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Changes in biodiversity can profoundly impact the ability of ecosystems to provide clean water, energy, food, recreation and other services that contribute to human well-being. In addition, changes in biodiversity can affect the transmission of infectious disease to humans, part...

Ecosystems provide multiple societal benefits from the production of nature-based goods and services. Many ecosystem services have been linked to a range of positive health outcomes through the buffering of pollutants and natural hazards and the promotion of healthy behaviors. A ...

Modern problems (e.g., pollution, urban sprawl, environmental equity) are complex and often transcend spatial and temporal scales. Systems thinking is an approach to problem solving that is based on the belief that the component parts of a system are best understood in the contex...

Numerous studies have established that impacts from mounting population and climatic pressures are decreasing the capacity of coastal watersheds and estuaries to provide services essential to human health and well-being &ndash; clean drinking water, flood protection, habitat for ...

Over the last 60 years, the Chesapeake Bay water quality and seagrass beds have diminished to the point that the system is less able to support abundant crabs and diverse fish, feed waterfowl, and produce safe recreational opportunities. Further, the long-term resilience of the B...

Governments, tribal leaders and citizens of the deserts in North America are facing unprecedented pressures from population growth and climate change. The dominant environmental and economic issue is to ensure that people have access to clean water and sanitation while vital ecos...

When considering potentially hazardous materials in the context of initial use, reuse, recycling, or ultimate disposal in the landscape, a crux of most decision will be understanding the cumulative contaminant exposure and risk of a given material to human health and well-being. ...

Core principles of translational approaches in science, including &ldquo;collaboration, engagement, communication, process, and decision framing&rdquo; (Enquist et al. 2017) strongly align with principles of successful ecosystem restoration practitioners. Connecting the benefits ...

A consortium of federal, academic, and non-government organizations (NGO) partners have established a collaborative research enterprise in the San Pedro River Basin to develop methods, standards, and tools to assess and value ecosystem goods and services. The central premise of e...

Childhood obesity has tripled in the last three decades and now affects 17% of children in the United States (US). In 2010, the percentage of obese children in the US was nearly 18% for both 6-11 and 12-19 years of age. Recent evidence in the literature suggests that exposure to ...

Land and resource use decisions are typically made to increase the economic viability of an area with little attention to the long term effects on human health and the environment from the resulting environmental condition after an action is taken. Currently, ecosystem services ...

Land and resource use decisions are typically made by individuals, towns, counties, tribes, states and sometimes mutliple states (regions) to increase economic viability of an area with little attention to the long term effects on human health and the enviornment. Improved decis...

The effects of people on ecosystems and the impacts of ecosystem services on human well-being are being viewed increasingly as an integrated system. Demographic and economic pressures change a variety of ecological indicators, which can then result in reduced quality of ecosystem...

Land managers and stakeholders face many challenges as competing objectives and a rapidly changing climate affect watersheds and the ecosystem services they provide &ndash; clean drinking water, flood control, food and fiber, habitat for fish and wildlife, recreation, and others ...

The web-based EnviroAtlas is an easy-to-use mapping and analysis tool built by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and its partners to provide information, data, and research on the relationships between ecosystems, built infrastructure, and societal well-being. The tool is ...

EPA's Ecosystem Services Research Program (ESRP) in the Office of Research and Development (ORD) is studying ecosystem services and the benefits to human well-being provided by ecological services. As part of this research effort, the Southwest Ecosystem Services Research Progra...

Envisioning and evaluating future scenarios has emerged as a critical component of both science and social decision-making. The ability to assess, report, map, and forecast the life support functions of ecosystems is absolutely critical to our capacity to make informed decisions...

The contributions of nature to human well-being are not considered comprehensively in environmental policy and decision making, largely due to the lack of the ecological and socioeconomic knowledge needed to do so. With its Ecosystem Services Research Program (ESRP), the U.S. EPA...

The human alteration of the nitrogen (N) cycle has yielded many benefits, but also has altered ecosystems and degraded air and water quality in many areas. Here we explore the science available to connect the effects of increasing N on ecosystem structure and function to ecosyst...

“In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments – there are only consequences,” was a thought penned in 1899 by attorney R.G. Ingersoll. That may no longer be a common perception among those who believe that we receive many life-sustaining benefits from nature: clean air an...

Modern life depends upon the use of many chemicals, products, and practices to promote well being and economic growth. However, when these chemicals, products and practices present the potential for harm to humans and ecosystems, they are termed environmental stressors and, as s...

Over the past two decades, the Biological Condition Gradient (BCG) has been developed as a consistent metric of ecosystem health and integrity, and has been used in a variety of systems to assess levels of biological condition towards effective ecosystem management. Building on t...

We’ve made tremendous progress in protecting the environment since Ohio’s Cuyahoga River burned in 1969 – the air, water and land of this country are cleaner due in major part to the kinds of science represented by SETAC. And yet, the environment continues to take a back seat to...

In the complex arena of sustainability, where the costs of failure can be high and stakeholders have multiple and sometimes conflicting interests, communities need measurement tools to characterize their current state, develop meaningful goals and quantifiable objectives for the ...

Riparian ecosystems, located at the interface of terrestrial and aquatic systems, are often given special attention by scientists for their high biodiversity and biological activity (Naiman et al. 1993, Naiman and Decamps 1997) and significant role in nutrient and energy flux (Mc...