99th ESA Annual Meeting (August 10 -- 15, 2014)

SYMP 6

Operationalizing the Concept of Ecosystem Services through Interdisciplinary Research and Synthesis

This session brings together top, interdisciplinary researchers to synthesize the needs, challenges, and approaches to operationalizing the concept of ecosystem services. The concept of ecosystem services describes how nature and biodiversity afford direct and indirect benefits to human welfare. Initially, most attention on the topic was placed on the economic valuation of ecosystem services. Lately, the concept has also focused on understanding when and where specific ecosystem services are produced in order to align conservation and management of natural resources with household needs, economics, business practices, policy decisions, and cultural values. However, moving forward from the concept of ecosystem services to the use of ecosystem services for natural resource management and environmental markets is challenging. Operationalizing ecosystem services requires: 1) identification of important services for human welfare in a specific geographic and temporal context, 2) determining if the specific environmental (local) context is likely to support the ecosystem feature and processes that underpin the desired services, and 3) availability of management options and social processes to ensure delivery of the services. This symposium explores current research projects and syntheses that begin to operationalize the concept of ecosystem services and provide concrete strategies about collecting, using, and implementing data on ecosystem services for decision-making. The session will include two talks about overarching frameworks and cross-scale analyses for applying ecosystem services to decision-making. Other talks will then provide strategies for using ecosystem services in vital (non-mutually exclusive) areas, including business strategy, urban planning, conservation, and policy. Each presenter will also discuss the approaches they used to navigate working across disciplines to accomplish social-ecological research goals.