Susan Harrell Yee

Modeling the human well-being benefits of ecosystem restoration and management for environmental decision making Since the release of the 2005 Millenium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA), there has been ever-growing interest and initiatives to encourage and support the use of natural infrastructure to enhance social and economic benefits to people (White House Council on Environmental Quality et al., 2022). The concept of 'ecosystem services' connects changes in ecosystems to the provisioning of goods and services that ultimately convey benefits to human well-being (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005). However, environmental management decisions are already complex and layering on human wellbeing benefits can seem intractable because they: require multidisciplinary socio-ecological information; are saddled with the inherent uncertainty of natural systems; couple sciencebased information with subjective human values; and are embedded within a decision environment of multiple stakeholder perspectives, multi-objective tradeoffs, and limited resources (Yee et al., 2017).

Background: The exact number of mosquito species relevant to human health is unknown, posing challenges in understanding the scope and breadth of vector–pathogen relationships, and how resilient mosquito vector–pathogen networks are to targeted eradication of vectors.Methods: We performed an extensive literature survey to determine the associations between mosquito species and their associated pathogens of human medical importance. For each vector–pathogen association, we then determined the strength of the associations (i.e., natural infection, lab infection, lab dissemination, lab transmission, known vector). A network analysis was used to identify relationships among all pathogens and vectors. Finally, we examined how elimination of either random or targeted species affected the extinction of pathogens.Results: We found that 88 of 3578 mosquito species (2.5%) are known vectors for 78 human disease-causing pathogens; however, an additional 243 species (6.8%) were identified as potential or likely vectors, bringing the total of all mosquitos implicated in human disease to 331 (9.3%). Network analysis revealed that known vectors and pathogens were compartmentalized, with the removal of six vectors being enough to break the network (i.e., cause a pathogen to have no vector). However, the presence of potential or likely vectors greatly increased redundancies in the network, requiring more than 41 vectors to be eliminated before breaking the network.Conclusion: Although < 10% of mosquitoes are involved in transmitting pathogens that cause human disease, our findings point to inherent robustness in global mosquito vector–pathogen networks.Graphical

Ecosystem restoration may require implementing programs or best management practices (BMPs) in areas that are geographically far from the target ecosystem. Stakeholders in these areas may feel disconnected from the target ecosystem or may not have a clear understanding of local benefits from implemented practices. To achieve widespread participation in restoration efforts, it is important to engage stakeholders located where BMPs need to be implemented to identify and consider their local priorities and impacts. Here, we demonstrate use of a structured decision-making approach to identify ecosystem services associated with BMPs in the Chesapeake Bay watershed and connect them with the priorities of stakeholders they benefit. We follow a four-step approach to define the bounds of the decision context, identify ecosystem services and beneficiaries relevant to that decision context, engage stakeholders to understand priorities, and identify potential metrics and indicators. Our approach highlights the utility of different tools, such as ecosystem service classification systems and the Final Ecosystem Goods and Services (FEGS) Scoping Tool, in engaging stakeholders to identify, communicate, and prioritize ecosystem services. The results demonstrate a method by which to connect large-scale regional restoration efforts, and the managers overseeing such efforts, with the priorities of local communities where programs will be implemented. This work will help Chesapeake Bay restoration partners identify and promote management actions that will provide the most value for communities throughout the watershed, while also benefiting restoration of Chesapeake Bay.

There is an astonishing diversity of ways in which people benefit from coral reefs. They provide recreation, resource extraction, inspirational, and educational opportunities, among many others as well as being valued just for their existence. As the condition of coral reef ecosystems decline, so do their ability to provide these benefits. Prudent management of coral reefs and the benefits they provide are important as some predict most coral reefs globally will be lost by the mid‐21st century. Meanwhile, coral reef managers have limited tools and relevant data to design and implement effective environmental management practices that will enable coral reefs to provide benefits demanded by society. We demonstrate an approach to identify and measure environmental components of coral reefs that directly benefit human well‐being. The approach views ecosystems through the lens of a specific set of beneficiaries and the biophysical features directly relevant to each. We call these biophysical features Final Ecosystem Goods and Services (FEGS). In our demonstration, we (1) identify a range of beneficiaries of coral reefs; (2) identify metrics of FEGS for those beneficiaries; and (3) describe how data quantifying those biophysical metrics might be used to facilitate greater economic and social understanding.

Ecosystem services, including availability of greenspace, clean air, and clean water, can have benefits to human well-being, but their relative importance compared to economic or social services is often overlooked. In Puerto Rico, for example, improving community well-being, including economic and cultural opportunities, human health, and safety, are often overarching goals of environmental management decisions, but the degree to which improvements in ecological condition and provision of ecosystem services could impact local communities is complicated by wide variation in social and economic conditions. This study quantifies and maps neighborhood-scale indicators of human well-being and ecosystem services for Puerto Rico to better understand the degree to which ecosystem services provisioning, alongside co-occurring social and economic services, explains variability in a number of indicators of human well-being. In Puerto Rico, variability in indicators of human well-being were predominately explained by economic services related to accumulating income and personal savings, and social services, including availability of family services, healthcare services, and access to communication technology. Despite the large explanatory power of economic and social services, however, the analysis detected that substantial portions of well-being, in particular education and human health, could be explained by variability in ecosystem services over space and time, especially availability of greenspace. Linking ecosystem services to multivariate elements of human well-being can serve to complement more traditional community planning or environmental management efforts by helping identify potential unintended consequences or overlooked benefits of decisions.

Coral reefs are highly valued ecosystems currently threatened by both local and global stressors. Given the importance of coral reef ecosystems, a Bayesian network approach can benefit an evaluation of threats to reef condition. To this end, we used data to evaluate the overlap between local stressors (overfishing and destructive fishing, watershed-based pollution, marine-based pollution, and coastal development threats), global stressors (acidification and thermal stress), and management effectiveness with indicators of coral reef health (live coral index, live coral cover, population bleaching, colony bleaching, and recently killed corals). Each of the coral health indicators had Bayesian networks constructed globally and for Pacific, Atlantic, Australia, Middle East, Indian Ocean, and Southeast Asia coral reef locations. Sensitivity analysis helped evaluate the strength of the relationships between different stressors and reef condition indicators. The relationships between indicators and stressors were also evaluated with conditional analyses of linear and nonlinear interactions. In this process, a standardized direct effects analysis was emphasized with a target mean analysis to predict changes in the mean value of the reef indicator from individual changes to the distribution of the predictor variables. The standardized direct effects analysis identified higher risks in the Middle East for watershed-based pollution with population bleaching and in Australia for overfishing and destructive fishing with living coral. For thermal stress, colony bleaching and recently killed coral in the Indian Ocean were found to have the strongest direct associations along with living coral in the Middle East. For acidification threat, Australia had a relatively strong association with colony bleaching, and the Middle East had the strongest overall association with recently killed coral, although extrapolated spatial data were used for the acidification estimates. The Bayesian network approach helped to explore the relationships among existing databases used for policy development in coral reef management by examining the sensitivity of multiple indicators of reef condition to spatially distributed stress. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2021;17:165–187. Published 2020. This article is a US Government work and is in the public domain in the USA. KEY POINTS Coral reefs are high-valued ecosystems at risk from diverse sources of stressors. A screening-level risk assessment was conducted to examine the sensitivity of reef condition indicators to stressors. Comprehensive and cohesive global data sets on stressors and reef condition were integrated. Bayesian networks provided powerful tools for examining risks and spatial relationships.