Environmental decision-making benefits from considering ecosystem services to ensure that aspects of the environment that people rely upon are fully evaluated. By focusing consideration of ecosystem services on final ecosystem goods and services (FEGS), the aspects of the environment directly enjoyed, used, or consumed by humans, these analyses can be more streamlined and effective. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has developed a set of tools to facilitate this consideration. The central feature of FEGS is that ecosystems are viewed through the diverse ways people directly benefit from them. The National Ecosystem Services Classification System (NESCS) Plus provides a framework for describing and identifying FEGS consistently. The standardization made available by NESCS Plus allows other tools and databases to interact using the NESCS Plus architecture and taxonomy, providing diverse insights for decision makers. Here, we examine the synergy of using the following four tools together: (1) the FEGS Scoping Tool; (2) the FEGS Metrics Report; (3) the EnviroAtlas; and (4) the EcoService Models Library. The FEGS Scoping Tool helps users determine what ecosystem services are relevant to a decision by harnessing FEGS understanding to enable communities to identify the relative importance of beneficiaries relevant to a decision and biophysical aspects of the environment of direct relevance to those beneficiaries. The FEGS Metrics Report can guide which metrics to monitor or model to represent those priority services. The EnviroAtlas, a powerful tool containing geospatial data and other resources related to ecosystem services, chemical and non-chemical stressors, and human health, and the EcoService Models Library, a database of ecosystem models, are two tools that support users in mapping and modeling endpoints relevant to priority services. While each of these tools is valuable on its own, together, they provide a powerful approach to easily incorporate and operationalize ecosystem services efforts into different parts of decision-making processes across different types of decisions. We illustrate how these integrated tools can be used together with a hypothetical example of a complex environmental management case study and the combined benefit of using the FEGS tools together.

Salt marshes provide a myriad of critical ecosystem services yet have been threatened by urban expansion, sea level rise, and the armoring of coastal property. This study uses a hedonic property price method to evaluate the effects of salt marshes on residential property values in the Eastern Shore of Virginia. Contrary to findings from the wetland literature, results show an insignificant relationship between proximity to salt marsh and residential property values. In contrast, results show a statistically significant increase in property values with increasing proportions of salt marsh within 250 to 500 meters of the parcel. Furthermore, the increase in value is found to be larger for proportions of preserved relative to non-preserved salt marsh in this proximity of the home. The findings of this study can contribute to understanding the spatial patterns for housing premiums stemming from salt marshes. The information can be used to guide coastal management agencies on how to conserve salt marshes in a way that promotes residential property values.