Leveraging Ecosystem Services in Stormwater Management
Citation:
Hoover, FushciaAnn. Leveraging Ecosystem Services in Stormwater Management. SESYNC, Baltimore, MD, February 21, 2019.
Impact/Purpose:
The research addresses issues related to the Clean Water Act and proposes a framework to assist stakeholders and decision makers to better manage their environmental systems while managing stormwater. The framework is applicable to local, state, regional, tribal, and federal partners.
Description:
Developed areas have always had a need to manage their stormwater. As populations increase and more people move to urban areas, the challenge of managing stormwater has increased because of increased pollution and a penchant for developing lands. Under this growth and development, the traditional practice has been to use gray infrastructure (e.g., underground pipes and storage tanks) to quickly move excess stormwater runoff. However, this technology is often expensive to maintain and provides limited benefits. Green infrastructure (GI; e.g., rain gardens, bioswales, etc.) is a more traditional technology that leverages natural processes to manage stormwater and can be integrated into an overall stormwater management plan. We argue that greenspace should also be considered as part of a stormwater management plan because vegetated space promotes interception or infiltration (e.g., street trees, urban forest, or parks); and greenspace is a form of GI if installed for stormwater management. Moreover, in addition to stormwater management benefits, there are other ancillary benefits that can be leveraged from greenspace. In this study, we present an applied framework for considering stormwater management along with ancillary benefits from urban greenspace. The framework is structured around four categories of ecosystem services, as defined by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment: provisioning, cultural, regulatory, and supporting services. The result is a framework designed to help stakeholders and decision makers consider benefits provided by greenspace to help alleviate multiple issues as they manage stormwater. The goal is to improve resilience and sustainability by 1) allowing stakeholders to prioritize and address their needs and concerns, and 2) empowering decision makers to increase benefits received from urban greenspace.