The State of the Nation’s Ecosystems initiates a series of periodic reports on the lands, waters, and living resources of the United States.

The report has been prepared for decision makers, opinion leaders, and informed citizens who seek an authoritative, comprehensive, and succinct overview of what the nation most needs to know about the changing state of its ecosystems.

The report has been prepared by experts from government, the private sector, environmental organizations, and academia through an intense five-year collaborative process. This involved hundreds of contributors and reviewers from all four sectors, publication of a prototype to solicit public commentary, and feedback on several drafts from a wide array of interested groups and experts.

The report emerging from this process presents a unique system of indicators that is simultaneously relevant to contemporary policy and decision making, balanced and unbiased in what it chooses to report on, and scientifically credible in the data it presents. We hope and believe that The State of the Nation’s Ecosystems and its planned successors will help to strengthen the empirical foundation for American environmental policymaking in the same way that the emergence of solid data about changes in GDP, employment, and inflation helped to strengthen the country’s economic policymaking in the last half-century.

The completion of this first report on The State of the Nation’s Ecosystems shows that a sustained, multisector collaborative approach to environmental reporting can make inroads on many of the problems of parochialism, perceived bias, and variable quality that have plagued previous efforts. We believe that the articulation of a coherent framework for reporting, a clear-eyed assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of available data, and the identification of data gaps are important advances. Its strengths notwithstanding, however, we are well aware that this report is at best an early step on a long path toward realization of the comprehensive, mature, and well-grounded system of ecosystem and environmental reporting that the nation deserves.

A number of specific steps are needed over the next five years in preparation for a second full edition of The State of the Nation’s Ecosystems. First, the Heinz Center will actively solicit feedback on this report, continuing the practice—begun with the 1999 prototype report—of using each completed step as the basis for future improvements. Second, we believe that a multisector effort is needed to address key gaps identified in this report. For almost half the indicators identified in this report as necessary to characterize the state of the nation’s ecosystems, gaps in scientific understanding, operational monitoring, or data coordination have made it impossible to produce useful national data. Finally, we hope to foster a broad and inclusive dialogue on where and how a permanent effort to produce a continuing series of high-quality reports on the state of the nation’s ecosystems could best be housed, administered, and funded. We pledge our own commitment to working with government at all levels, the private sector, environmental groups, and academia in ensuring that these issues are addressed in a timely and serious manner.

It is our pleasure to thank the extraordinary group of individuals and organizations that have worked together to realize this first report on The State of the Nation’s Ecosystems.

The foundations of this effort are the countless professionals and supporting organizations involved in the exacting work of ecosystem monitoring. Without them, there would simply be nothing of quality to report. The sources of data drawn on in this report—sources from government, the private sector, environmental groups, and academia—are cited on the individual indicator pages and in the technical notes.