Ecologists benefit from interactions with economists in at least two distinct ways: 1) ecology has historically borrowed and adapted analytical modeling approaches from economics, and 2) many of the environmental issue that ecologists work with are explicitly influenced by economics.

By bringing economists to work with ecologists and environmental scientists at NCEAS, we gain both analytical expertise and knowledge of the economic factors that play an important role in conservation and management decisions.

Together ecologists and economists collaborate to better understand human interactions with ecosystems.  Natural environments provide important services to humans that may be lost when those systems are degraded. For example, coastal wetlands provide critical habitat for animals that are harvested, reduce shoreline erosion, filter water before it enters the ocean, and can buffer inland communities against storm surge.  Ecologists and economists work together to identify and place values on such services for society. Where multiple management and conservation actions are being considered, economic expertise helps to identify the approach that achieves desired conservation and management goals while minimizing societal costs.  Alternatively, economics provides a decision-making framework within which to maximize conservation benefits of an environmental policy given a fixed allocation of resources.

To catalyze greater collaboration among ecologists and economists, interdisciplinary teams of NCEAS researchers have engaged both research communities, publishing in the economics literature (1) and in the ecological literature (2). The fruits of such innovative cross-pollination are increasingly evident.  For example:

• Large-scale management plans are evaluated in terms of both ecological and economic costs and benefits (3-5)
• Satellite imagery has been used to make large-scale estimates of the relative contributions of marketed products and ecosystem services to national economies, globally (6)
• A model has been developed to describe how declines of pollinators may affect markets for crops that require insect pollination (7)
• Alternative methods for extracting resources while minimizing environmental impacts can be evaluated with simultaneous consideration of ecological and economic factors (8)
• The value of a single species performing an ecosystem service, such as pest control in agriculture (9), can be calculated and compared to alternative methods of performing that service
• Applying ecosystem-based management in the oceans presents new challenges in ecology, economics and governance as the spatial scale at which we govern systems frequently does not match the spatial scale that is relevant to the organisms we manage (10)  

This discourse between ecologists and economists has been invigorating for researchers at a fundamental level, as they break new ground in their respective fields, and provides management and conservation professionals with critical tools for decision making.

1. Resource and Energy Economics 26 (Jun, 2004).
2. P. R. Armsworth et al., Trends in Ecology & Evolution 16, 229 (May, 2001).
3. S. Farber et al., Bioscience 56, 121 (Feb, 2006).
4. F. W. Davis et al., Ecology and Society 11 (Jun, 2006).
5. A. S. P. Pfaff et al., Ecological Economics 35, 203 (Nov, 2000).
6. P. C. Sutton et al., Ecological Economics 41, 509 (Jun, 2002).
7. P. G. Kevan et al., Conservation Ecology 5, art. no. (Jun, 2001).
8. J. F. Kitchell et al., Bulletin of Marine Science 74, 607 (May, 2004).
9. C. J. Cleveland et al., Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 5, 238 (Jun, 2006).
10. L. B. Crowder et al., Science 313, 617 (August 4, 2006, 2006).