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Who Benefits from National Estuaries? Applying the FEGS Classification System to Identify Ecosystem Services and their Beneficiaries

In spite of their perceived value, the widespread implementation of ecosystem services assessments has been limited because of perceptions of being too technical, too expensive, or requiring special expertise. For example, federal estuary management programs have widely used ecosystem services conce...

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Autores principales: Yee, Susan Harrell, Sullivan, Angelica, Williams, Kathleen C., Winters, Kirsten
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6651245/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31277218
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16132351
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author Yee, Susan Harrell
Sullivan, Angelica
Williams, Kathleen C.
Winters, Kirsten
author_facet Yee, Susan Harrell
Sullivan, Angelica
Williams, Kathleen C.
Winters, Kirsten
author_sort Yee, Susan Harrell
collection PubMed
description In spite of their perceived value, the widespread implementation of ecosystem services assessments has been limited because of perceptions of being too technical, too expensive, or requiring special expertise. For example, federal estuary management programs have widely used ecosystem services concepts to frame management issues and communicate with stakeholders. Yet, indicators assessed, monitored, and reported in estuarine management still have traditionally focused on ecological conditions, with weak connections, if any, to social or economic outcomes. Approaches are needed which expand the range of ecosystem services that can be considered, link ecosystem services explicitly to different stakeholder groups, facilitate effective communication with economists and other social scientists, and expand the array of available valuation techniques. We applied the concept of final ecosystem goods and services to review the broad suite of ecosystem services and their beneficiaries relevant to the management of two federal programs for estuary management, the National Estuary Program (NEP) and the National Estuarine Research Reserve System (NERRS). The Final Ecosystem Goods and Services Classification System provided a structured framework for connecting ecosystem services to their beneficiaries and the environments providing them. Document analysis of management plans assessed the degree to which these programs consider ecosystem services, their beneficiaries, and habitats within the estuarine watershed. The hierarchical list of final ecosystem goods and services generated from document analysis serves as a tool for defining management goals, identifying stakeholders, developing meaningful indicators, and conducting valuation studies in estuarine management planning efforts. Though developed here for estuarine management, the keyword hierarchy and final ecosystem goods and services approach have broad applicability and transferability to other environmental management scenarios.
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spelling pubmed-66512452019-08-07 Who Benefits from National Estuaries? Applying the FEGS Classification System to Identify Ecosystem Services and their Beneficiaries Yee, Susan Harrell Sullivan, Angelica Williams, Kathleen C. Winters, Kirsten Int J Environ Res Public Health Article In spite of their perceived value, the widespread implementation of ecosystem services assessments has been limited because of perceptions of being too technical, too expensive, or requiring special expertise. For example, federal estuary management programs have widely used ecosystem services concepts to frame management issues and communicate with stakeholders. Yet, indicators assessed, monitored, and reported in estuarine management still have traditionally focused on ecological conditions, with weak connections, if any, to social or economic outcomes. Approaches are needed which expand the range of ecosystem services that can be considered, link ecosystem services explicitly to different stakeholder groups, facilitate effective communication with economists and other social scientists, and expand the array of available valuation techniques. We applied the concept of final ecosystem goods and services to review the broad suite of ecosystem services and their beneficiaries relevant to the management of two federal programs for estuary management, the National Estuary Program (NEP) and the National Estuarine Research Reserve System (NERRS). The Final Ecosystem Goods and Services Classification System provided a structured framework for connecting ecosystem services to their beneficiaries and the environments providing them. Document analysis of management plans assessed the degree to which these programs consider ecosystem services, their beneficiaries, and habitats within the estuarine watershed. The hierarchical list of final ecosystem goods and services generated from document analysis serves as a tool for defining management goals, identifying stakeholders, developing meaningful indicators, and conducting valuation studies in estuarine management planning efforts. Though developed here for estuarine management, the keyword hierarchy and final ecosystem goods and services approach have broad applicability and transferability to other environmental management scenarios. MDPI 2019-07-03 2019-07 /pmc/articles/PMC6651245/ /pubmed/31277218 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16132351 Text en © 2019 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Yee, Susan Harrell
Sullivan, Angelica
Williams, Kathleen C.
Winters, Kirsten
Who Benefits from National Estuaries? Applying the FEGS Classification System to Identify Ecosystem Services and their Beneficiaries
title Who Benefits from National Estuaries? Applying the FEGS Classification System to Identify Ecosystem Services and their Beneficiaries
title_full Who Benefits from National Estuaries? Applying the FEGS Classification System to Identify Ecosystem Services and their Beneficiaries
title_fullStr Who Benefits from National Estuaries? Applying the FEGS Classification System to Identify Ecosystem Services and their Beneficiaries
title_full_unstemmed Who Benefits from National Estuaries? Applying the FEGS Classification System to Identify Ecosystem Services and their Beneficiaries
title_short Who Benefits from National Estuaries? Applying the FEGS Classification System to Identify Ecosystem Services and their Beneficiaries
title_sort who benefits from national estuaries? applying the fegs classification system to identify ecosystem services and their beneficiaries
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6651245/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31277218
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16132351
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