What are ecosystem services? Think about the ways nature already helps humans – bees pollinate many of the crops that we eat, trees soak up carbon we emit, and worms can be used to decompose our waste. These Ecosystem Services can be defined as the benefits that people receive from nature. Restored habitat along the Tidal Delaware River can provide valuable services, in addition to providing recreational opportunities for area residents and homes for wildlife.

This is an emerging field of study that seeks to quantify the benefits that the earth’s natural systems provide to human kind. For example, wetlands provide a variety of essential services that we would otherwise have to provide through construction (“grey infrastructure”). These include (1) absorbing and slowing water (and thereby reducing flooding), (2) filtering water (and thereby making it cleaner for human uses), and (3) sequestering carbon dioxide (and thereby reducing greenhouse gas concentrations contributing to climate change). The goal of an ecosystem service assessment is to quantify the economic value of these benefits in terms of dollars (e.g. drinking water treatment costs offset by wetlands) or biophysical metrics (e.g. pollutant reductions gained by wetlands).

Assisted by a DuPont Clear into the Future grant award, PEC currently leads an Urban Waterfront workgroup effort to identify, prioritize, and subsequently quantify ecosystem services associated with a restored urban waterfront. A major goal of this effort is to inform decision making on the best locations along the urban river front to restore habitat. To date, the workgroup has reviewed the ecosystem services literature and identified services deemed most relevant and important for urban waterfront restoration (see below list). The group is currently defining data needs and methods that can be used to quantify one or more of these services:

• Recreation
• Fish and wildlife habitat
• Health benefits
• Water quality
• Stormwater Management
• Carbon sequestration
• Shoreline stabilization

The workgroup has identified similar urban and regional ecosystem service assessments that inform this work, including:

The Potential Economic, Environmental, Health, and Quality of Life Benefits of a Fully Connected Waterfront Greenway in Philadelphia (September 2010), For Citizen’s for Pennsylvania’s Future (PennFuture) by Econsult Corporation.

The Economic Value of Protected Open Space in Southeastern Pennsylvania (November 2010), GreenSpace Alliance and Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission.

PEC would like to acknowledge DuPont Clear into the Future for sponsoring and funding a portion of this work.