Broadening Benefits and Anticipating Tradeoffs with a Proposed Ecosystem Service Analysis Framework for the US Army Corps of Engineers.

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.

Assessing intervention effectiveness at promoting voluntary conservation practice adoption in agrienvironments.

Although implementing conservation practices on private farms and forests can produce substantial environmental benefits, these practices are not being adopted widely enough to result in measurable improvements at regional scales. Researchers have investigated the production and program factors influencing producer choices to voluntarily adopt these practices. However, the findings of reviews are inconsistent, raising questions about review methods, including the omission of relevant variables. Further, applying lessons from past work to promote adoption is difficult because many reviews investigated dispositional or demographic variables that practitioners and policy makers cannot directly observe or influence. We conducted a new review of 146 empirical studies that tested the effects of different interventions (e.g., financial incentives, outreach events, and nudges) on increasing the likelihood of producers adopting conservation practices. We conducted a metaregression of quantitative studies from diverse disciplines that filtered studies by quality (i.e., use of randomization and clear analysis reporting). We synthesized these results with a thematic analysis of qualitative studies on producer perspectives about conservation practices. Financial incentives had the strongest evidence of increasing producers' likelihood of adopting conservation practices (odds ratio 1.86, p < 0.05). However, this effect was only apparent after filtering by study quality, which also improved model fit and identified significant regional differences (odds ratio -1.69, p < 0.01). The thematic review of qualitative studies revealed that peer groups may be successful in reinforcing adoption behaviors due to homophily effects and that financial incentives not only offset implementation costs but also mitigated perceived risks of adoption. Given the problems we encountered in testing hypotheses about the magnitude of variability explained by intervention types and practice characteristics, we recommend additional experimental and longitudinal work that accounts for financial incentives and pairs qualitative and quantitative data to clarify relationships between program design and practice adoption rates.

Evaluación de la efectividad de las intervenciones en la promoción de la adopción de prácticas de conservación voluntaria en los agroecosistemas Resumen Aunque la implementación de prácticas de conservación en granjas y bosques privados puede producir beneficios ambientales sustanciales, estas prácticas no se adoptan lo suficiente como para tener mejoras medibles en escalas regionales. Los investigadores han estudiado los factores de producción y programación que influyen sobre la elección de los productores de adoptar voluntariamente estas prácticas. Sin embargo, los hallazgos de las revisiones son inconsistentes, lo que genera preguntas sobre los métodos de revisión, incluyendo la omisión de variables relevantes. Además, es complicado aplicar lo aprendido en trabajos previos para promover la adopción porque muchas revisiones investigaron las variables demográficas y de disposición que los practicantes y los formuladores de políticas no pueden observar o influir directamente. Realizamos una nueva revisión de 146 estudios empíricos que analizaron los efectos de diferentes intervenciones (p. ej.: incentivos económicos, eventos de divulgación, estímulos) sobre el incremento de la probabilidad de que los productores adopten prácticas de conservación. Realizamos la meta regresión de estudios cuantitativos a partir de diferentes disciplinas que filtraron los estudios por calidad (uso de aleatorización y reporte claro de análisis). Sintetizamos estos resultados con un análisis temático de los estudios cualitativos sobre las perspectivas que tienen los productores de las prácticas de conservación. Los incentivos económicos contaron con la evidencia más sólida de incrementar la probabilidad de que los productores adoptaran prácticas de conservación (proporción de probabilidades 1.86, p < 0.05). Sin embargo, este efecto sólo fue aparente después de filtrar según la calidad del estudio, lo que también mejoró el ajuste del modelo e identificó diferencias regionales significativas (proporción de probabilidades -1.69, p < 0.01). La revisión temática de los estudios cualitativos reveló que los grupos de referencia pueden tener éxito en el refuerzo de los comportamientos de adopción debido a los efectos de homofilia y el hecho de que los incentivos económicos no sólo compensan los costos de implementación, sino también mitigan los riesgos percibidos de la adopción. Ya que nos encontramos con problemas en la prueba de la hipótesis sobre la magnitud de la variabilidad explicada por los tipos de intervención y las características de la práctica, recomendamos una experimentación adicional y trabajo longitudinal que explique los incentivos económicos y empareje los datos cualitativos y cuantitativos para clarificar las relaciones entre el diseño del programa y las tasas de adopción de las prácticas.

The Chesapeake Bay Program Modeling System: Overview and Recommendations for Future Development.

