Spring 2024 Sustainability Fellow: Isabella Marmanidis

Partner: Apalachee Regional Planning Council

Project: How To: Conduct an Economic Valuation of the Apalachee River

Student: Isabella Marmanidis

Isabella Marmanidis, a first-year graduate student in Demography, worked as a Sustainability fellow during teh Spring 2024 semester. She partnered with Caroline Smith at The Apalachee Regional Planning Council (ARPC) to create a framework for an economic valuation of the Apalachicola River.

The Apalachicola River is an important resource for the residents of the Apalachee Region of Florida. These five counties depend on the river in many ways. However, this riverine ecosystem is complex and provides many services besides the ones that are used commercially. Conservationist groups have advocated for more protection of the river. In order to facilitate the communication of the river’s importance, they desire to ascribe a monetary value to it and the services it provides.

To protect an important natural resource, such as the Apalachicola River, it is important to help stakeholders understand the value of it. ARPC seeks to help stakeholders understand the economic value specifically of the Apalachicola River. Isabella created her report to communicate what an economic valuation is and how it is conducted. She then created a framework to help stakeholders understand how an economic valuation might be conducted for this specific ecosystem, as there are many different ways to conduct economic valuations.

This project connects to Isabella’s professional goals because she is interested in aiding the community’s development and improving the quality of life for all. 

“The project is very closely related to what I want my career to focus on as well as my personal research interests. I am interested in aiding community development and improving people’s quality of life.” Marmanidis said.

To understand the full value of the Apalachicola River to the Apalachee region, Isabella considered all sociological, economic, and ecological perspectives. She was then able to account for total Ecosystem Services (ES) derived from the ecosystem being studied and assign values to them. Her process involved conducting a literature review to address the question: How to ascribe a monetary value to an ecosystem. She then synthesized the data and created a framework of analysis that would best fit the Apalachicola River’s ecosystem to be accessible to all non-academic stakeholders.

It is not straightforward to determine the valuation of Ecosystem Services because it is subjective and an estimation because it is impossible to assign exact dollar amounts to them. Although it is not an exact science, Isabella reports in her conclusion that this is an important step to take in order to protect the Apalachicola River System. 
 

“This was a great program and I found a lot of value in this fellowship. I think this project is the first step in a long process of assigning an economic value to the Apalachicola River System.” said Isabella.

To learn more about Isabella's project, click here.

To learn more about the Sustainability Fellows program, visit sustainablecampus.fsu.edu/sustainability-fellows.