J Coast Conserv DOI 10.1007/s11852-011-0158-z
Prioritization of Ecosystem Services Research: Tampa Bay Demonstration Project Marc Russell & John Rogers & Stephen Jordan & Darrin Dantin & James Harvey & Janet Nestlerode & Federico Alvarez
Received: 31 January 2011 / Revised: 2 June 2011 / Accepted: 5 June 2011 # Springer Science+Business Media B.V. (outside the USA) 2011
Abstract The Tampa Bay Ecosystem Services Demonstration Project (TBESDP) is part of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Ecosystem Services Research Program. The principal objectives of TBESDP are to (1) quantify the ecosystem services of the Tampa Bay watershed, (2) determine the value of ecosystem services to society, (3) predict the supply of ecosystem services under future scenarios of population growth and climate change, and (4) apply this knowledge through models and tools that will support the best informed environmental decisions possible. The scope and complexity of this project required intensive effort to establish which services can be quantified by applying existing models, data, and scientific literature and which services will require supporting research. Research priorities were assessed by: (1) developing and refining conceptual models of major ecosystems in the Tampa Bay region, (2) gathering input from stakeholders about the relative importance and values of various ecosystem services, (3) preparing and reviewing a bibliometric analysis of the volume of scientific literature relevant to the ecosystems and services of interest, and (4) evaluating an integrated analysis of importance, value, and availability of scientific information. This analysis led us to focus on two research priorities, seagrass-habitat functions as support for fishery production, and wetlands as regulators of water quality. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s11852-011-0158-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. M. Russell (*) : J. Rogers : S. Jordan : D. Dantin : J. Harvey : J. Nestlerode : F. Alvarez U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 1 Sabine Island Drive, Gulf Breeze, FL 32561, USA e-mail:
[email protected]
Keywords Ecosystem services . Tampa Bay . Valuation . Conceptual models . Prioritization
Introduction Ecosystems provide services that are essential to human well-being, meeting needs for sustenance, employment, development, health, and personal enjoyment. Rarely, however, are ecosystem services considered in environmental decision-making, because they usually are not identified, quantified, or considered in ways that allow us to evaluate alternative actions or trade-offs. Incorporating services as a routine part of decision-making will more fully illuminate how our choices in responding to environmental issues can affect our well-being. During the past 15 years publications on societal benefits from ecosystems have been plentiful (e.g., Turner 1993; Daily 1997, 2000; Costanza et al. 1997; Wilson and Carpenter 1999; de Groot et al. 2002; Boyd and Banzhaf 2007; Carpenter et al. 2006; Barbier et al. 2008). Publication of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA 2005), which identified services such as the provision of useable air and water, food, fiber, and fuel production, and opportunities for recreation in vibrant natural places, greatly increased international recognition of the importance of ecosystem services. The current challenge is to move from the conceptual framework outlined in the MEA to operational tools that will help regional and local managers in selecting alternative future scenarios of urban development which safeguard ecosystem services, and will support balanced assessments of the trade-offs between various aspects of human well-being and the supply of ecosystem services. Establishing the value of ecosystem services is the strategic focus for the United
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States Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Ecosystem Services Research Program (ESRP). The ESRP’s mission is to conduct innovative ecological research to provide information and methods needed by decision makers to help assess the benefits of ecosystem services to human well-being. The Tampa Bay Ecosystem Services Demonstration Project (TBESDP) within ESRP is focused on producing quantified spatial inventories of ecosystem services production in the Tampa Bay Estuary Region. The project goal is to illustrate how regional and local managers can use ESRP methods to evaluate alternative future development scenarios to conserve and enhance ecosystem goods and services. Decisions and actions taken in this way are expected to better benefit human well-being while securing the integrity and productivity of the Tampa Bay Estuary Region. The scale of TBESDP is broad and focuses on multiple ecosystems and their services within the boundaries of the Tampa Bay Estuary Region. This breadth requires prioritization of research projects to demonstrate the utility of ESRP methods. This paper presents our approach, methods, and results for prioritizing ecosystem goods and services related research efforts for the TBESDP. We describe the methods employed to rank research priorities for conducting new research designed to reduce the uncertainty in ecosystem services production models. Our process integrated information from ecological science, economic analysis, and social values and concerns related to ecosystem goods and services. Three metrics (importance to stakeholders, relative economic value, and availability of scientific information) for three broadly defined ecosystem types (terrestrial, wetlands, and open-water) delimited the integration of stakeholder needs, economic values, and scientific knowledge. This approach was developed to maximize the transparency of choosing among potential research projects and get the most out of research results in the development of decision support models. The approach served to (1) generate information relevant and beneficial to potential end users, (2) advance the scientific understanding of ecosystem goods and services, and (3) foster efficiency and cost-effectiveness for a large, complex research program.
