Connecting Ecosystem Services to Human & Wildlife Resiliency

Natural landscapes and organisms serve our wellbeing in a great variety of ways: water purification, flood protection, aquifer recharge, protection from damage by storms and hurricanes, pollution reduction, carbon capture,... [ view full abstract ]

Natural landscapes and organisms serve our wellbeing in a great variety of ways: water purification, flood protection, aquifer recharge, protection from damage by storms and hurricanes, pollution reduction, carbon capture, recreation and wildlife enhancement. Identifying and understanding the services provided by local ecosystems can lead to cost-effective solutions to infrastructural and environmental problems while also creating enhanced wildlife habitat in urban/suburban areas. For the storm-prone 8-County Galveston Bay-Houston region, which encompasses 10 distinct ecoregions, there is a critical need to better connect the ecosystem services contained in the diverse assemblages of forests, prairies, bottomlands, wetlands, riparian waterways and shorelines to maximize the economic and social benefits to humans and wildlife which rely heavily on those services. These diverse ecosystems provide habitat to many key species including thousands of migratory birds and butterflies, native alligators, bats, deer, armadillos, and five endangered species. This presentation is based upon Houston Wilderness’ Ecosystem Services Primer which discusses ways for determining ecosystem service land-use analysis/values using 6 different study/valuation methods depending on the goals and/or impacts of a decision-maker. Local and regional Gulf of Mexico area case examples are discussed, where ES valuation options between gray and nature-based infrastructure were analyzed and the natural solutions were chosen and implemented. Case examples include corporate use of tertiary treatment wetlands, increased use of native filtering features in major waterways, levee-based wetlands implemented for hurricane and erosion protection and large-landscape prairie lands for water absorption and flood prevention. Each of these examples of nature-based infrastructure creation and enhancement also provide additional habitat for the native and migratory wildlife. In an expanding urban core such as the 8-County Galveston Bay-Houston Region, which is larger than the entire State of New Jersey in America. There is a critical need to: (1) Engage in more region-based studies on ecosystem services to better understand the value of natural benefits and the cost-effective infrastructure policies; (2) Compare the economic value of ecosystem services to other alternative approaches when making public policy decisions regarding land-use and infrastructure; and (3) More fully incorporate ecosystem services into infrastructure decisions. The presentation will also briefly discuss the eight-county Gulf-Houston Regional Conservation Plan and its recent kickoff of a “24% By 2040 Land-Use Strategy” to improve ecological and economic resiliency in the 8-County region through preservation/enhancement of 24% of undeveloped land in the 4.8 million acres of land cover by the year 2040 – an additive of 15% over the current 9% in preserved green space in this region (See maps and more information at www.GulfHoustonRCP.org, and see the Ecosystem Services Primer at http://houstonwilderness.org/ecosystem-services/.)