Klain, S.C., Satterfield, T.A., Chan, K.M.A., 2014. What matters and why? Ecosystem services and their bundled qualities. Ecological Economics 107, 310–320. doi:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2014.09.003 URL
Naeem … Olmsted et al. 2015 Science: Science right when paying for services
Naeem, S., J. C. Ingram, A. Varga, T. Agardy, P. Barten, G. Bennett, E. Bloomgarden… P. Olmsted et al. 2015. Get the science right when paying for nature’s services. Science 347(6227):1206-1207. http://www.sciencemag.org/content/347/6227/1206.summary
Mach et al. 2014 OCM: Ecological Effects of an Invasive Seagrass
Mach ME, S Wyllie-Echeverria and KMA Chan. 2014. Ecological effect of a nonnative seagrass spreading in the Northeast Pacific: a review of Zostera japonica. Ocean and Coastal Management 102:375–382. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ocecoaman.2014.10.002
Mach & Chan 2014 F1000Research: Greenbacks for Greencrabs
Mach ME and KMA Chan. 2014. Trading greenbacks for green crabs: Evaluating the commercial shellfish harvest at risk to European green crab invasion. F1000Research. [v3; ref status: indexed, http://f1000research.com/articles/2-66/v3 ]
Policy Forum in Science with Paige
CHANS lab PhD Student Paige Olmsted was part of a global analysis of Payments for Ecosystem Services programs, which resulted in this piece in Science this week calling for improved understanding and inclusion of ecological principles and considerations in project design.
Nathan Bennett awarded Liber Ero Fellowship
Congratulations to Nathan Bennett on being awarded a Liber Ero Fellowsip, Canada’s most prestigious conservation science fellowship. Nathan’s project is called ‘Towards more coordinated and strategic networks: How effectively are marine conservation organizations producing management actions and outcomes in Canada’s Great Bear Sea?’ – you can read more about his project, Liber Ero and the 2015 fellows here.
Puget Sound Cultural and Recreational Links to Ecosystems
Kai, Mollie and Sarah worked with Ecotrust to report on cultural and recreational values tied to Puget Sound’s ecosystems. Their report includes an estimate of the economic value of coastal recreation to Puget Sound residents and how this value varies across space. They used interviews to better understand what sense of place and landscape-related aesthetic values mean to different residents. The report estimates public willingness to pay for environmental protection through agricultural riparian buffers and interviews with farmers regarding their attitudes towards the controversial issue in Snohomish County. The report can be downloaded here.
New publication predicting the cost of an invasive crab to Puget Sound, Washington
Non-native species pose a risk to native environments, but predicting the value at-risk to these species before invasion occurs is difficult and rare in current literature. Megan Mach and Kai Chan presented a method for describing the economic risk of an invasive species that encompasses the great variation possible in an invading species interactions with its new environment. The European green crab, Carcinus maenas, has already invaded the northeastern Pacific from Baja, Mexico to the outer coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia and is predicted to invade Puget Sound, Washington. This region is well known for its commercial shellfish harvest, at risk to the future invasion of green crab.
We evaluated the current harvested shellfish biomass and revenue in Puget Sound and assessed these values using a model to describe potential value-at-risk should green crab invade, incorporating a range of calorie intake rates and invasion densities. These data provided more accurate value-at-risk estimates by incorporating invasion uncertainty and may be useful for motivating prevention and management of species invasions.
Mach ME and KMA Chan. 2014. Trading green backs for green crabs: Evaluating the commercial shellfish harvest at risk to European green crab invasion. [v3; ref status: indexed, http://f1000r.es/4jf] F1000Research 2-66. URL