Methods Study area characteristics Tampa Bay, Florida’s largest open-water estuary, covers 398 square miles (1,031 km2) at high tide and comprises six major sub-watersheds (Fig. 1). Tampa Bay, which supports one of the world’s most productive natural systems, is a popular destination for sport and recreation. More than 100
tributaries flow into Tampa Bay, including dozens of meandering, brackish-water creeks and four major rivers— the Hillsborough, Alafia, Manatee, and Little Manatee. Estuaries like Tampa Bay, where salt water from the sea mixes with fresh water from rivers, groundwater, and uplands, are nurseries for juvenile fish, shrimp, and crabs. More than 70% of all fish, shellfish, and crustaceans spend some critical stage of their development in nearshore waters, protected from larger predators. The number of people in this area is expected to grow by nearly 19% by the year 2015. According to a study completed by the University of Florida, the west-central region of Florida will experience “explosive” growth, with continuous urban development from Ocala to Sebring, and St. Petersburg to Daytona Beach (Zwick and Carr 2006). The I-75 and I-4 corridors are expected to be fully developed. Most of Florida’s heartland will convert to urban development, resulting in a dramatic loss of agricultural character and native Florida landscapes that define this region today. Populations in Seminole, Orange, Brevard, Indian River, Pinellas, and Manatee Counties are expected to grow to nearcapacity within 10–20 years, spilling over into surrounding counties. Virtually all the natural systems and wildlife corridors in this region will be fragmented, if not replaced, by urban development. With such fast-paced growth, redressing past damage to Bay habitats and protecting them in the future will remain the greatest challenge for managers in this region. Maintaining the water quality gains of recent decades will require more effort every year to compensate for increased ecosystem stress, such as pollution and loss of habitat, associated with growth. Metrics for evaluating research priorities Integration of societal, economic, and scientific information was required to meet our prime objective of prioritizing TBESDP research. Three metrics were selected for our prioritization approach: (1) relative economic value, (2) importance to stakeholders, and (3) availability of scientific information. Relative values and importance of specific ecosystem services to stakeholders were generated separately from two workshops. Working with local representatives we established a locally relevant relative ecosystem services value hierarchy during a workshop in late 2008. We then conducted a second workshop with a group of project stakeholders where we collaboratively ranked each ecosystem service by its importance to decision makers in that region. Importance to stakeholders and relative economic value metrics were then combined to rank services for each ecosystem type. The most highly ranked services from the combined metrics were incorporated into literature searches to determine the relative availability of scientific information on each.
Prioritization of Ecosystem Services Research Fig. 1 The Tampa Bay, Florida watershed. Land cover aggregated from 2006 Florida Land Cover Classification System codes
To ensure that models and tools derived from this project have relevance and utility for this specific region, we are interacting with stakeholders such as the Tampa Bay Estuary Program (TBEP) which is leading a major conservation and restoration program for Tampa Bay (TBEP 2006) and the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council which has been instrumental in organizing multi-jurisdiction responses to Tampa Bay region problems (see http://www.tbrpc.org/abm/). Our approach of including decision makers and stakeholders in efforts oriented towards informing non-regulatory
programs is not new. During the 1990’s, EPA began exploring new ways to implement its environmental policies that moved beyond regulatory enforcement to include voluntary programs. For example, EPA’s Office of Water began its watershed-based policy initiative, which familiarized the public with the concept that watersheds are important and manageable systems. The Office of Water used a variety of outreach techniques to publicize the concept that “we all live downstream,” i.e., each of us lives in a watershed and the decisions and actions of each of us affect all of us.
