Does Life Satisfaction Vary with Time and Income? Investigating the Relationship Among Free Time, Income, and Life Satisfaction.

Time and income are distinct and critical resources needed in the pursuit of happiness (life satisfaction). Income can be used to purchase market goods and services, and time can be used to spend time with friends and family, rest and sleep, and other activities. Yet little research has examined how different combinations of time and income affect life satisfaction, and if more of both is positively associated with greater levels of life satisfaction. We investigate whether life satisfaction significantly varies with time and income using data from the American Time Use Survey and its well-being module, which is a nationally representative sample of over 5000 US respondents over the age of 15. We plot a three-dimensional space exploring the relationship among time, income, and life satisfaction, finding people with similar incomes with less free time have lower levels of life satisfaction. We also identify different four subpopulations, three of which have low well-being along time and income, and one with high well-being along time and income. These sub-groups significantly differ along key characteristics. Respondents with less free time and low income-the doubly poor-are more likely to be female, less educated, and have more than two kids and young children. Those with low income but lots of time, in comparison, are more likely to be black, unemployed, and have some physical or cognitive difficult. We conclude that time provides unique insights into human well-being that income alone cannot capture and should be further incorporated into research and policy on life satisfaction.

Prioritizing actions: spatial action maps for conservation.

Spatial prioritization is a critical step in conservation planning, a process designed to ensure that limited resources are applied in ways that deliver the highest possible returns for biodiversity and human wellbeing. In practice, many spatial prioritizations fall short of their potential by focusing on places rather than actions, and by using data of snapshots of assets or threats rather than estimated impacts. We introduce spatial action mapping as an approach that overcomes these shortfalls. This approach produces a spatially explicit view of where and how much a given conservation action is likely to contribute to achieving stated conservation goals. Through seven case examples, we demonstrate simple to complex versions of how this method can be applied across local to global scales to inform decisions about a wide range of conservation actions and benefits. Spatial action mapping can support major improvements in efficient use of conservation resources and will reach its full potential as the quality of environmental, social, and economic datasets converge and conservation impact evaluations improve.

Turning off the tap: Common domestic water conservation actions insufficient to alleviate drought in the United States of America.

Climate change is exacerbating drought and water stress in several global regions, including some parts of the United States. During times of drought in the U.S., municipal governments, private water suppliers and non-profits commonly deploy advocacy campaigns and incentive programs targeting reductions in residential water use through actions including: repairing leaks, shutting off taps, and installing new water-saving appliances. We asked whether these campaigns have the potential to alleviate water stress during drought at the county scale by estimating the potential impact of full adoption of such actions. In 2010, we show that the maximum potential use reductions from these residential actions may only alleviate water stress in 6% (174) of U.S. counties. The potential impact of domestic programs is limited by the relative dominance of agriculture water withdrawal, the primary water user in 50% of U.S. counties. While residential actions do achieve some water demand savings, they are not sufficient to alter water stress in the majority of the continental U.S. We recommend redirecting advocacy efforts and incentives to individual behaviors that can influence agricultural water use.

Five financial incentives to revive the Gulf of Mexico dead zone and Mississippi basin soils.

