An Atlas of Ecosystem Services for the Mid-Atlantic
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Towns and cities rely on natural ecosystems to provide clean air, water, green space, and other amenities for economic sustainability and quality of life, yet the relationship between ecosystems and these benefits are not always fully understood or considered in local decisions. EPA and its partners developed EnviroAtlas to help communities better manage these benefits (i.e., ecosystem services) for public good.
Local decision making often requires finer-scale data than are available at regional or national scales. In particular, high-resolution land use and land cover data have been beneficial in helping communities understand and quantify ecosystem services. At this scale, benefits provided from individual street trees, small bodies of water, and local greenspace can be quantified.
In collaboration with the USDA Forest Service and the University of Vermont and in coordination with efforts in the Chesapeake Bay, EPA will provide 1-m land cover for the entirety of the Mid-Atlantic Region (i.e., Delaware, District of Columbia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia and 7 tribal nations).
In addition to the land cover, over 30 metrics or measurements of ecosystem services derived from these data will be calculated and made available in EPA’s EnviroAtlas.