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Relative economic value To assign economic values to specific ecosystem services, we employed the Relative Valuation of Ecosystem Services Index (RESVI; Jordan et al. 2010). The RESVI method was employed on December 12, 2008 in Tampa, FL with a group of interested parties from the region. During this workshop we asked a knowledgeable section of the population including fourteen people representing environmentally aware entities such as the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Commission, Tampa Bay Estuary Program, local area universities, and county environmental protection managers to rank, using their personal valuation hierarchy or relative willingness to pay for, a set of ecosystem services established from published lists. We did not present to participants of this first workshop any conceptual maps linking ecological or physical processes to those ecosystem services so as to not bias their responses. The RESVI technique generates the relative values of goods and services using a particular community’s rankings of ecosystem goods and services combined with the relative production of good and services by each landscape type in that region. When accessing alternative future scenarios the resulting index can be used to define the direction and relative magnitude of changes in the combined value for a suite of ecosystem goods and services. The index can also assess the tradeoffs of conserving some services over others. By means of the semi-quantitative RESVI method, communities, organizations, or governments can assess the value of ecosystem services expeditiously, without the investment of significant resources. The tool can simultaneously account for multiple ecosystem services, and express the value either in relative or dollar-based units. It was designed to generate relative values for the majority of ecosystem goods and services that do not have market values without the need for very intensive and costly primary non-market valuation surveys. The process for using RESVI is as follows: (1) brief participants about the question to be addressed, describing the extent and nature of the ecosystem(s) involved, and supply information about the relevant ecosystem goods and services; (2) ask each participant to assign relative values to a suite of ecosystem goods and services, e.g., ask what portion of a dollar one would spend for recreational Fig. 2 Relative Ecosystem Services Valuation Index development process. Valuation index development requires steps 1–4 while application of the index to a landscape requires step 5
amenities versus other ecosystem goods and services; (3) apply an absolute reference value (in dollars) from the literature or primary research to one service from one landscape type, e.g., water filtration by wetlands; and (4) index all services using the reference value and the relative values assigned by the participants (Fig. 2). The values can then be apportioned to the landscape with knowledge of (1) the relative or absolute provision of services by each landscape type, and (2) the areal extent of each landscape type in the parcel or region under study. Relative importance to managers and researchers An initial list of ecosystem services (Table 1) based on the MEA was presented to a steering committee made up of local and regional environmental managers, academic professionals, and representatives of non-governmental organizations in the Tampa Bay region. By conducting a needs assessment analysis with this committee prior to our second workshop in January 2009, we verified that we had included those ecosystem goods and services deemed important to representative regional stakeholders, and also generated preliminary lists of the stressors and services deemed to require the most attention. This preliminary list of ecosystem goods and services and related stressors was used to develop concept maps showing our expert opinion on the ecological and physical processes linking stressors to ecosystem services within terrestrial, wetland, and open water (i.e. shallow coastal waters of Tampa bay and environs) ecosystems. These draft concept maps were produced by TBESDP scientists working back from ecosystem goods and services, through the ecological functions and physical processes responsible for their production, to stakeholder identified stressors. A two-day stakeholder workshop was conducted in January 2009 at EPA’s Gulf Ecology Division in Gulf Breeze, Fl with representative decision makers, resource managers, academic experts who are involved in research in the various ecosystems located in and around Tampa Bay, FL, other potential end users, and TBESDP project scientists. Stakeholder representatives came from the Tampa Bay Estuary Program, Florida Department of Environmental Protection, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation
Prioritization of Ecosystem Services Research Table 1 Ecosystem services terminology used in this study (first column), with synonyms and related human benefits Service
Synonym 1
Synonym 2
Human benefits
Air quality Climate moderation Food and fiber Flood protection Habitat/refugia biodiversity
Useable air Climate regulation Food and fiber production Flood control Habitat functions
Clean air Stable climate Storm surge moderation Biodiversity support
Recreation and sense of place Water supply Water quality
Culture and aesthetics Fresh water supply Water quality regulation
Available water Useable water, clean water
Health, visibility Numerous Nutrition, materials Protection of life and property Intangible, biophilia, support of other ecosystem services and functions Recreation, cultural identity, sense of place Water for drinking, irrigation, industry Clean water for drinking and recreation
Commission, University of South Florida, University of Central Florida, University of Florida Hillsborough County Forest Extension Service, University of Florida, and EIMSensor Inc. Objectives of the workshop were to (1) gather, organize, and access existing location-specific knowledge about ecological functions and physical processes producing ecosystem services, (2) produce refined conceptual maps linking stressors to services, (3) gain opinions of local experts on the significance, uncertainty, and degree of knowledge applicable to the functional pathways by which drivers and stressors affected locally important ecosystem services, and (4) foster research