The Chesapeake Bay is the largest, most productive, and most biologically diverse estuary in the continental United States providing crucial habitat and natural resources for culturally and economically important species. Pressures from human population growth and associated development and agricultural intensification have led to excessive nutrient and sediment inputs entering the Bay, negatively affecting the health of the Bay ecosystem and the economic services it provides. The Chesapeake Bay Program (CBP) is a unique program formally created in 1983 as a multi-stakeholder partnership to guide and foster restoration of the Chesapeake Bay and its watershed. Since its inception, the CBP Partnership has been developing, updating, and applying a complex linked modeling system of watershed, airshed, and estuary models as a planning tool to inform strategic management decisions and Bay restoration efforts. This paper provides a description of the 2017 CBP Modeling System and the higher trophic level models developed by the NOAA Chesapeake Bay Office, along with specific recommendations that emerged from a 2018 workshop designed to inform future model development. Recommendations highlight the need for simulation of watershed inputs, conditions, processes, and practices at higher resolution to provide improved information to guide local nutrient and sediment management plans. More explicit and extensive modeling of connectivity between watershed landforms and estuary sub-areas, estuarine hydrodynamics, watershed and estuarine water quality, the estuarine-watershed socioecological system, and living resources will be important to broaden and improve characterization of responses to targeted nutrient and sediment load reductions. Finally, the value and importance of maintaining effective collaborations among jurisdictional managers, scientists, modelers, support staff, and stakeholder communities is emphasized. An open collaborative and transparent process has been a key element of successes to date and is vitally important as the CBP Partnership moves forward with modeling system improvements that help stakeholders evolve new knowledge, improve management strategies, and better communicate outcomes.

Exploring private land conservation non-adopters' attendance at outreach events in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, USA.

BACKGROUND: Outreach events such as trainings, demonstrations, and workshops are important opportunities for encouraging private land operators to adopt voluntary conservation practices. However, the ability to understand the effectiveness of such events at influencing conservation behavior is confounded by the likelihood that attendees are already interested in conservation and may already be adopters. Understanding characteristics of events that draw non-adopters can aid in designing events and messaging that are better able to reach beyond those already interested in conservation. METHODS: For this study, we interviewed 101 operators of private agricultural lands in Maryland, USA, and used descriptive statistics and qualitative comparative analysis to investigate differences between the kinds of outreach events that adopters and non-adopters attended. RESULTS: Our results suggested that non-adopters, as compared to adopters, attended events that provided production-relevant information and were logistically easy to attend. Further, non-adopters were more selective when reading advertisements, generally preferring simplicity. Future research and outreach can build on these findings by experimentally testing the effectiveness of messages that are simple and relevant to farmers' production priorities.

Phosphorus and the Chesapeake Bay: Lingering Issues and Emerging Concerns for Agriculture.

Hennig Brandt's discovery of phosphorus (P) occurred during the early European colonization of the Chesapeake Bay region. Today, P, an essential nutrient on land and water alike, is one of the principal threats to the health of the bay. Despite widespread implementation of best management practices across the Chesapeake Bay watershed following the implementation in 2010 of a total maximum daily load (TMDL) to improve the health of the bay, P load reductions across the bay's 166,000-km watershed have been uneven, and dissolved P loads have increased in a number of the bay's tributaries. As the midpoint of the 15-yr TMDL process has now passed, some of the more stubborn sources of P must now be tackled. For nonpoint agricultural sources, strategies that not only address particulate P but also mitigate dissolved P losses are essential. Lingering concerns include legacy P stored in soils and reservoir sediments, mitigation of P in artificial drainage and stormwater from hotspots and converted farmland, manure management and animal heavy use areas, and critical source areas of P in agricultural landscapes. While opportunities exist to curtail transport of all forms of P, greater attention is required toward adapting P management to new hydrologic regimes and transport pathways imposed by climate change.

Evidence-based economic analysis demonstrates that ecosystem service benefits of water hyacinth management greatly exceed research and control costs.

Invasive species management can be a victim of its own success when decades of effective control cause memories of past harm to fade and raise questions of whether programs should continue. Economic analysis can be used to assess the efficiency of investing in invasive species control by comparing ecosystem service benefits to program costs, but only if appropriate data exist. We used a case study of water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes (Mart.) Solms), a nuisance floating aquatic plant, in Louisiana to demonstrate how comprehensive record-keeping supports economic analysis. Using long-term data sets, we developed empirical and spatio-temporal simulation models of intermediate complexity to project invasive species growth for control and no-control scenarios. For Louisiana, we estimated that peak plant cover would be 76% higher without the substantial growth rate suppression (84% reduction) that appeared due primarily to biological control agents. Our economic analysis revealed that combined biological and herbicide control programs, monitored over an unusually long time period (1975-2013), generated a benefit-cost ratio of about 34:1 derived from the relatively modest costs of $124 million ($2013) compared to the $4.2 billion ($2013) in benefits to anglers, waterfowl hunters, boating-dependent businesses, and water treatment facilities over the 38-year analysis period. This work adds to the literature by: (1) providing evidence of the effectiveness of water hyacinth biological control; (2) demonstrating use of parsimonious spatio-temporal models to estimate benefits of invasive species control; and (3) incorporating activity substitution into economic benefit transfer to avoid overstating benefits. Our study suggests that robust and cost-effective economic analysis is enabled by good record keeping and generalizable models that can demonstrate management effectiveness and promote social efficiency of invasive species control.

