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. 2019 Jul 3;16(13):2351.
doi: 10.3390/ijerph16132351.

Who Benefits from National Estuaries? Applying the FEGS Classification System to Identify Ecosystem Services and their Beneficiaries

Susan Harrell Yee  1 , Angelica Sullivan  2 , Kathleen C Williams  3 , Kirsten Winters  4   5
Affiliations

Who Benefits from National Estuaries? Applying the FEGS Classification System to Identify Ecosystem Services and their Beneficiaries

Susan Harrell Yee et al. Int J Environ Res Public Health. .

Abstract

In spite of their perceived value, the widespread implementation of ecosystem services assessments has been limited because of perceptions of being too technical, too expensive, or requiring special expertise. For example, federal estuary management programs have widely used ecosystem services concepts to frame management issues and communicate with stakeholders. Yet, indicators assessed, monitored, and reported in estuarine management still have traditionally focused on ecological conditions, with weak connections, if any, to social or economic outcomes. Approaches are needed which expand the range of ecosystem services that can be considered, link ecosystem services explicitly to different stakeholder groups, facilitate effective communication with economists and other social scientists, and expand the array of available valuation techniques. We applied the concept of final ecosystem goods and services to review the broad suite of ecosystem services and their beneficiaries relevant to the management of two federal programs for estuary management, the National Estuary Program (NEP) and the National Estuarine Research Reserve System (NERRS). The Final Ecosystem Goods and Services Classification System provided a structured framework for connecting ecosystem services to their beneficiaries and the environments providing them. Document analysis of management plans assessed the degree to which these programs consider ecosystem services, their beneficiaries, and habitats within the estuarine watershed. The hierarchical list of final ecosystem goods and services generated from document analysis serves as a tool for defining management goals, identifying stakeholders, developing meaningful indicators, and conducting valuation studies in estuarine management planning efforts. Though developed here for estuarine management, the keyword hierarchy and final ecosystem goods and services approach have broad applicability and transferability to other environmental management scenarios.

Keywords: beneficiaries; document analysis; estuary management; final ecosystem goods and services.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Illustration and examples of the three elements needed to define final ecosystem services.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Number of NEP or NERR management plans mentioning each beneficiary category. Asterisks denote categories for which counts differed significantly (logistic regression; p < 0.05) between NEP and NERR.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Number of NEP or NERR management plans mentioning each FEGS type. Asterisks denote categories for which counts differed significantly (logistic regression; p < 0.05) between NEP and NERR.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Number of NEP or NERR management plans mentioning each category of environment. Asterisks denote categories for which counts differed significantly (logistic regression; p < 0.05) between NEP and NERR.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Number of management plans mentioning each type of FEGS with each category of Beneficiary. Circles indicate a particular combination was significantly (logistic regression; p < 0.05) more common in either NEP plans (solid) or NERR plans (dashed).
Figure 6
Figure 6
Relative frequency by which documents linked each type of FEGS to different types of Beneficiaries.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Relative frequency by which documents linked each type of FEGS to different types of Environments.
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