Ongoing NESP Activities

Landowner Surveys on Ecosystem Services

NESP has compiled a number of landowner surveys on ecosystem services. To see the list of surveys, click here.

Ecosystem Services Projects: Case Studies

In response to inquiries from the NESP steering group, the Nicholas Institute at Duke is currently collecting examples of regional and local Ecosystem Services projects and programs underway in the United States today. The goal of this project is to help further our understanding of where and why ecosystem service projects and programs are happening. The hope is that by examining these projects, we can find examples that governments, businesses, and conservation organizations can follow and learn from. For more information about the case studies, click here. 

Marine Ecosystem Services Partnership

The Marine Ecosystem Services Partnership (MESP) is a collaborative effort striving to serve policy makers, environmental managers, researchers, and marine ecosystem stakeholders.  Its goal is to better maintain and expand the existing library of economic valuations of marine ecosystems with marine policy needs.  MESP’s working partners are organizing an online effort to make literature and spatial data freely available through user communication and data entry. For more information about MESP, click here. 

Federal Exchanges on Ecosystem Services

NESP worked with the EPA to coordinate a series of multi-agency dialogues to exchange information on what the federal agencies are doing with regard to ecosystem services, in order to provide information for the broader NESP community and foster greater agency engagement with NESP. For more information on these exchanges, including presentations from past exchanges, click here.

Federal Inventory on Ecosystem Services

Connected with Federal Exchanges effort, EPA conducted an inventory of federal agency research and policy on ecosystem services that will identify the work currently being done as well as gaps and needs. The inventory has so far begun to examine the work on ecosystem services by the EPA, USDA, NOAA, and the Department of the Interior. Click here to download a working draft of the inventory. For more information about the inventory, or if you work in any of these departments and see revisions to be made, please contact Llael Cox at EPA, cox.llael@epa.gov.

Background on the development of NESP

NESP Kickoff Meeting

NESP held a kickoff meeting at the National Geographic Society in Washington, DC, on October 1-2, 2009. For more information on the discussion at this meeting, click here.

Survey Summary

Click here for information on a survey conducted on the scope, purpose, and structure of the National Ecosystem Services Partnership. 

Interactive Web Forum

At our web forum, includes a summary of the results from our survey on the partnership mission, objectives, and structure, early draft partnership documents for download, and discussion forums for each of the three working groups that helped develop the scope and purpose of the partnership.  The working groups covered: (1) partnership function and structure, (2) research and assessment needs, and (3) internal and external communication.