Pathogen reduction co-benefits of nutrient best management practices.

BACKGROUND: Many of the practices currently underway to reduce nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment loads entering the Chesapeake Bay have also been observed to support reduction of disease-causing pathogen loadings. We quantify how implementation of these practices, proposed to meet the nutrient and sediment caps prescribed by the Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL), could reduce pathogen loadings and provide public health co-benefits within the Chesapeake Bay system. METHODS: We used published data on the pathogen reduction potential of management practices and baseline fecal coliform loadings estimated as part of prior modeling to estimate the reduction in pathogen loadings to the mainstem Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay attributable to practices implemented as part of the TMDL. We then compare the estimates with the baseline loadings of fecal coliform loadings to estimate the total pathogen reduction potential of the TMDL. RESULTS: We estimate that the TMDL practices have the potential to decrease disease-causing pathogen loads from all point and non-point sources to the mainstem Potomac River and the entire Chesapeake Bay watershed by 19% and 27%, respectively. These numbers are likely to be underestimates due to data limitations that forced us to omit some practices from analysis. DISCUSSION: Based on known impairments and disease incidence rates, we conclude that efforts to reduce nutrients may create substantial health co-benefits by improving the safety of water-contact recreation and seafood consumption.

Toward a standard lexicon for ecosystem services.

The complex, widely dispersed, and cumulative environmental challenges currently facing society require holistic, transdisciplinary approaches to resolve. The concept of ecosystem services (ES) has become more widely accepted as a framework that fosters a broader systems perspective of sustainability and can make science more responsive to the needs of decision makers and the public. Successful transdisciplinary approaches require a common language and understanding of key concepts. Our primary objective is to encourage the ES research and policy communities to standardize terminology and definitions, to facilitate mutual understanding by multidisciplinary researchers and policy makers. As an important step toward standardization, we present a lexicon developed to inform ES research conducted by the US Environmental Protection Agency and its partners. We describe a straightforward conceptualization of the relationships among environmental decisions, their effects on ecological systems and the services they provide, and human well-being. This provides a framework for common understanding and use of ES terminology. We encourage challenges to these definitions and attempts to advance standardization of a lexicon in ways that might be more meaningful to our ultimate objective: informing environmental decisions in ways that promote the sustainability of the environment upon which we all depend.

Adding fuel to the fire: the impacts of non-native grass invasion on fire management at a regional scale.

BACKGROUND: Widespread invasion by non-native plants has resulted in substantial change in fire-fuel characteristics and fire-behaviour in many of the world's ecosystems, with a subsequent increase in the risk of fire damage to human life, property and the environment. Models used by fire management agencies to assess fire risk are dependent on accurate assessments of fuel characteristics but there is little evidence that they have been modified to reflect landscape-scale invasions. There is also a paucity of information documenting other changes in fire management activities that have occurred to mitigate changed fire regimes. This represents an important limitation in information for both fire and weed risk management. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We undertook an aerial survey to estimate changes to landscape fuel loads in northern Australia resulting from invasion by Andropogon gayanus (gamba grass). Fuel load within the most densely invaded area had increased from 6 to 10 t ha(-1) in the past two decades. Assessment of the effect of calculating the Grassland Fire Danger Index (GFDI) for the 2008 and 2009 fire seasons demonstrated that an increase from 6 to 10 t ha(-1) resulted in an increase from five to 38 days with fire risk in the 'severe' category in 2008 and from 11 to 67 days in 2009. The season of severe fire weather increased by six weeks. Our assessment of the effect of increased fuel load on fire management practices showed that fire management costs in the region have increased markedly (∼9 times) in the past decade due primarily to A. gayanus invasion. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: This study demonstrated the high economic cost of mitigating fire impacts of an invasive grass. This study demonstrates the need to quantify direct and indirect invasion costs to assess the risk of further invasion and to appropriately fund fire and weed management strategies.

Opportunities for Reducing Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) compliance costs: lessons from the Chesapeake Bay.