collaborations for filling important knowledge gaps. At this second workshop we cooperatively developed the conceptual linkages among anthropogenic stressors, ecological functions, and ecosystem services to make apparent the links between manageable components of the ecosystem and valued services (Figs. 3, 4 and 5). Participants of the second workshop were better able to rank ecosystem goods and services in order of importance for their agency, university, or organization’s decisions using our concept maps since they make clear which ecological and physical processes interact to produce each ecosystem good or service. Ultimately we wanted to generate a relative ranking
Fig. 3 Concept map for terrestrial ecosystems. Links are shown between stressors, ecological functions, physical processes, and related ecosystem services
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Fig. 4 Concept map for wetland ecosystems. Links are shown between stressors, ecological functions, physical processes, and related ecosystem services
of ecosystem goods and services through stakeholder assessment of the linkages between the ecological and physical processes that managers and researchers commonly focus on and resulting ecosystem goods and services. Neither the terminology nor the classification of ecosystem services had been firmly established in the
scientific literature at the time of either the valuation or importance workshops; several lists and classifications had been proposed and sometimes debated (e.g., Boyd and Banzhaf 2007). The lack of agreement was partially a product of the relative novelty of the field, but also a result of tension between what ecologists can define and
Fig. 5 Concept map for open water ecosystems. Links are shown between stressors, ecological functions, physical processes, and related ecosystem services
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measure rigorously, what economists can use in valuation studies, and what can be understood readily by nonspecialists. Several advancements have been made in the identification of final ecosystem services since the workshops (Ringold et al. 2009, Johnston and Russell submitted). We have identified the ecosystem goods and services of greatest interest to workshop participants, even though some are now thought of as intermediate services, in Table 1, which also lists some synonyms and examples of the direct or indirect benefits society gains from these goods and services. Availability of scientific information We used a bibliometric analysis to access the amount of publications in the scientific literature relating to links between drivers, stressors, functions, and ecosystem services and their value to society. The volume of literature was used to rank service links by state of knowledge. The number of scientific articles published on specific topics in the 100 top-ranked ecology and environmental science journals were determined by bibliometric analysis. Journals were ranked using an average H-index score from SCImago (2007) and Publish or Perish™ (Harzing 2009) limiting results to “agriculture and biological sciences” and “environmental science” subject categories. Our search phrases were designed to cover all terms related to those ecosystem functions and services of terrestrial, wetland, and openwater ecosystems that were determined at the two workshops to be both important to managers and economically valuable. With the aid of the concept maps shown in Figs. 2, 3 and 4, we divided our search phrases into the following six categories:
5) Ecosystem endpoints (i.e. final services) relevant to humans (e.g. yield, harvest, etc.) 6) Benefits of those ecosystem services to human wellbeing (e.g. food, provisioning etc.) Search terms were applied to the database as in the following example, where the vertical bar stands for the logical ‘or’ and spaces stand for ‘and’: Agriculture production invasive | resistance | disease | climate | precipitation | urbanization crop | livestock | produce | acreage | harvest | irrigation yield | harvest food | provisioning. Search phrases were entered into Publish or Perish™ software which uses the Google Scholar™ database to generate results, with the additional capability of searching by ISDN number (which facilitated limiting our results to the 100 top-ranked journals). Search results were limited to the years 1979–2009. Research priorities composite analysis We constructed an algorithm to combine stakeholder priorities, relative valuation, and bibliographic data into a numeric index. The original data-gathering exercises were done independently, using somewhat different terms and groups of services. Therefore, this post hoc analysis could not include all services for all three ecosystems. For example, only the bibliographic analysis included agricultural food production as a service, whereas recreation was included as a service in the economic valuation, but not in the stakeholder rankings or the bibliographic analysis. The formula for combining the three types of data into an overall ranking index (Rij) is: Rij ¼
1) The ecosystem type (terrestrial, wetlands, or open water). To reduce complexity, we limited the terrestrial ecosystem to two categories of landscape—agriculture and forest—and limited the open water search to articles related to seagrass habitats. Seagrass restoration is a major goal of the Tampa Bay Estuary Program, and this resource is viewed locally as the key integrator of stressors and source of services (e.g. habitat existence, food production, recreation related water quality, flood protection). 2) The ecosystem service of interest (e.g., food production) 3) Stressors on the ecosystem functions that produce the service (e.g. invasive species, precipitation change, urbanization etc.) 4) Metrics or measures of ecosystem functions that produce the service (e.g. acreage, crop type, livestock, etc.)
