Standardizing in-situ observations of ecosystem services

Background/Question/Methods

What we measure affects what we can decide to do. Global organizations that focus on human health and development tend to measure mortality, morbidity, or poverty, while conservation organizations tend to measure species and ecosystem health or degradation; if the two are not measured in a coordinated fashion we will miss the tradeoffs or synergies at work. Recent efforts have made progress in tracking changes in the environment at the local scale (e.g., food production, water quality), but few programs monitor how these changes translate into altered human wellbeing (e.g. nutrition level or diarrheal burden). Further, connecting these changes in our socio-ecological systems to the land and natural resource use decisions that provoked them is essential to building effective linkages between policy, nature and people. Ecosystem services approaches to conservation will not succeed if the connection between ecosystem health and human wellbeing is not convincingly demonstrated. 

Results/Conclusions

We will review lessons learned from monitoring agricultural systems and nutrition (Vital Signs Monitoring System) and watershed management for improved water supplies (The Nature Conservancy, Natural Capital Project). In greater depth, we will review ongoing efforts to standardize in-situ observations of ecosystem services such as water provisioning and purification. These efforts include assessing the impact of payments for watershed services programs on both biophysical (water) outcomes and socio-economic outcomes for the upstream and downstream beneficiaries. We will discuss challenges faced in standardizing monitoring approaches and metrics across highly variable regions with widely disparate data availability and monitoring infrastructure, and we will offer potential solutions, drawing from our lessons learned.