A central challenge in the Mississippi River Basin is how to continue to support profitable agricultural production, provide water supply, flood control, transportation, and other benefits, while reducing the current burden of environmental degradation. Several practices have been shown to reduce nutrient runoff and water pollution, and improve soil fertility, while often yielding profits for farmers. Yet many of these beneficial practices remain underutilized. Participants at an expert workshop identified five candidate financial mechanisms that could increase adoption of these beneficial farming practices in four focal Midwest states in the next five years: crop insurance premium subsidies, transformation of the private service provider business model, expansion and targeting of 2019 U.S. Farm Bill funding, development of new state funds, and direction of post-disaster federal funds towards habitat restoration, particularly in floodplains. This study provides rough approximations of the change in nutrient runoff and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the annualized costs, and the nutrient and GHG reductions per dollar likely to result from deployment of each financial mechanism. Based upon these approximations, the adoption of these programs could reduce annual nitrate flows at the outlet of the Ohio and Upper Mississippi River Basins by 25%, surpassing the intermediate 2025 target (20% reduction) and achieving more than half of the long-term target (45% reduction) set by the Mississippi River/Gulf of Mexico Hypoxia Task Force. These approximations also illustrate that these five mechanisms could provide the same GHG reductions (∼43 Tg CO2e yr-1) as taking 12 coal-fired energy plants offline. The total cost of these five financial mechanisms is estimated at ∼$2.6 billion, or 64 g of nitrates and ∼17 kg of CO2e per dollar spent. These proposed solutions all face political, financial, cultural or institutional challenges, but with industry support, creative political action, and continued communication of both private and public benefits, they can create meaningful nutrient reductions and rebuild soils by 2022.

Are California Elementary School Test Scores More Strongly Associated With Urban Trees Than Poverty?

Unprecedented rates of urbanization are changing our understanding of the ways in which children build connections to the natural world, including the importance of educational settings in affecting this relationship. In addition to influencing human-nature connection, greenspace around school grounds has been associated with benefits to students' cognitive function. Questions remain regarding the size of this benefit relative to other factors, and which features of greenspace are responsible for these effects. We conducted a large-scale correlative study subsampling elementary schools (n = 495) in ecologically, socially and economically diverse California. After controlling for common educational determinants (e.g., socio-economic status, race/ethnicity, student teacher ratio, and gender ratio) we found a significant, positive association between test scores and tree and shrub cover within 750 and 1000 m of urban schools. Tree and shrub cover was not associated with test scores in rural schools or five buffers closer to urban schools (10, 50, 100, 300, and 500 m). Two other greenspace variables (NDVI and agricultural area) were not associated with test performance at any of the analyzed buffer distances for rural or urban schools. Minority representation had the largest effect size on standardized test scores (8.1% difference in scores with 2SD difference in variable), followed by tree and shrub cover around urban schools, which had a large effect size (2.9-3.0% at 750 and 1000 m) with variance from minority representation and socioeconomic status (effect size 2.4%) included. Within our urban sample, average tree-cover schools performed 4.2% (3.9-4.4, and 95% CI) better in terms of standardized test scores than low tree-cover urban schools. Our findings support the conclusion that neighborhood-scale (750-1000 m) urban tree and shrub cover is associated with school performance, and indicate that this element of greenspace may be an important factor to consider when studying the cognitive impacts of the learning environment. These results support the design of experimental tests of tree planting interventions for educational benefits.

Evidence-Based Causal Chains for Linking Health, Development, and Conservation Actions.

Sustainability challenges for nature and people are complex and interconnected, such that effective solutions require approaches and a common theory of change that bridge disparate disciplines and sectors. Causal chains offer promising approaches to achieving an integrated understanding of how actions affect ecosystems, the goods and services they provide, and ultimately, human well-being. Although causal chains and their variants are common tools across disciplines, their use remains highly inconsistent, limiting their ability to support and create a shared evidence base for joint actions. In this article, we present the foundational concepts and guidance of causal chains linking disciplines and sectors that do not often intersect to elucidate the effects of actions on ecosystems and society. We further discuss considerations for establishing and implementing causal chains, including nonlinearity, trade-offs and synergies, heterogeneity, scale, and confounding factors. Finally, we highlight the science, practice, and policy implications of causal chains to address real-world linked human-nature challenges.

Cross-discipline evidence principles for sustainability policy.

Evidence-based approaches to sustainability challenges must draw on knowledge from the environment, development and health communities. To be practicable, this requires an approach to evidence that is broader and less hierarchical than the standards often applied within disciplines.

Spatial planning for a green economy: National-level hydrologic ecosystem services priority areas for Gabon.

