Yee Susan H, Sharpe Leah M, Branoff Benjamin L, Jackson Chloe A, Cicchetti Giancarlo, Jackson Susan, Pryor Margherita, Shumchenia Emily
Gulf Ecosystem Measurement and Modeling Division, Office of Research and Development, Center for Environmental Measurement and Modeling, US Environmental Protection Agency, Gulf Breeze, Florida 32561, USA.
Current Address: Department of Biology, Universität Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany.
Ecol Inform. 2023 Nov 1;77:1-20. doi: 10.1016/j.ecoinf.2023.102182.
The Massachusetts Bays National Estuary Partnership is one of 28 programs in the United States Environmental Protection Agency's National Estuary Program (NEP) charged with developing and implementing comprehensive plans for protecting and restoring the biological integrity and beneficial uses of their estuarine systems. The Partnership has recently updated their comprehensive management plan to include restoration targets for coastal habitats, and as part of this effort, the program explored how to better demonstrate that recovery of ecological integrity of degraded ecosystems also provides ecosystem services that humans want and need. An essential step was to identify key stakeholders and understand the benefits important to them. The primary objective of the study presented here was to evaluate variability in beneficial uses of estuarine habitats across coastal communities in Massachusetts Bays. We applied a text mining approach to extract ecosystem services concepts from over 1400 community planning documents. We leveraged a Final Ecosystem Goods and Services (FEGS) classification framework and related scoping tool to identify and prioritize the suite of natural resource users and ecosystem services those users care about, based on the relative frequency of mentions in documents. Top beneficiaries included residents, experiencers and viewers, property owners, educators and students, and commercial or recreational fishers. Beneficiaries had a surprising degree of shared interests, with top ecosystem services of broad relevance including for naturalness, fish and shellfish, water movement and navigability, water quality and quantity, aesthetic viewscapes, availability of land for development, flood mitigation, and birds. Community-level priorities that emerged were primarily related to regional differences, the local job industry, and local demographics. Identifying priority ecosystem services from community planning documents provides a starting point for setting locally-relevant restoration goals, designing projects that reflect what stakeholders care about, and supporting post-restoration monitoring in terms of accruing relevant benefits to local communities.
马萨诸塞湾国家河口伙伴关系是美国环境保护局国家河口计划（NEP）的28个项目之一，负责制定和实施全面计划，以保护和恢复其河口系统的生物完整性及有益用途。该伙伴关系最近更新了其综合管理计划，将沿海栖息地的恢复目标纳入其中。作为这项工作的一部分，该项目探讨了如何更好地证明退化生态系统生态完整性的恢复也能提供人类所需的生态系统服务。关键的一步是确定关键利益相关者，并了解对他们重要的益处。本文所述研究的主要目标是评估马萨诸塞湾沿海社区河口栖息地有益用途的变异性。我们采用文本挖掘方法，从1400多份社区规划文件中提取生态系统服务概念。我们利用最终生态系统产品和服务（FEGS）分类框架及相关范围界定工具，根据文件中提及的相对频率，确定自然资源使用者及其所关注的生态系统服务的类别并进行优先排序。主要受益者包括居民、体验者和观赏者、业主、教育工作者和学生，以及商业或休闲渔民。受益者有着惊人程度的共同利益，最具广泛相关性的顶级生态系统服务包括自然性、鱼类和贝类、水流与通航性、水质与水量、美学景观、可用于开发的土地、防洪以及鸟类。出现的社区层面优先事项主要与区域差异、当地就业行业和当地人口统计数据有关。从社区规划文件中确定优先生态系统服务，为设定与当地相关的恢复目标、设计反映利益相关者所关心内容的项目，以及在为当地社区积累相关效益方面支持恢复后监测提供了一个起点。
