Sharpe Leah M, Harwell Matthew C, Phifer Colin, Gardner George, Newcomer-Johnson Tammy
Gulf Ecosystem Measurement and Modeling Division, Office of Research and Development, United States Environmental Protection Agency, Gulf Breeze, FL, United States.
Pacific Ecological Systems Division, Office of Research and Development, United States Environmental Protection Agency, Newport, OR, United States.
Front Ecol Evol. 2023 Dec 21;11:1-16. doi: 10.3389/fevo.2023.1290662.
Environmental decision-making benefits from considering ecosystem services to ensure that aspects of the environment that people rely upon are fully evaluated. By focusing consideration of ecosystem services on final ecosystem goods and services (FEGS), the aspects of the environment directly enjoyed, used, or consumed by humans, these analyses can be more streamlined and effective. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has developed a set of tools to facilitate this consideration. The central feature of FEGS is that ecosystems are viewed through the diverse ways people directly benefit from them. The National Ecosystem Services Classification System (NESCS) Plus provides a framework for describing and identifying FEGS consistently. The standardization made available by NESCS Plus allows other tools and databases to interact using the NESCS Plus architecture and taxonomy, providing diverse insights for decision makers. Here, we examine the synergy of using the following four tools together: (1) the FEGS Scoping Tool; (2) the FEGS Metrics Report; (3) the EnviroAtlas; and (4) the EcoService Models Library. The FEGS Scoping Tool helps users determine what ecosystem services are relevant to a decision by harnessing FEGS understanding to enable communities to identify the relative importance of beneficiaries relevant to a decision and biophysical aspects of the environment of direct relevance to those beneficiaries. The FEGS Metrics Report can guide which metrics to monitor or model to represent those priority services. The EnviroAtlas, a powerful tool containing geospatial data and other resources related to ecosystem services, chemical and non-chemical stressors, and human health, and the EcoService Models Library, a database of ecosystem models, are two tools that support users in mapping and modeling endpoints relevant to priority services. While each of these tools is valuable on its own, together, they provide a powerful approach to easily incorporate and operationalize ecosystem services efforts into different parts of decision-making processes across different types of decisions. We illustrate how these integrated tools can be used together with a hypothetical example of a complex environmental management case study and the combined benefit of using the FEGS tools together.
环境决策通过考虑生态系统服务而受益，以确保人们所依赖的环境方面得到充分评估。通过将生态系统服务的考量重点放在最终生态系统产品和服务（FEGS）上，即人类直接享用、使用或消费的环境方面，这些分析可以更加精简和有效。美国环境保护局已开发出一套工具来促进这种考量。FEGS的核心特点是通过人们直接从生态系统中受益的多种方式来审视生态系统。国家生态系统服务分类系统升级版（NESCS Plus）提供了一个用于一致描述和识别FEGS的框架。NESCS Plus实现的标准化使其他工具和数据库能够使用NESCS Plus架构和分类法进行交互，为决策者提供多样化的见解。在此，我们研究同时使用以下四种工具的协同作用：（1）FEGS范围界定工具；（2）FEGS指标报告；（3）环境地图集；（4）生态系统服务模型库。FEGS范围界定工具通过利用对FEGS的理解，帮助用户确定哪些生态系统服务与决策相关，使社区能够识别与决策相关的受益者的相对重要性以及与这些受益者直接相关的环境生物物理方面。FEGS指标报告可以指导监测或建模哪些指标来代表那些优先服务。环境地图集是一个强大的工具，包含与生态系统服务、化学和非化学压力源以及人类健康相关的地理空间数据和其他资源，而生态系统服务模型库是一个生态系统模型数据库，这两个工具支持用户绘制和建模与优先服务相关的终点。虽然这些工具各自都很有价值，但它们共同提供了一种强大的方法，可轻松将生态系统服务工作纳入不同类型决策的决策过程的不同部分并加以实施。我们通过一个复杂环境管理案例研究的假设示例以及一起使用FEGS工具的综合效益，来说明这些集成工具如何一起使用。