The Chesapeake Bay Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) program is an unprecedented opportunity to restore the Chesapeake Bay, yet program costs threaten to undermine its complete implementation. Analyses of Bay TMDL program design and implementation were used to relate program cost-effectiveness to choices in (1) compliance definitions, (2) geographic load allocations, and (3) approaches to engaging unregulated sources. A key finding was that many design choices require choosing an acceptable level of risk of achieving water quality outcomes, and a lack of data can lead to precautionary choices, which increase compliance costs. Furthermore, although some choices managed costs, others decisions may have reduced the potential for cost savings from water quality trading and payment programs. In particular, the choice by some states to distribute the portion of load reductions that improve water quality in the Bay mainstem to many small basins is likely to diminish the potential for market development or reduce funding for the most cost-effective nutrient and sediment reduction practices. Strategies for reducing costs of future TMDLs include considering diminishing marginal returns early in the TMDL design to balance costs and risks in regulatory goal setting and to design rules and incentives that promote innovation and cost-effective compliance strategies.

Realizing the potential of ecosystem services: a framework for relating ecological changes to economic benefits.

Increasingly government agencies are seeking to quantify the outcomes of proposed policy options in terms of ecosystem service benefits, yet conflicting definitions and ad hoc approaches to measuring ecosystem services have created confusion regarding how to rigorously link ecological change to changes in human well-being. Here, we describe a step-by-step framework for producing ecological models and metrics that can effectively serve an economic-benefits assessment of a proposed change in policy or management. A focus of the framework is developing comparable units of ecosystem goods and services to support decision-making, even if outcomes cannot be monetized. Because the challenges to translating ecological changes to outcomes appropriate for economic analyses are many, we discuss examples that demonstrate practical methods and approaches to overcoming data limitations. The numerous difficult decisions that government agencies must make to fairly use and allocate natural resources provides ample opportunity for interdisciplinary teams of natural and social scientists to improve methods for quantifying changes in ecosystem services and their effects on human well-being. This framework is offered with the intent of promoting the success of such teams as they support managers in evaluating the equivalency of ecosystem service offsets and trades, establishing restoration and preservation priorities, and more generally, in developing environmental policy that effectively balances multiple perspectives.

Evaluating quality of life, economic vulnerabilities, and drivers of ecosystem change.

We examined regional conditions and trends related to quality of life and potential vulnerabilities of these factors to changes in the condition of natural resources in the Mid-Atlantic Region, USA. We selected a variety of variables on economic and socio-demographic conditions that demonstrate links between the condition of natural areas and human concerns and that quantify dependencies on resources. We extracted data from economic and population census databases for counties within the study area and present a subset of results of the cluster analyses used to describe condition and potential risks due to distinct combinations of variables. We found that the same variables used to judge quality of life were often correlated with increasing population and thus were likely to be related to land pressures and risks to natural resources. Within the region, economic dependence on resource-harvesting industries such as forestry and fisheries was low (less than 4% of total earnings at most), however, the potential for natural amenities to attract residents appeared to be growing as the self-employed and otherwise mobile people settled in areas with affordable housing and natural amenities. Suburban residential spread had been occurring in both the close-in and distant suburbs of the region's urban areas and some rural, growth appeared to be driven, in part, by businesses migrating to suburbs. Further work is needed to tease apart causal factors for the trends we observed, but correlations clearly existed in some areas between increasing populations and quality of natural surroundings.

Development of indicators to assess economic vulnerabilities to changes in ecosystem services: case study of counties in Maryland, USA.

We develop indicators showing the relative environmental burdens that human activities place on locales for a given level of economic benefits. The main purpose is to develop tools that allow us to examine the potential vulnerabilities within economies to changes in resource conditions. The indicators of pollution emission or resource consumption per job can be used to identify potential challenges to resource and industry managers and to compare areas in terms of their ability to adapt to change. For example, if a large number of area jobs are dependent on abundant water, this indicates a vulnerability to a reduction in water availability for industrial use. We develop a case study for 23 counties and 1 city in Maryland to examine the usefulness and limitations of the indicators. Our case study demonstrates that the indicators provide an informative view into patterns of local economic activity and use of an area's environmental goods and services. In contrast to patterns for total environmental burdens (e.g., total SO2 emissions) that are typically reported, the rates of environmental burden per job are not simply correlated with high or low economic output. Thus, the indicators represent distinct patterns of environmental burdens per job that reflect reliance on environmental services. The indicators have some limitations when used at this fine scale because they can misrepresent conditions in counties in which economic sectors are dominated by one or a few businesses. For this reason, the indicators are best used as a regional screening tool.