Rapidly developing countries contain both the bulk of intact natural areas and biodiversity, and the greatest untapped natural resource stocks, placing them at the forefront of "green" economic development opportunities. However, most lack scientific tools to create development plans that account for biodiversity and ecosystem services, diminishing the real potential to be sustainable. Existing methods focus on biodiversity and carbon priority areas across large geographies (e.g., countries, states/provinces), leaving out essential services associated with water supplies, among others. These hydrologic ecosystem services (HES) are especially absent from methods applied at large geographies and in data-limited contexts. Here, we present a novel, spatially explicit, and relatively simple methodology to identify countrywide HES priority areas. We applied our methodology to the Gabonese Republic, a country undergoing a major economic transformation under a governmental commitment to balance conservation and development goals. We present the first national-scale maps of HES priority areas across Gabon for erosion control, nutrient retention, and groundwater recharge. Priority sub-watersheds covered 44% of the country's extent. Only 3% of the country was identified as a priority area for all HES simultaneously, highlighting the need to conserve different areas for each different hydrologic service. While spatial tradeoffs occur amongst HES, we identified synergies with two other conservation values, given that 66% of HES priority areas intersect regions of above average area-weighted (by sub-watersheds) total forest carbon stocks and 38% intersect with terrestrial national parks. Considering implications for development, we identified HES priority areas overlapping current or proposed major roads, forestry concessions, and active mining concessions, highlighting the need for proactive planning for avoidance areas and compensatory offsets to mitigate potential conflicts. Collectively, our results provide insight into strategies to protect HES as part of Gabon's development strategy, while providing a replicable methodology for application to new scales, geographies, and policy contexts.

Setting the bar: Standards for ecosystem services.

Progress in ecosystem service science has been rapid, and there is now a healthy appetite among key public and private sector decision makers for this science. However, changing policy and management is a long-term project, one that raises a number of specific practical challenges. One impediment to broad adoption of ecosystem service information is the lack of standards that define terminology, acceptable data and methods, and reporting requirements. Ecosystem service standards should be tailored to specific use contexts, such as national income and wealth accounts, corporate sustainability reporting, land-use planning, and environmental impact assessments. Many standard-setting organizations already exist, and the research community will make the most headway toward rapid uptake of ecosystem service science by working directly with these organizations. Progress has been made in aligning with existing organizations in areas such as product certification and sustainability reporting, but a major challenge remains in mainstreaming ecosystem service information into core public and private use contexts, such as agricultural and energy subsidy design, national income accounts, and corporate accounts.

Natural capital and ecosystem services informing decisions: From promise to practice.

The central challenge of the 21st century is to develop economic, social, and governance systems capable of ending poverty and achieving sustainable levels of population and consumption while securing the life-support systems underpinning current and future human well-being. Essential to meeting this challenge is the incorporation of natural capital and the ecosystem services it provides into decision-making. We explore progress and crucial gaps at this frontier, reflecting upon the 10 y since the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. We focus on three key dimensions of progress and ongoing challenges: raising awareness of the interdependence of ecosystems and human well-being, advancing the fundamental interdisciplinary science of ecosystem services, and implementing this science in decisions to restore natural capital and use it sustainably. Awareness of human dependence on nature is at an all-time high, the science of ecosystem services is rapidly advancing, and talk of natural capital is now common from governments to corporate boardrooms. However, successful implementation is still in early stages. We explore why ecosystem service information has yet to fundamentally change decision-making and suggest a path forward that emphasizes: (i) developing solid evidence linking decisions to impacts on natural capital and ecosystem services, and then to human well-being; (ii) working closely with leaders in government, business, and civil society to develop the knowledge, tools, and practices necessary to integrate natural capital and ecosystem services into everyday decision-making; and (iii) reforming institutions to change policy and practices to better align private short-term goals with societal long-term goals.

Catching the right wave: evaluating wave energy resources and potential compatibility with existing marine and coastal uses.

