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Frequent Questions
What is the Ecosystem Services Research Program
The Ecosystem Services Research Program (ESRP), located in the EPA´s Office of Research and Development, informs environmental decision making based on ecosystem research. Previous Program work paved the way for assessing environmental condition of ecosystems across the nation. Now this integrated, multidisciplinary research program will offer the scientific foundation — methods, models, tools and data — to improve our understanding of ecosystem services, the functions and processes ecosystems provide that ensure our health and well-being.
Why is the Ecosystem Services Research Program focus important?
Humans are permanently changing ecosystem services at local, regional, and global scales, and we can expect pressures on natural systems to continue to intensify with expanding human populations. The Program will include research to describe ecosystem quality and value, the risks associated with their loss, and the relative impacts of human action on the services nature provides. This is a critical need.
Ecosystem services are rarely considered during environmental decision-making, principally because they are not well identified, quantified, or considered in ways applicable to commerce. The Program research results will enable economists, social scientists, environmental managers and others to incorporate an enhanced understanding of value and risk when making decisions about the costs and benefits of using and protecting ecosystem services. To ensure sustainable human and natural systems, the full long term value of ecosystem services must be considered when making decisions.
Why is EPA studying ecosystem services?
Currently, resource managers and policy makers have few if any scientific tools or information they need to consider the full value of ecosystems (e.g., urban forests, coastal wetlands, desert landscapes), before they make decisions that will permanently impair or destroy these valuable systems.
ESRP and its partners are generating scientific knowledge, tools, and decision support to clarify and measure the full value of ecosystem services and their enhancement or loss through landscape alteration and other resource management choices. Our hope is that this knowledge will influence management decisions in ways that enhance the type, quality, and quantity of services we receive from ecosystems even as we continue to respond to human needs within an expanding world population.
What are the goals for EPA´s ecosystem services research?
The Ecosystem Services Research Program is designed to be strategic and interactive. It includes 5 long-term research goals intended to improve our understanding, and promote the protection of ecosystem services at multiple scales and complexity. Planned research outcomes:
- New decision support systems and an on-line decision support platform that assists decision makers in using existing and emerging Ecosystem Services Research Program methods, models, and tools, and allows users to explore the outcomes of alternative management options.
- A national atlas of ecosystem services, and a design for inventorying those services to define location, condition and value.
- A better set of tools, methods, and models for understanding pollutant impacts on ecosystem services using a key example — nitrogen.
- A better set of tools, methods, and models for understanding the effects of multiple stresses on ecosystem services using a key ecosystem type — wetlands.
- Four place-based examples where local communities incorporate ecosystem services into their decision-making to illustrate the long term benefits of this perspective, applied in very different socio-political, geographic, and ecological environments. Studies are planned in:
- Tampa Bay Region on the Gulf Coast of Florida
- The Willamette River Basin in central Oregon
- The Midwestern US, and
- The Coastal Carolinas
How is the research conducted?
The Ecosystem Services Research Program draws upon in-house and partner expertise in monitoring, modeling and valuation of ecosystems and related services, and coordinates across EPA´s Office of Research and Development laboratories and centers throughout the United States to implement research goals. In addition, research grant recipients from universities, colleges and other scientific institutions provide valuable support to the program. Input from EPA´s regional and program offices on research needs are also key in facilitating the development and transfer of policy relevant results to those who make policy and management decisions.
Current and planned research activities are outlined in the Ecosystem Services Research Program´s multi-year plan. The research program receives regular internal EPA Office of Research and Development review, and external review by the Board of Scientific Counselors, the EPA Science Advisory Board, experts in the field, and a broad range of interested parties including, state, regional an program office staff.
Why should EPA Focus on Ecosystem Services?
Earth´s ecosystems provide the underlying foundation for all human systems. Products and processes of nature supply materials for economic development, food, clothing, medicines, even the air we breathe and water we drink, all essential to the well being of individuals, families and societies. While we each may appreciate nature, it is often easy to overlook how our personal choices, which we enjoy and value, can also degrade and destroy the ecosystems and their services that sustain us.
Ecosystem services have been taken for granted, are generally considered “free” and limitless. When human populations were low, and our activities were within the bounds of natural recovery processes, this was true. It is no longer. As a nation and members of the global human family, we need a new way of operating, a new perspective that incorporates a full understanding of the finite nature of ecosystems and their benefits to us. EPA´s mandate to protect human health and the environment requires that we identify how human management and policies affect ecosystems.
