Ecosystem services, or the benefits that functioning ecosystems provide to people, offer a common language to express the range of values and objectives that people have for coasts and oceans. Working with natural scientists, economists, and other social scientists, we are facilitating the development of more meaningful measures of services, more effective tools to evaluate tradeoffs among services, and ways for scientists to communicate about these concepts that will better resonate with decision makers.

Previous Events

Options for the ocean: Scientific insights for decision makers (Feb 2011)

This lunchtime dialogue brought together scientists and policy makers to explore how the latest science of ecosystem services might inform Coastal and Marine Spatial Planning under the new US National Ocean Policy.

Communicating the science of ecosystem services to decision-makers (Dec 2010)

This 2-day workshop challenged a group of natural and social scientists to identify and develop consistent messages about ecosystem services that would resonate with decision makers and tested their communication skills through a series of role-playing exercises with regional and Federal decision makers.

Marine spatial planning is coming: What can science do for you? (Sept 2010)

This breakfast dialogue, held in conjunction with the California and the World Oceans Meeting, brought together scientists and decision makers to explore the latest science to define common goals, assess tradeoffs among services, visualize cumulative impacts, and evaluate consequences.

West Coast ecosystem services: Feasible metrics and tradeoffs (July 2009)

In collaboration with the Natural Capital Project, this workshop convened ecologists, economists, and practitioners to adddress: (1) How do we measure key marine and coastal ecosystem services for the US west coast? and (2) How do we apply these metrics to assess important ecosystem service tradeoffs?