حفاظت از سیستم های حمایت از زندگی ما: موجودی تحقیقات فدرال ایالات متحده در مورد خدمات اکوسیستم

In the United States, a broad range of federal resource management and environmental agencies are conducting research related to ecosystem goods and services (EGS), and government agencies at all levels are increasingly interested in measuring the outcomes of proposed decisions in terms of ecosystem service benefits. The United States Environmental Protection Agency's (USEPA) Ecosystem Services Research Program responded to the need for increased awareness of EGS efforts across agencies by conducting a web-based inventory of U.S. federal ecosystem services research. This characterization describes the breadth and focus of ecosystem services programs and projects that were ongoing or completed between April 2010 and May 2012 at nine federal agencies: the Department of Defense (DOD), Department of Energy (DOE), Department of the Interior (DOI), Department of Transportation (DOT), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), and USEPA. This paper discusses the progress, gaps, and opportunities revealed and will increase awareness of current efforts, enhance opportunities for the public and private sector to collaborate on ecosystem services work, identify high priority research areas, and help avoid duplication.

Publication of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005) greatly increased global awareness of the worldwide threats to ecosystems, the benefits of ecosystem goods and services (EGS) to humans, and the decisions that impact EGS. Since then, there has been a significant increase in public and private sector attention to EGS from a research and policy perspective. An increasing number of U.S. Federal agencies with natural resource protection mandates are conducting research, managing land and water, implementing markets, and developing tools in support of conserving EGS. Federal agencies are being called upon to take action to conserve EGS. In 2009 the U.S. President issued Executive Order 13514 (The President, 2009), calling on all executive agencies and departments to “safeguard the health of our environment” and “prioritize actions based on a full accounting of both economic and social benefits and costs”. A draft version of this inventory was cited in the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) (2011) report on “Sustaining Environmental Capital”. The Committee on Environment, Natural Resources and Sustainability (CENRS) has asked its Subcommittee on Ecological Systems (SES) to take steps to implement the PCAST call for an inventory of federal monitoring of biodiversity and EGS. To achieve the goals outlined by PCAST, an assessment of the current state of federal EGS work is needed. This inventory will increase awareness of current efforts and enhance opportunities for the public and private sector to collaborate, leverage existing EGS work, identify high priority research areas, apply findings, and avoid duplication.1 The full database showing all listings and a complete methodology is available online at the Ecosystem Commons website, where researchers are invited to add to what was captured through our methodology.2

This is the first comprehensive effort to evaluate U.S. federal government participation in ecosystem services research. Overall, this inventory illustrates a great interest at the federal level in advancing the state of the science on EGS, in using EGS to inform resource management, and in valuing services. It reveals less emphasis to date on research related to market implementation, social research, policy evaluations, and monitoring. Most of the programs and projects identified were oriented towards including EGS in decision-making processes, either through resource management plans for federal lands, producing tools for state and local governments, or characterizing the production and benefits of services in a way that informs tools and resource practices. Researching or managing for multiple EGS is also common, particularly at the EPA and USDA. The EGS addressed the least often include primary production, water quantity, fire management, and flood mitigation. Our inventory also confirms a lack of valuation research for regulating services other than climate regulation and water purification. In addition, the few EGS monitoring programs identified do not provide a comprehensive picture of the state of the nations' services. We hope this analysis will lead to increased federal collaboration on ecosystem services research and policy support.3