EPA letter of support
Dear Dr Costanza,
I am the National Program Director for the Ecological Research Program within the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Research and Development. My role is to develop and implement an Ecological Research Program that meets the needs of EPA’s Program Offices having responsibilities for managing air, water, waste, and toxic materials; for providing technical support to EPA’s Regional Offices; as well as tools and support for EPA’s clients in State and Tribal natural resource agencies, and in local communities.
I believe the common thread connecting these diverse client needs is the overarching need to conserve ecosystem services through proactive decision-making. As you know, the processes and functions of ecosystems – the very foundation of our health, livelihoods, and well-being – are now at risk world wide. Last year, I chose to set EPA’s Ecological Research Program on a new strategic course to focus solely on ecosystem services. Our Program goal is to transform the way decision-makers understand and respond to environmental issues by making clear the ways in which their management choices affect the type, quality, and magnitude of the services we receive from ecosystems – such as clean air, clean water, productive soils, and generation of food and fiber. We want to accomplish this at every level of governance, from local to national. We believe this will enable the Agency to better secure the long-term integrity and productivity of our ecological systems without necessarily imposing a greater regulatory burden.
I believe our success will depend in large measure on creating and disseminating a wholly new generation of modeling and decision-support tools that not only embody the best in ecological science, but also capture people’s attention so that they can explore options and make informed choices.
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This is no small task. EPA’s Ecological Research Program is staffed by 300 scientists and administrative support personnel located at ten different laboratories and centers across the U.S. For 2007, the Program budget is $65 million dollars per year to support in-house research; at present, I have essentially no discretionary funds to support academic research. However, I am seeking to partner with the best scientists I can find who work in this field. To that end, I initiated a Memorandum of Understanding with the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics, which I believe is working at the forefront of trans-disciplinary research. We share many common goals and believe that by working together we can advance this important field. One of our many opportunities for interaction is with the Gund’s Multi-scale Integrated Modeling of Ecosystems Services (MIMES) platform. For example, our Ecological Research Program is conducting four place-based studies for mapping and managing ecosystem services, principally through developing scenarios that examine the effect of human and natural stressors on ecosystem services and to portray alternative management options. These studies vary in scale from fairly localized coastal cities to the entire landscape of the U.S. Midwest. EPA’s ecologists will be using MIMES in these place-based studies. In addition, we will be providing our place-based study data to the Gund Institute for model building, as well as providing our staff time and resources to help develop, refine, and test the MIMES platform.
We believe MIMES could well be a focal point for collecting and analyzing EPA’s ecosystem service data and scenarios. We have even had discussions about potential long-term housing of MIMES platform in EPA’s Office of Environmental Information. Several of our Program’s best ecological modelers will be visiting the Gund Institute next month to learn more about MIMES. When fully developed, the product your Foundation is supporting could well be put to immediate use within the Agency.
EPA’s Ecological Research Program has already benefited from the cutting edge, trans-disciplinary research on ecosystem services underway at the Gund Institute. We look forward to continued and expanded collaboration with you and your research team.
Sincerely,
/s/ Rick A. Linthurst
Rick A. Linthurst, Ph.D.
National Program Director for Ecology