U.S. ecologists and environmental scientists have long wanted to know the overall state and trends of the nation's ecosystems. But their repeated calls for a comprehensive suite of indicators have gone unanswered with the exception of a privately funded $9 million effort that is defunct. Today, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) asked the Obama Administration to make it happen by creating a quadrennial survey of ecosystem trends and making relevant federal data more accessible.
The H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment funded surveys in 2002 and 2008 that synthesized a vast amount of environmental data—such as biodiversity, pollution, and water supplies—from federal agencies and other sources. The Heinz Center tried to get the federal to continue the surveys, but all that came of it was a small pilot project. The PCAST report (pdf) suggests that a committee of the interagency National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) could coordinate future surveys—or outsource the job to the Heinz Center. Rosina Bierbaum of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, who co-chaired the PCAST working group that wrote the report, estimates that such surveys would cost between $5 million and $10 million apiece.
)
)
