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Ecosystem goods and services (EGS) have been promoted as a way to effectively examine tradeoffs and improve communication of project-related environmental outcomes in terms of human well-being. This document proposes a framework to inform the development of any future guidance to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) District planners for projecting...
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Context 1
... conduct an ESE, the analyst gathers evidence that the ecological change will be used or appreciated to establish that the project site is capable of delivering the service that was only suggested by the ecological outcome metric. For example, as shown in Figure 4, the ecological outcome of an increase in game fish abundance suggests that the EGS of recreational fishing will be enhanced, but the ESE step is used to confirm that a fishing benefit is likely. The analyst confirms that the site has public access and gathers evidence of existing or likely recreational use. ...
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... EGS conceptual models will clarify the different methods applied to non-use EGS (Figure 3) and use EGS (Figure 4). Readers will note that the simple conceptual model of Figure 2 is expanded to document intermediate metrics and relationships, as needed. ...
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... a result, the change in likelihood of persistence can serve as a proxy for the non-use values generated by a project. The team forms a committee of ecologists to generate a theoretical curve (based on limited empirical evidence) to reflect probability of persistence as a function of total habitat area ( Figure 14). ...
Context 4
... ecologists use theory and data to draw a curve to represent how probability of persistence (and value) changes as a function of regional habitat extent. In Figure 14, the curve is steep over the range of 15%-35% of historic extent to roughly reflect ecological thinking that this range is consistent with the minimum amount of habitat needed to ensure long-term persistence of species ( Tear et al. 2005) and ecosystems ( Nicholson et al. 2009;Rodríguez et al. 2011). The flat part of the curve in the 0%-15% range of historic habitat reflects the idea that if the extent falls below 15% of historic range, long-term viability will be quite low. ...
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... describe the relative importance of restoring the cottonwood-willow riparian forest, the PDT documents that the ecosystem extent appears close to a (theoretical) threshold that may reduce its chances for persistence Figure 14. 1 Studies reveal that in the ecoregion only 10% of the native riparian areas remain ( Noss et al. 1995), due to invasion by non-native plants, water withdrawals, and land conversion. ...
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... literature review reveals that the species inhabits only 32% of its historic range in the Lower Colorado River Basin (Voeltz 2002), which is the enclosing watershed for the study area. Although 32% is above the minimal threshold considered necessary for viability, it is still in a range consistent with substantial long-term risk of extirpation and therefore the PDT assesses that the added habitat is important to long-term viability (consistent with Figure 14 in Step 1.3). ...
Citations
... The methods section describes the main analysis elements of the EGS Framework, with full details available in Wainger et al. (2020). The results section provides details of the test implementation for a multi-objective river restoration project study in the Meramec River, Missouri (USA). ...
... The Impact Evaluation Table is used to summarize and communicate the potential magnitude of EGS impacts and benefits (shown in results). The Decision Criteria Table, summarizes whether EGS goals are consistent with policy and provide documentation of assumptions and sources of risk (shown in Wainger et al. 2020). ...
... Further, all potential EGS benefits are evaluated for social benefits, regardless of whether they are within missions and project authorities. Project actions and EGS impacts are further screened using a Decision Criteria Table to reveal constraints on federal cost-sharing and compliance with federal laws, regulations, and relevant executive orders (example in Wainger et al. 2020). ...
Would-be adopters of ecosystem service analysis frameworks might ask, ‘Do such frameworks improve ecosystem service provision or social benefits sufficiently to compensate for any extra effort?’ Here we explore that question by retrospectively applying an ecosystem goods and services (EGS) analysis framework to a large river restoration case study conducted by the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) and comparing potential time costs and outcomes of traditional versus EGS-informed planning. USACE analytic methods can have a large influence on which river and wetland restoration projects are implemented in the United States because they affect which projects or project elements are eligible for federal cost-share funding. A new framework is designed for the USACE and is primarily distinguished from current procedures by adding explicit steps to document and compare tradeoffs and complementarity among all affected EGS, rather than the subset that falls within project purposes. Further, it applies economic concepts to transform ecological performance indicators into social benefit indicators, even if changes cannot be valued. We conclude that, for large multi-partner restoration projects like our case study, using the framework provides novel information on social outcomes that could be used to enhance project design, without substantially increasing scoping costs. The primary benefits of using the framework in the case study appeared to stem from early comprehensive identification of stakeholder interests that might have prevented project delays late in the process, and improving the communication of social benefits and how tradeoffs among EGS benefits were weighed during planning.