Many hope that ocean waves will be a source for clean, safe, reliable and affordable energy, yet wave energy conversion facilities may affect marine ecosystems through a variety of mechanisms, including competition with other human uses. We developed a decision-support tool to assist siting wave energy facilities, which allows the user to balance the need for profitability of the facilities with the need to minimize conflicts with other ocean uses. Our wave energy model quantifies harvestable wave energy and evaluates the net present value (NPV) of a wave energy facility based on a capital investment analysis. The model has a flexible framework and can be easily applied to wave energy projects at local, regional, and global scales. We applied the model and compatibility analysis on the west coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada to provide information for ongoing marine spatial planning, including potential wave energy projects. In particular, we conducted a spatial overlap analysis with a variety of existing uses and ecological characteristics, and a quantitative compatibility analysis with commercial fisheries data. We found that wave power and harvestable wave energy gradually increase offshore as wave conditions intensify. However, areas with high economic potential for wave energy facilities were closer to cable landing points because of the cost of bringing energy ashore and thus in nearshore areas that support a number of different human uses. We show that the maximum combined economic benefit from wave energy and other uses is likely to be realized if wave energy facilities are sited in areas that maximize wave energy NPV and minimize conflict with existing ocean uses. Our tools will help decision-makers explore alternative locations for wave energy facilities by mapping expected wave energy NPV and helping to identify sites that provide maximal returns yet avoid spatial competition with existing ocean uses.

A critical analysis of ecosystem services as a tool in conservation projects: the possible perils, the promises,and the partnerships.

Human modifications of the environment are growing in number and geographic extent, expanding to all of the Earth's surfaces and affecting the vast majority of the Earth's natural resources. Increases in demand for resources, growing levels of poverty, and more extensive urbanization, among other changes, lead to a need to move beyond parks and classic conservation approaches to incorporate humans and working landscapes more directly in conservation efforts. One approach to do this is to focus on ecosystem services, the benefits ecosystems provide to humans. Here conservation projects that focus only on biodiversity are analytically compared with those that include ecosystem-service goals to dispel myths and explore promises. Projects conducted by The Nature Conservancy, the world's largest conservation organization, are used, and it is demonstrated that not only do ecosystem-service approaches engage new landscapes, stakeholders, and funding sources, but that they do so without neglecting traditional biodiversity goals and the traditional approaches of protection and preservation. Seven case studies that uniquely create a broker-type structure to determine how to distribute money for the provision of particular services to the satisfaction of a wide range of stakeholder interests are focused on. It is found that all use local, independent leadership to initiate partnership formation, which then leads to the creation of a separate institutional entity that has legal rights to determine fund provision. The activities encouraged by these entities, and which therefore appear to satisfy a wide array of interests, are supporting education, rewarding best management practice, creating jobs, and monitoring outcomes.

Mapping and valuing ecosystem services as an approach for conservation and natural-resource management.

Current approaches to conservation and natural-resource management often focus on single objectives, resulting in many unintended consequences. These outcomes often affect society through unaccounted-for ecosystem services. A major challenge in moving to a more ecosystem-based approach to management that would avoid such societal damages is the creation of practical tools that bring a scientifically sound, production function-based approach to natural-resource decision making. A new set of computer-based models is presented, the Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs tool (InVEST) that has been designed to inform such decisions. Several of the key features of these models are discussed, including the ability to visualize relationships among multiple ecosystem services and biodiversity, the ability to focus on ecosystem services rather than biophysical processes, the ability to project service levels and values in space, sensitivity to manager-designed scenarios, and flexibility to deal with data and knowledge limitations. Sample outputs of InVEST are shown for two case applications; the Willamette Basin in Oregon and the Amazon Basin. Future challenges relating to the incorporation of social data, the projection of social distributional effects, and the design of effective policy mechanisms are discussed.

Field evidence that ecosystem service projects support biodiversity and diversify options.