1 þ n Sij =nÞ a þ Vj a þ 1 bij =B a ;
where Rij is the composite score for each ecosystem (i) and service (j), Sij is the stakeholder ranking for each ecosystem and service, n is the number of ranks, Vj is the mean relative economic value for each service, bij is the number of references found for a particular ecosystem and service, and B is the total number of all references across ecosystems and services. The subscript a indicates that each term (subscore) was standardized to a mean of 1.0 and standard deviation of 0.5, so that all subscores were on the same scale. The Vj has only one subscript because the relative valuation exercise was done only for overall services; they were not valued separately by ecosystem. In the first term of the formula, 1 is added to n to prevent the possible result that Rij =0; the last term gives greater weight to elements with fewer references and vice versa, under the assumption that categories represented by the least literature are most in need of research. The subscores are weighted equally here,
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but different weights could be applied if, for example, one wished to give more weight to stakeholder ranks.
thus, the foundation for subsequent development of system dynamic models to examine the effects and potential unintended consequences of alternative futures on the production of a suite of ecosystem goods and services.
Results Importance to stakeholders Relative economic value Tampa Bay regional representatives assigned relative values to ecosystem services as shown in Fig. 6. The data represent the proportions of an arbitrary amount of money (scaled to $1.00) that workshop participants would spend on sustaining or improving the delivery of these services. The group was asked not to assume that money spent on habitat would contribute to increases in other services such as recreation or aesthetics, and to consider each service separately. Concept models Our refined concept maps captured the major elements leading to the production of ecosystem goods and services, and the various connections between the elements (Figs. 2, 3 and 4). Several additions/adjustments were made to our preliminary concept maps during the January 2009 workshop. These include the addition of the human use stressor to the open water map, the integration of several sub-maps associated with agricultural, forested, and urban sections of the terrestrial ecosystem into a combined concept map, as well as several added linkages within each map. These refined concept maps have nodes (shown as “lt,” i.e. “leads to,” in the concept maps) that workshop participants used to qualitatively assess the interactions between several functions and their effects on services. These nodes will ultimately be populated by quantitative ecological production functions linking the two joined elements. These quantitative functions, for example, will allow us to model how stressors impact primary production which is related to the growth of trees, leading to CO2 sequestration which contributes to climate regulation. The concept maps are,
The Tampa Bay stakeholder group ranked the availability of water of sufficient quality for various designated uses, such as water meeting standards for drinking, swimming, or fishing, first in importance in all three ecosystem types (Table 2). Rankings of other services were variable across ecosystems. Availability of scientific information More than 17,000 relevant articles were identified by the bibliographic search, from 78 of the 100 journals searched; no relevant articles were identified in 22 of the journals. Agricultural production was represented by the largest number of publications, with 28% of the total, nearly 20 times the number of references found for seagrass fishery habitat (apparently the least-studied category). Numbers of references generated by the other search categories did not differ greatly, with a maximum difference of 25%. Complete results from the bibliographic analysis are contained in (link to ESM_1.doc) Composite analysis of research priorities Combined data from the importance rankings, relative valuation, and bibliographic analysis generated composite scores and ranks for a subset of ecosystems and services. Seagrass habitat ranked as the highest research priority, followed by wetland water quality, then by wetland habitat (Table 3). High priority ecosystem services in each ecosystem type are easily identified when the three prioritization metrics are arrayed together (Figs. 7, 8 and 9).
Discussion
Aesthetics
Climate
Flood control
0.10
Recreation
0.15
Water supply
0.20
Water quality
Mean response ($)
0.25
Habitat
0.30
The TBESDP is a complex undertaking. With limited resources, it is necessary to establish priorities for research involving field work and original data collection, which are expensive and time-consuming. Topics identified as lower priorities can be addressed through reference to the scientific and technical literature, analysis of existing data, and modeling.
