Proceedings of the Gulf of Mexico Ecosystem Services Workshop

Yoskowitz, D., Santos, C., Allee, B., Carollo, C., Henderson, J., Jordan, S., & Ritchie, J. B. (2010). Proceedings of the Gulf of Mexico Ecosystem Services Workshop. Bay St. Louis, MS: Harte Research Insitute for Gulf of Mexico Studies,Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi.

On June 16-18th, 2010, the first Gulf wide Ecosystem Services Workshop was held in Bay St. Louis, MS. There were a total of 31 attendees, representing different areas such as ecology, biology, economics, geology, oceanography, and fisheries. Federal and state agencies, NGOs, the private sector, and academic institutions were represented. The goal of this workshop was to gain consensus on approaches, definition, and identification of ecosystem services in the Gulf of Mexico (GoM) and the steps to be taken toward the initiation of a case study. Some of the outcomes of this workshop were a common definition of ecosystem services in the GoM, an inventory of different ecosystems in the Gulf and the services they provide, and lastly criteria to select a pilot project to implement ecosystem services valuation in one of the U.S. Gulf States. The workshop was supported by NOAA Gulf Coast Services Center and NOAA’s Gulf of Mexico Regional Collaboration Team.