The National Ecosystem Services Partnership (NESP) is led by Lydia Olander, director of the Ecosystem Services Program at the Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability. It engages a diverse and variable group of experts, including federal agency staff, academics, NGO leaders, and practitioners. NESP collaborates with these partners to research and create resources related to ecosystem services policy, monitoring, modeling, and mapping.
NESP is working on a number of different applications with federal and state agencies and other institutions on ecosystem services issues associated with nature-based solutions and natural and working lands.
NESP History
Guidebook Advisors
During the development of the NESP guidebook, NESP had an active advisory group:
- Jim Boyd, Resources for the Future
- Sally Collins, (Independent Consultant, formerly U.S. Forest Service)
- Olivia Ferriter, U.S. Department of Interior, Office of Policy Analysis
- Ellen Gilinsky, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Water
- Ted Maillett, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Federation
- Linwood Pendleton, Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability, Duke University
- David Saah, The University of San Francisco and Spatial Informatics Group
- Paul Sandifer, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
- Lynn Scarlett, The Nature Conservancy
- Carl Shapiro and Frank Casey, United States Geological Survey (USGS)
- Nikola Smith, U.S. Forest Service
- Melanie Stansbury, White House Office of Management and Budget
- Tony Tooke, U.S. Forest Service
- Dean Urban, Duke University
- Sara Vickerman, Defenders of Wildlife
- Lisa Wainger, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science
- Rob Winthrop and Rebecca Moore, U.S. Bureau of Land Management
In addition to these advisors, there are many other contributors 
from federal agencies, academic institutions, consulting firms, and NGOs.
Technical Working Groups
The FRMES project brought together an array of experts from academia, agencies, NGOs, and consulting firms to develop credible, comparable, and feasible methods for assessing the ecosystem services outcomes and tradeoffs across management options. The working groups also explored the current state of the data and modeling capacity needed to successfully conduct ecosystem services assessments.
Federal Exchanges on Ecosystem Services
In order to provide information for the broader NESP community and foster greater agency engagement, NESP worked with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to coordinate a series of multi-agency dialogues to exchange information on what the federal agencies are doing with regard to ecosystem services. See the presentations here.
Federal Inventory on Ecosystem Services
In connection with the Federal Exchanges effort, the 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.
Interactive Web Forum
Our archived web forum includes a summary of the results from our survey on the partnership mission, objectives, and structure. It also includes 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.
Survey Summary
Summary of survey information conducted on the scope, purpose, and structure of the National Ecosystem Services Partnership.
NESP Kickoff Meeting
NESP held a kickoff meeting at the National Geographic Society in Washington, D.C., October 1-2, 2009. See more information on the discussion at this meeting.