... Moreover, the findings of the study address the stakeholders' need to enhance the evaluation of economic impacts of SLR and the role of wetlands in flood protection, filling an information gap for decision-making regarding resilient approaches in coastal areas in the US (Rezaie et al. 2020;Molino et al. 2020;Wainger et al. 2020). The results can support states' efforts to develop adaptation for coastal flood protection, including conservation, restoration, and management of floodplain and protected areas (Kousky and Walls 2014;Epanchin-Niell et al. 2017;Rezaie et al. 2017;Schuerch et al. 2018). ...
Along the North Atlantic coasts of the United States, sea levels are rising at higher rates than the global average. Additionally, sea level rise (SLR) can cause reduction and redistribution of wetlands across the low-lying coastal landscape. This study applied a coupled storm surge and waves model to the Chesapeake Bay regions that are prone to SLR. Two historical storms of low and high wind intensity were simulated for current and potential future sea-level and land cover conditions. The future scenarios incorporated projections of local SLR and land use due to potential reduction and changes in coastal wetlands. Simulated flood depths were used in depth–damage functions to estimate prospective property damages, and were combined with population density information to estimate potential number of people at risk. The results showed that, depending on storm intensity, the total flooded area can increase from the baseline by 1.3–2.3 times in the minimum SLR scenario, and by 2.1–4.7 times in the maximum SLR scenario. The maximum SLR was estimated to cause approximately $5.8 billion to $8.6 billion in additional damages and potentially to affect 1–1.2 million people more than the number affected in current conditions. Results also suggest that the low-intensity storm was projected to have greater impacts in the future than the high-intensity storm today, indicating that even relatively weak storms may cause considerable damage to coastal communities in a future with SLR. Finally, flooding, property damage, and the number of people affected in the future scenarios were exacerbated by wetlands reduction and change—in other words, the protective services currently provided by natural lands in coastal areas can be diminished in the future with SLR.
Data and observations made at > 40-year-old dredged sediment beneficial use project sites were used to link ecosystem functions (e.g., maintenance of floral and faunal habitat, energy dissipation) with an established ecosystem goods and services framework (e.g., navigation channel maintenance, hazard reduction, ecosystem sustainability). This approach works toward quantifying the full suite of positive outcomes dredged sediment beneficial use projects provide to the environment and society. Ecological functions are derived from physical, biogeochemical, and habitat processes which occur on different timeframes and to varying magnitudes, and these functional drivers control the delivery of ecosystem goods and services. For example, physically dominated ecological functions are typically delivered more quickly (weeks to months) after project implementation than functions requiring the maturation of plant communities or other biologically mediated processes (years to decades). As a result, coupling ecological functions with the resulting ecosystem goods and services informs dredged sediment beneficial use decisions by communicating the relative influence of specific design features or management actions on project outcomes. These analyses also support the development of conceptual ecological benefits trajectories across decadal timelines. Future research will be needed to improve the quantification of ecological functions, and the resulting goods and services in a dredged sediment beneficial use context. The need for better quantification tools is expected to increase with implementation of Working with Nature, Engineering With Nature, and natural and nature-based feature initiatives. A companion paper evaluates the long-term ecological outcomes of dredged sediment beneficial use project implementation, demonstrating the capacity of beneficial use projects to sustainably deliver a variety of ecosystem functions over multiple decades.
Coastal communities and cities in Mid-Atlantic regions of the US are frequently threatened by flood damages and erosion due to hurricane wind, storm surge and waves. With a changing climate, sea level rise (SLR) and intensified storms, the damage due to hurricanes is expected to increase. Hard structures have long been used for coastal flood protection, but scientists and coastal managers are learning that natural and nature-based features (NNBF) can play a significant role in attenuating storm surge and waves in many coastal areas. In this study, we applied high resolution coupled storm surge and wave models (ADCIDC+ SWAN) to evaluate current and future coastal flood vulnerabilities in Maryland and Virginia under the impacts of sea level rise, marsh migration and climate change. The coastal models are further integrated with careful economic valuation exercises in order to calculate the value of coastal protective services from NNBF. The results of the integrated coastal modeling and economic framework show that for strong hurricanes the projected flood extent will increase up to 78% and 122 % in the coastal counties in Maryland and Virginia respectively. And the protective ecosystem service of wetlands varies from 70 USD to 275 USD per acre for low to high intensity storm occurring in Maryland.
