Review of ESA 2019 SYMP 8: Integrating Human Health with Ecosystem Services – Research to Provide Practical Tools for Healthier and More Resilient Communities
Citation:
Hahn, I., B. Dyson, A. Neale, R. Gould, P. Huber, K. Biedenweg, J. Hochard, AND A. Geller. Review of ESA 2019 SYMP 8: Integrating Human Health with Ecosystem Services – Research to Provide Practical Tools for Healthier and More Resilient Communities. BULLETIN OF THE ECOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA. Ecological Society of America, Ithaca, NY, 102(1):e01786, (2020).
Impact/Purpose:
EPA ORD SHC is making efforts to better evaluate, quantify and incorporate cumulative impacts both quantitatively and qualitatively, and seeks to foster better integration of ecosystem services and human health and well-being by providing the knowledge, data, and tools needed while supporting local communities build capacity to become more sustainable and resilient. Through collaborations with EPA STAR projects under the RFA, "Integrating Human Health and Ecosystem Services", the scientists are producing ground-breaking research results with real world case studies involving communities that are faced with important decision makings pertaining to conserving and restoring ecological health as well as promoting human health. This review paper summarizes the 2019 Ecological Society of America (ESA) Annual meeting Symposium organized by EPA and provide lessons learned and future directions for integrating human health and ecosystem services for improving public health and environmental protection.
Description:
Synopsis The US EPA’s Sustainable and Healthy Communities (SHC) National Research Program has provided $2 million research grants to fund four academic research projects through the Science-To-Achieve-Results(STAR) to carry out community-based research that will foster better understanding of how ecosystems and ecosystem services support human health and well-being, with the following major research questions: What are the factors that determine success or failure, when using existing data sources on environmental pollution, ecosystem services, and community health and well-being, to understand the impacts of multiple stressors? What are the factors that influence whether and how transparent decision-making processes are developed and used to identify the most important stakeholders and stressors, evaluate management strategies, and set and prioritize goals? What are the most effective methods for tracking progress and ensuring accountability towards mitigating and reducing adverse impacts to ecosystems and human health and wellbeing at the community level? In this session, the four research projects will examine how communities can promote human health and well-being in their decision makings and management practices regarding some of their most vitally important ecological systems: (1) how a community deals with the harmful algal blooms threatening its major lake, (2) how an agricultural community may make the most optimal land-use decisions for a holistic sustainability, (3) how a community nearby CAFO may utilize its natural ecological assets to promote its health and resilience, (4) how a community may make the most optimal near-term decisions regarding its ecology and human residents. A common goal of the projects is to develop scientific evidence—based tools, models, or approaches to better enable communities to integrate environmental, societal, and economic information for optimal outcomes. The four research presentations, along with two EPA’s SHC tools research presentations will attempt to integrate, synthesize, and generalize these different challenges into solutions for communities that can use for a variety of environmental/ecological problems. The main purposes of the symposium are: (1) to present compelling case studies and examples on how communities may make the most optimal decisions regarding its important ecology and human residents (2) to have open discussion with ESA members on how a community can bring about meaningful and impactful changes to bridge ecosystem and human health; and (3) to have open dialogue about how scientific research results can be applied to real-world issues in actual communities, narrowing the gap between theory and practice in achieving the optimal ecological health and human health.
