Using an Ecosystems Services Framework to Inform Inland Fisheries Stakeholders

A recent report from the National Academies outlined an ecosystem services approach for assessing the impacts associated with broad ecosystem-level changes linked to human activity.  Using a similar ecosystem services framework to situate research, management, and outreach regarding inland fisheries can broaden the ways scientists, managers, policy makers, and public stakeholders conceive of inland fisheries ecosystems.  Such an approach would explicitly link the structure, function, and resilience of integrated social and ecological systems of inland fisheries.  Valuing inland fisheries under an ecosystem services approach would include considering the types of data needed for defining and characterizing the ecological production functions and for measuring and characterizing the value of the associated services. Challenges for implementing an ecosystem services framework to inform inland fisheries science and management include having appropriate biological, physical, social, and economic data to establish baselines, developing comprehensive systems models, and valuing the services appropriately, including consideration of tradeoffs involved in enhancing particular ecosystem services while potentially diminishing others.