0.05
Conceptual models 0.00
Fig. 6 Mean relative values of selected ecosystem services across all ecosystem types, as elicited from 14 Tampa Bay decision-makers
Different individuals conceive of systems in different ways, have different stores of knowledge, and attach different
Prioritization of Ecosystem Services Research Table 2 Ecosystem services ranked in order of importance to Tampa Bay stakeholders
Services separated by semicolons were ranked equally for a particular ecosystem
Rank
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Ecosystem Terrestrial
Wetlands
Open water
Water quality Food and fiber; flood protection Climate moderation Air quality Habitat/refugia, biodiversity Culture and aesthetics
Water quality Water supply; flood protection Habitat/refugia, biodiversity Culture and aesthetics Climate moderation Air quality
Water quality Food and fiber Culture and aesthetics Habitat/refugia, biodiversity Flood protection Climate moderation Air quality
priorities to system elements and processes, so it can be challenging for a group, especially a large and diverse one, to construct a consensus model. Nevertheless, going through the process of identifying elements of the system and relationships between them, then eliminating those of lesser importance, can be educational for all involved, and strengthen the resulting model. The workshop in which we expanded and refined our conceptual maps demonstrates the strength of this approach as well as difficulties of the process. Conceptual models come in many forms, and serve various purposes. In all cases, they represent an individual’s or a group’s vision of a system. They may be used as illustrated here, in a priori fashion, to construct a shared vision of the elements and functions that need to be addressed in a research program, or they can be used post hoc to integrate a body of fine-grained research into a more holistic vision of a system. Cloern’s (2001) conceptual models of coastal eutrophication illustrate how conceptual models change as new data and research increase our understanding, and how they can be used both proactively and reactively. Although the concept maps of the different ecosystem types are complex, they show only a fraction of the
complexity of the actual systems (Figs. 2, 3 and 4). The models portray all of the functional relationships as unidirectional, without explicit interactions or feedbacks. These additional complexities will need to be fully explored during the process of quantitative modeling. For example, in terrestrial ecosystems, there are likely to be important feedbacks from the mix of crops, forests, and other land uses to temperature, precipitation, and biological stressors (e.g., invasive and genetically modified plants). Likewise, in the open water system, there is a potentially strong interaction between SAV/wetland structure and secondary production that will need to be considered. Despite their limitations, these conceptual diagrams have been central to research planning, and a basis for sharing knowledge among experts and stakeholders from the Tampa Bay area.
Table 3 Number of publications focused on services in particular ecosystems is translated into a relative score reflecting the need for further research to fill information gaps and then combined with
relative scores for both stakeholder priorities and valuation of those services to rank each subset of ecosystems and ecosystem services for research prioritization
Ecosystem Service
Seagrass Habitat
Wetland Habitat
Publications
248
1,647
Proportion of total Subscore Relative value Subscore Stakeholder rank Subscore Composite score Composite rank
0.020 2.00 0.27 1.48 4 0.58 4.05 1
0.133 1.08 0.27 1.48 3 0.95 3.50 3
Wetland Water quality 1,900 0.153 0.91 0.24 1.30 1 1.69 3.90 2
Stakeholder priorities and relative valuation The workshop stakeholder group ranked water quality as the highest priority for all three ecosystems. We used “water quality” as a shorthand term for the ecosystem service of providing water of sufficient quality for designated human uses (drinking, fishing, swimming, etc.). Flood protection ranked high for terrestrial and wetlands ecosystems, as did
Wetland Flood protection 1,746 0.141 1.02 0.085 0.37 2 1.32 2.71 5
Wetland Water supply 1,929 0.156 0.90 0.200 1.06 2 1.32 3.27 4
Forest Water supply 2,184 0.176 0.73 0.200 1.06 5 0.20 1.99 6
Forest Climate regulation 2,734 0.221 0.37 0.065 0.25 3 0.95 1.57 7
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Fig. 7 Relative research priorities for ecosystem services in terrestrial ecosystems based on importance to stakeholders, valuation index, and bibliometric analysis. Note that a zero reflects that no data were collected for that ecosystem service for this ecosystem
Fig. 9 Relative research priorities for ecosystem services in open water ecosystems based on importance to stakeholders, valuation index, and bibliometric analysis. Note that a zero reflects that no data were collected for that ecosystem service for this ecosystem
food and fiber production for terrestrial and open water ecosystems. We are unsure of the precise reasons for these priorities, but speculate that the highly ranked services are
those that are most visible to the participants and also the most likely to be effected by local management actions. Water quality is a high profile issue in the Tampa Bay region primarily because the availability of water of sufficient quality is a key for contact and non-contact recreation. The needs of fish and wildlife of Tampa Bay and adjacent coastal waters is also central to the area’s economy and resident’s quality of life. Flood protection, a service strongly related to wetlands along the coastal fringe, as well as to inland wetlands and terrestrial land uses, is an obvious priority for this low-lying area, which is vulnerable to hurricanes and extreme rainfall events. The Tampa Bay area also supports substantial agricultural production and commercial fisheries—their prominent economic and cultural importance could explain the priority given to food and fiber production. There were differences between the stakeholder priorities and the mean relative values assigned to ecosystem goods and services by local resident representatives. In particular, habitat functions were ranked highest in the relative valuation exercise, but received low to moderate ranking for importance to stakeholders. Water quality, however, received high rankings from both the valuation workshop participants and our stakeholder group, when asked to rank ecosystem goods and services by importance to their organization. The questions these groups were asked were quite different: the stakeholders were asked to assign relative importance to ecosystem services based on the
