Ecosystem Services – Benefits and Considerations for the Cleanup of Contaminated Mine Sites

One way to characterize and improve the benefits of environmental cleanups is to use concepts of "ecosystem services", those benefits that nature contributes to human health and well-being. Join us to learn about how we may consider ecosystem services in cleanup of contaminated site cleanups. This two-part webinar will first introduce ecosystem services concepts from a contaminate site cleanup perspective and discuss ongoing efforts at EPA to connect ecosystem services concepts, tools, and frameworks to different aspects of cleanups. The second part will introduce examples of mine cleanups that have elements relevant to ecosystem services with an overall goal to tee up innovative ideas for characterizing and improving the benefits of environmental cleanups. Overall, an understanding of ecosystem services concepts can be helpful to ecological risk assessors and cleanup project managers working on sites looking for enhancing environmental benefits in their projects.

Impact/Purpose

This is a presentation to the Clu-In (Contaminated Site Clean-up Information) Forum's seminar series to be held on September 21, 2021, 1:00PM-3:00PM EDT (17:00-19:00 GMT). This presentation is 1/2 of the session - shown by the yellow highlights below - and is designed to introduce concepts of ecosystem services to contaminated site practitioners. One way to characterize and improve the benefits of environmental cleanups is to use concepts of "ecosystem services", those benefits that nature contributes to human health and well-being. Join us to learn about how we may consider ecosystem services in cleanup of contaminated site cleanups. This two-part webinar will first introduce ecosystem services concepts from a contaminate site cleanup perspective and discuss ongoing efforts at EPA to connect ecosystem services concepts, tools, and frameworks to different aspects of cleanups. The second part will introduce examples of mine cleanups that have elements relevant to ecosystem services with an overall goal to tee up innovative ideas for characterizing and improving the benefits of environmental cleanups. Overall, an understanding of ecosystem services concepts can be helpful to ecological risk assessors and cleanup project managers working on sites looking for enhancing environmental benefits in their projects. For more information and to register, please visit https://clu-in.org/live.

Citation

Harwell, M. Ecosystem Services – Benefits and Considerations for the Cleanup of Contaminated Mine Sites. Clu-In (Contaminated Site Clean-up Information) Forum's seminar series, NA, September 21, 2021.