Ecosystem Services in Working Lands Practice and Policy of the U.S. Northeast: Successes, Challenges, and Opportunities for Producers and Extension

This webinar will discuss the new report – Ecosystem Services in Working Lands Practice and Policy of the U.S. Northeast.

Authored by Northeast Ecosystems Services Fellows Alicia F. Coleman, PhD, and Mario R. Machado, PhD, the report documents results from an assessment of over 1,300 ecosystem service provisioning programs and policies across the U.S. Northeast (Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and West Virginia, as well as in the District of Columbia.)

The assessment describes the programs’ institutional arrangements, their incentive structures, and the ecosystem services they provide. The analysis is tied to goals for the Northeast region developed by the Association of Northeast Extension Directors (NEED) and Northeastern Regional Association of State Agricultural Experiment Station Directors (NERA). The assessment is intended to build the capacity of Cooperative Extension and the Agricultural Research Station system’s work in supporting producers to deliver ecosystem services on working lands. In addition to providing analysis, a linked database captures a time-bound dataset that can be filtered by state.

Presenters

Mario Machado

Mario Machado is a postdoctoral researcher at the Gund Institute at the University of Vermont. His research focuses on regenerative agriculture, ecosystem services, and landscape multifunctionality with a regional focus on both the U.S. Northeast and the Caribbean. 

Alicia Coleman

Alicia Coleman is a postdoctoral research associate in the Applied Forest Ecology Lab at the University of Connecticut, after recently completing a doctoral degree from the Department of Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Areas of interest include urban/suburban forest prioritization and information technologies, the role and expectations of environmental justice communities in urban forest stewardship, and how housing tenure affects the structure and function of urban forests. Prior to doctoral studies, Alicia completed two years of AmeriCorps service at a regional land trust in eastern Massachusetts, where she focused on conservation planning and prioritization, landowner outreach, and collaborative projects with local land trusts and the Boston-area Metropolitan Area Planning Council.

The information in this posting was excerpted from the original written by Rose Hayden-Smith for Connect Extension. Read the post here.