Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. A comprehensive inventory of ecosystem services across the entire Great Lakes basin is currently lacking and is needed to make informed management decisions.
A greater appreciation and understanding of ecosystem services, including both use and non-use services, may have avoided misguided resource management decisions in the past that have resulted in legacies inherited by future generations. Given the interest in ecosystem services and lack of a coherent approach to addressing this topic in the Great Lakes, a summit was convened involving 28 experts working on various aspects of ecosystem services in the Great Lakes. The invited attendees spanned a variety of social and natural sciences.
Several themes and recommendations emerged from the summit. There was general consensus that 1 a comprehensive inventory of ecosystem services throughout the Great Lakes is a desirable goal but would require considerable resources; 2 more spatially and temporally intensive data are needed to overcome our data gaps, but the arrangement of data networks and observatories must be well-coordinated; 3 trade-offs must be considered as part of ecosystem services analyses; and 4 formation of a Great Lakes Institute for Ecosystem Services, to provide a hub for research, meetings, and training is desirable.
Several challenges also emerged during the summit, which are discussed in the paper. Indeed, the Great Lakes provide society with a variety of ES cf. Austin et al. But even if we could place a value on these ES, adding those values to existing markets would still grossly underestimate the value of the Great Lakes because a many ES cannot be bought and sold in existing markets e.
The total value of the Great Lakes is, therefore, the sum of their current market value, plus the sum of all ES that are not currently accounted for in existing markets, plus the sum of all ES that cannot be, or perhaps should not be, converted to currency. Most experts would agree this value is likely to be exceedingly high. But figuring out how to quantify, aggregate, and compare all of these differing values, and perhaps more importantly, how much that value changes under any particular change or management scenario, are major challenges in our desire to make more informed decisions on how to manage the Laurentian Great Lakes.
