decisions. This session is part of a broader symposium addressing nonuse valuation. Our objective is to advance our understanding concerning nonuse values and present ecosystem-specific biophysical metrics that can be used to assess terrestrial and wetland ecosystems at regional and national scales. We present a process for conceptualizing and developing preliminary metrics of nonuse value based on causal-chains, including results, for three common systems in the United States, wetlands, forests and agricultural systems. As a first step in this process, we identified existing datasets from government agencies that were publicly available with broad regional and nationwide spatial coverages. For wetlands and forests ecosystems, we drew upon existing, field-based ecological datasets to represent the ecological integrity of the ecosystems as a whole. For wetlands, we determined that the nonuse metric was best captured by the biological indicator of condition, which was calculated using a Vegetation Multimetric Index (VMMI), and developed and measured for the Environmental Protection Agency’s National Wetland Condition Assessment (NWCA). Similarly, for forest ecosystem integrity, we applied the Forest Services’ Terrestrial Health Assessment values, as our metric for nonuse values. For agricultural systems, where the line between natural inputs and human activity is more ambiguous, we considered a site appeal index to assess nonuse values. Results from this project demonstrate the value of the causal chain approach. We present case studies where these metrics have been used, including ways to visualize complex datasets as useful figures and numbers amenable to cost-benefit analysis, especially as it relates to evaluating policy changes. Continued testing and refinement of the proposed nonuse metrics for these three ecosystems and closer collaborations between natural and social scientists will ensure the inclusion of the nonuse perspective in evaluations.

Record Details: