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Estimating biotic integrity to capture existence value of freshwater ecosystems

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) uses a water quality index (WQI) to estimate benefits of proposed Clean Water Act regulations. The WQI is relevant to human use value, such as recreation, but may not fully capture aspects of nonuse value, such as existence value. Here, we identify an ind...

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Autores principales: Hill, Ryan A., Moore, Chris C., Doyle, Jessie M., Leibowitz, Scott G., Ringold, Paul L., Rashleigh, Brenda
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: National Academy of Sciences 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10161049/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37094141
http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2120259119
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author Hill, Ryan A.
Moore, Chris C.
Doyle, Jessie M.
Leibowitz, Scott G.
Ringold, Paul L.
Rashleigh, Brenda
author_facet Hill, Ryan A.
Moore, Chris C.
Doyle, Jessie M.
Leibowitz, Scott G.
Ringold, Paul L.
Rashleigh, Brenda
author_sort Hill, Ryan A.
collection PubMed
description The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) uses a water quality index (WQI) to estimate benefits of proposed Clean Water Act regulations. The WQI is relevant to human use value, such as recreation, but may not fully capture aspects of nonuse value, such as existence value. Here, we identify an index of biological integrity to supplement the WQI in a forthcoming national stated preference survey that seeks to capture existence value of streams and lakes more accurately within the conterminous United States (CONUS). We used literature and focus group research to evaluate aquatic indices regularly reported by the EPA’s National Aquatic Resource Surveys. We chose an index that quantifies loss in biodiversity as the observed-to-expected (O/E) ratio of taxonomic composition because focus group participants easily understood its meaning and the environmental changes that would result in incremental improvements. However, available datasets of this index do not provide the spatial coverage to account for how conditions near survey respondents affect their willingness to pay for its improvement. Therefore, we modeled and interpolated the values of this index from sampled sites to 1.1 million stream segments and 297,071 lakes across the CONUS to provide the required coverage. The models explained 13 to 36% of the variation in O/E scores and demonstrate how modeling can provide data at the required density for benefits estimation. We close by discussing future work to improve performance of the models and to link biological condition with water quality and habitat models that will allow us to forecast changes resulting from regulatory options.
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spelling pubmed-101610492023-05-06 Estimating biotic integrity to capture existence value of freshwater ecosystems Hill, Ryan A. Moore, Chris C. Doyle, Jessie M. Leibowitz, Scott G. Ringold, Paul L. Rashleigh, Brenda Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A Social Sciences The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) uses a water quality index (WQI) to estimate benefits of proposed Clean Water Act regulations. The WQI is relevant to human use value, such as recreation, but may not fully capture aspects of nonuse value, such as existence value. Here, we identify an index of biological integrity to supplement the WQI in a forthcoming national stated preference survey that seeks to capture existence value of streams and lakes more accurately within the conterminous United States (CONUS). We used literature and focus group research to evaluate aquatic indices regularly reported by the EPA’s National Aquatic Resource Surveys. We chose an index that quantifies loss in biodiversity as the observed-to-expected (O/E) ratio of taxonomic composition because focus group participants easily understood its meaning and the environmental changes that would result in incremental improvements. However, available datasets of this index do not provide the spatial coverage to account for how conditions near survey respondents affect their willingness to pay for its improvement. Therefore, we modeled and interpolated the values of this index from sampled sites to 1.1 million stream segments and 297,071 lakes across the CONUS to provide the required coverage. The models explained 13 to 36% of the variation in O/E scores and demonstrate how modeling can provide data at the required density for benefits estimation. We close by discussing future work to improve performance of the models and to link biological condition with water quality and habitat models that will allow us to forecast changes resulting from regulatory options. National Academy of Sciences 2023-04-24 2023-05-02 /pmc/articles/PMC10161049/ /pubmed/37094141 http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2120259119 Text en Copyright © 2023 the Author(s). Published by PNAS. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/This article is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Social Sciences
Hill, Ryan A.
Moore, Chris C.
Doyle, Jessie M.
Leibowitz, Scott G.
Ringold, Paul L.
Rashleigh, Brenda
Estimating biotic integrity to capture existence value of freshwater ecosystems
title Estimating biotic integrity to capture existence value of freshwater ecosystems
title_full Estimating biotic integrity to capture existence value of freshwater ecosystems
title_fullStr Estimating biotic integrity to capture existence value of freshwater ecosystems
title_full_unstemmed Estimating biotic integrity to capture existence value of freshwater ecosystems
title_short Estimating biotic integrity to capture existence value of freshwater ecosystems
title_sort estimating biotic integrity to capture existence value of freshwater ecosystems
topic Social Sciences
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10161049/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37094141
http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2120259119
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