What are Ecosystem Services?
Ecosystem services are the direct and indirect benefits we obtain from nature. These include:
- Clean air
- Clean water
- Food
- Clothing
- Recreation
- Products we use in our daily lives
They also include services like flood control from natural disasters such as hurricanes. Ecosystem services have been categorized in various ways to understand their purpose and the benefits and costs of their use. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005) 
identifies four distinct categories of ecosystem services, based on function:
- Provisioning services such as fresh water, fuel, food, and timber
- Regulating services such as the regulation of floods, disease, water quality and air quality
- Supporting services such as fertile soil, nutrient cycling and pollination
- Cultural services such as recreational or spiritual enhancement.
While ecosystems provide benefits to other species, evaluation of ecosystem services is directed toward benefits to humans. Ecosystem services are more strictly defined for accounting purposes as those end-products of nature that contribute directly to human well-being.
Relationships among ecosystem services and human well-being
Source: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
View larger version of image here.
What is an ecosystem?
An ecosystem is a dynamic complex of communities of plants, animals, and microorganisms and their non-living environment, interacting as a functional unit. An ecosystem thus includes the soil, air, water, and living organisms in a defined or bounded area.
The size of an ecosystem varies from water droplets to the earth. We generally think of them as functional units like forests, wetlands, lakes, streams, or watersheds. Natural functioning ecosystems are self sustaining through the interactions among biological and physical components. Humans are an integral part of ecosystems, so our actions combined with natural events can alter ecosystem structure and function and the services they provide. Ecosystems are all combinations, sizes and shapes of living and non-living components of our natural and human altered environments.
How are ecosystems disrupted?
Ecosystems and their services can be disrupted or destroyed by human actions such as:
- Population growth and consumption — the number of people within an ecosystem and how much each person consumes
- Economic and sociopolitical activities — economic, political, cultural and religious decisions affecting how we use natural resources
- Individual and corporate activities - personal use and release of pesticides, medicines, and toxic products, emissions and discharges of pollutants to air, land and water; introduction of non-native species.
How do we place a value on ecosystem services?
It is not easy. There are different ways of looking at services. For example, one third of our food comes from plants pollinated by birds, bats and insects. The value of these pollination services in the United States is estimated at $6 billion a year. If we destroy populations of pollinators with pesticides, loss of habitat, or other stressors we would be forced to go without many fruits, vegetables, and grains we enjoy, or replace pollination services with costly alternatives. Thus pollination is an essential and valuable service provided free in natural functioning ecosystems, and its loss has obvious implications for economic stability and human health and well-being.
All ecosystem services have both monetary and non-monetary value. Valuation methods have been developed in economic disciplines outside EPA Office of Research and Development (ORD) expertise. ORD researchers are working in partnership with economists to provide scientific information and tools needed to better assess the benefits and costs of using and losing ecosystem services. ORD is also in the forefront in considering the broad implications of loss of ecosystem services on human health.
How can knowing about ecosystem services improve decisions?
Modern human societies, industrial and otherwise, are altering ecosystem services at exponential rates both because of their type and magnitude of impact. Is it really possible to make a difference in today´s world? The answer is yes. The Ecosystem Services Research Program results will show how our choices impact ecosystems, their services, our needs, and the consequences of change. Through knowing this, we can make better more proactive decisions.
Trade-offs are typical in environmental decisions. Improving one human value or ecosystem service can lead to negative effects on other services, such as when food production reduces biodiversity, water availability and water quality. With a better understanding of the dynamics of these ecosystem services, and recognition of broader values such as pollination, a better balance of services may be achieved by seeking alternative practices that both enhances services and minimizes loss (e.g., ensuring habitat for crop pollinators can improve other services like water quality, biodiversity, aesthetic appeal and carbon sequestration). Insights on “bundles” of services can create positive synergy in protection and restoration efforts. When, for example, developers build more concentrated populations in urban and suburban settlements that allow for larger local green spaces, the community better meets human spiritual and recreational needs, while improving local property values, and contributing to water purification, and urban wildlife habitat. Understanding this combined benefit of multiple services can promote more proactive local planning that enhances ecosystem services and human well-being with positive economic benefits.