About
On September 23–26, 2013, the FRMES project hosted a series of meetings in Washington, D.C. to share the research, concepts, methods, and draft reports that have been developed to date and to seek participants’ feedback on the direction of the project. Participants in the forum included federal agency staff currently grappling with or exploring the use of ecosystem services approaches in planning and program implementation, agency leaders tasked with developing policy direction for this ecosystem services work, as well as engaged academics and NGOs. These meetings were a follow up to a session hosted by NESP and A Community on Ecosystem Services (ACES) in May 2012, which discussed ways to advance ecosystem services in federal agency planning and decision-making. Topics covered at the September meetings included:
- An overview of the guidebook and FRMES process.
- Agency case examples, exploring the range of decision contexts within which agencies are considering and incorporating ecosystem services.
- Methods and metrics for conducting ecosystem services analyses across a variety of geographies, scales, and decision contexts.
The presentations given at the meetings, a list of meeting participants, and a two-page overview of the purpose of the meetings and the larger FRMES project are available for review.