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Fig. 8 Relative research priorities for ecosystem services in wetland ecosystems based on importance to stakeholders, valuation index, and bibliometric analysis. Note that a zero reflects that no data were collected for that ecosystem service for this ecosystem
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linkages to ecological and physical processes that they have experience about, whereas the valuation exercise was focused on what the participants valued most highly in an overall ecosystem context. As applied here, we can conclude that importance and value were different concepts, and that the responses quantified separate dimensions in our analysis. We suspect that the relatively low ranks for climate regulation (or climate moderation) in both groups resulted not because they thought this service was unimportant, but rather that it was a global issue upon which local and regional actions could have little influence. The issue of scale and the use of unambiguous endpoints are important to consider here. First, climate change is a global issue affected by the cumulative effects of very local scale behaviors. Climate change has been portrayed in the popular media as something humans should be concerned with. Climate change’s effect on individual welfare is a difficult concept for the average individual to grasp though. There are multitudes of interacting and transformative processes that turn global climate change into tangible changes in the local environmental conditions that then impinge on the attributes of an ecosystem that humans directly benefit from (i.e. final services). It is very difficult for a person to place even a relative value or importance on climate change without explicit knowledge of these relationships to human benefits. It is highly recommended that newly available methods that can identify those attributes of an ecosystem that beneficiaries directly interact with be employed in future valuation/prioritization studies (Johnston and Russell submitted). Bibliometric analysis It was not surprising that agricultural production generated the largest volume of literature, given the dominant role of agriculture in the traditional economy relative to other ecosystem services. The seagrass habitat service was far less represented than any of the other services; of 248 references, 80 (32%) were from a single journal, Marine Ecology Progress Series. These findings alone were important in guiding our research priorities toward the services most in need of original research, and away from others. These data also provided a third objective dimension to the overall analysis. Integrated research priorities In the composite analysis of importance to stakeholders, relative valuation, and availability of scientific literature, we took an objective approach to combining the information into an overall ranking of research priorities. Although the inconsistencies between the data sets prevented a complete analysis, the composite ranking gave us one clear
way to see through the complexity. There are, of course, other considerations in planning a research program beyond those described in this article: feasibility, cost, and logistics among them. Moreover, objective analysis, however well done, should not substitute for reasoning and judgment. Based on combined data from the importance rankings, relative valuation, and bibliometric analysis, we deduced that water quality related functions in wetlands, especially reactive nitrogen removal, and the habitat functions of wetlands and SAV that support fishery production would be our major priorities for TBESDP original research. These two areas of research should reduce the most amount of uncertainty in important sections of our resulting models. Other functions and ecosystem services will be quantified principally by using existing models and data from the scientific and technical literature. The combination of existing information and results of our original research efforts will allow us to develop system dynamic models of ecosystem functionality related to ecosystem services that have output constrained by actual measurements and also quantify uncertainty. Our prioritization results have been validated by our stakeholders and workshop participants and were found to be consistent with stakeholder preferences and values. Our research prioritization approach is helping us meet the overall objectives of the EPA’s Tampa Bay Ecosystem Services Demonstration Project. We envision that this and similar research prioritization approaches can be used initially across biogeographically similar ecosystems and watersheds i.e. Gulf of Mexico and southeast U.S.coastal areas and as information is gathered, apply this approach to ever larger systems and more dissimilar systems. Once the responsiveness of our ecosystem services model to differing stressors and variables is understood and tested, we will quantify the Tampa derived model sensitivity to substitution of information from other systems. This information could serve as a fourth metric for prioritizing further research towards more accurately predicting how real changes to the ecosystem will influence the ecosystem goods and services human well-being depends on.
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