An integrative management protocol for connecting human priorities with ecosystem health in the Neponset River Estuary

Environmental scientists currently lack a common and unifying approach to equitably connect human activities with ecosystem health assessments. In order to enhance ecosystem health, our historical way of thinking about ecosystem monitoring needs to include a vital connection between the benefits of ecosystems and usersʹ well-being. To date much emphasis has been placed on environmental indicators (e.g. pH, salinity, dissolved oxygen), and not as much on socio-economic indicators (e.g. environmental clean-up costs, dollars lost from beach closures, number of public access points), ones that the public can understand more easily, and therefore value, and this bias toward environmental indicators may influence their decisions. Given that each ecosystem has unique physical characteristics and that monitoring objectives may vary, a common set of indicators is not necessarily suitable to all systems. Rather, a common protocol for indicator selection is more appropriate as it can be applied across political jurisdictions and a diverse set of ecosystems. To investigate the value of environmental and socio-economic indicators in coastal urban ecosystems, we have applied a methodology to identify management goals and to select indicators specific to an urban estuarine ecosystem, the Neponset River Estuary. In our study, we identified the stakeholder community who had significant management interests in order to specify and rank management goals. A panel of experts was convened to select and rank essential environmental and socio-economic indicators according to how well they measured success in achieving the largest number of more important management goals. A post-survey evaluation was administered among the stakeholder community and panel of experts in order to evaluate the protocolʹs applicability, effectiveness, and potential for implementation. This protocol resulted in a ranked set of environmental and socio-economic indicators that were equally assessed against a common set of management goals identified by the stakeholder community from the Neponset River Estuary.