Ecosystem service approaches to conservation are being championed as a new strategy for conservation, under the hypothesis that they will broaden and deepen support for biodiversity protection. Where traditional approaches focus on setting aside land by purchasing property rights, ecosystem service approaches aim to engage a much wider range of places, people, policies, and financial resources in conservation. This is particularly important given projected intensification of human impacts, with rapid growth in population size and individual aspirations. Here we use field research on 34 ecosystem service (ES) projects and 26 traditional biodiversity (BD) projects from the Western Hemisphere to test whether ecosystem service approaches show signs of realizing their putative potential. We find that the ES projects attract on average more than four times as much funding through greater corporate sponsorship and use of a wider variety of finance tools than BD projects. ES projects are also more likely to encompass working landscapes and the people in them. We also show that, despite previous concern, ES projects not only expand opportunities for conservation, but they are no less likely than BD projects to include or create protected areas. Moreover, they do not draw down limited financial resources for conservation but rather engage a more diverse set of funders. We also found, however, that monitoring of conservation outcomes in both cases is so infrequent that it is impossible to assess the effectiveness of either ES or BD approaches.

An ecosystem services framework to support both practical conservation and economic development.

The core idea of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment is that the human condition is tightly linked to environmental condition. This assertion suggests that conservation and development projects should be able to achieve both ecological and social progress without detracting from their primary objectives. Whereas "win-win" projects that achieve both conservation and economic gains are a commendable goal, they are not easy to attain. An analysis of World Bank projects with objectives of alleviating poverty and protecting biodiversity revealed that only 16% made major progress on both objectives. Here, we provide a framework for anticipating win-win, lose-lose, and win-lose outcomes as a result of how people manage their ecosystem services. This framework emerges from detailed explorations of several case studies in which biodiversity conservation and economic development coincide and cases in which there is joint failure. We emphasize that scientific advances around ecosystem service production functions, tradeoffs among multiple ecosystem services, and the design of appropriate monitoring programs are necessary for the implementation of conservation and development projects that will successfully advance both environmental and social goals. The potentially bright future of jointly advancing ecosystem services, conservation, and human well-being will be jeopardized unless a global monitoring effort is launched that uses the many ongoing projects as a grand experiment.

Linking terrestrial and marine conservation planning and threats analysis.

The existence of the Gulf of Mexico dead zone makes it clear that marine ecosystems can be damaged by terrestrial inputs. Marine and terrestrial conservation planning need to be aligned in an explicit fashion to fully represent threats to marine systems. To integrate conservation planning for terrestrial and marine systems, we used a novel threats assessment that included 5 cross-system threats in a site-prioritization exercise for the Pacific Northwest coast ecoregion (U.S.A.). Cross-system threats are actions or features in one ecological realm that have effects on species in another realm. We considered bulkheads and other forms of shoreline hardening threats to terrestrial systems and roads, logging, agriculture, and urban areas threats to marine systems. We used 2 proxies of freshwater influence on marine environments, validated against a mechanistic model and field observations, to propagate land-based threats into marine sites. We evaluated the influence of cross-system threats on conservation priorities by comparing MARXAN outputs for 3 scenarios that identified terrestrial and marine priorities simultaneously: (1) no threats, (2) single-system threats, and (3) single- and cross-system threats. Including cross-system threats changed the threat landscape dramatically. As a result the best plan that included only single-system threats identified 323 sites (161,500 ha) at risk from cross-system threats. Including these threats changed the location of best sites. By comparing the best and sum solutions of the single- and cross-system scenarios, we identified areas ideal for preservation or restoration through integrated management. Our findings lend quantitative support to the call for explicitly integrated decision making and management action in terrestrial and marine ecosystems.

Shaping global environmental decisions using socio-ecological models.

One of the most ambitious ecological studies of the past few decades was the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA), which examined the consequences of ecosystem change for human well-being. The MA developed global ecological scenarios as a process to inform policy options, despite enormous uncertainties. These scenarios were based on an interlocking suite of models that forecast the future. Following the recent completion and publication of the MA, there is now movement towards making the value of ecosystem services an integral part of key policy decisions. Here, we review the MA approach and suggest areas where immediate progress can be made to increase the likelihood that decision-makers will embrace the vision of assessments such as the MA.