Science Wednesday: Ready for Takeoff Each week we write about
the science behind environmental protection. Previous Science
Wednesdays. While I’ve come to expect extra scrutiny when
flying, I was momentarily flustered when the pilot needed to
know my weight so he could compute his preflight plans. (155
pounds.) This morning I joined Eric Vance, EPA’s chief
photographer, EPA scientist Steve Klein, and U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service pilot V. Ray Bentley aboard a four-seat,
single-engine plane for a flight over the Willamette River
Valley in western Oregon. The landscape we flew over is the
subject of the Willamette Ecosystem Services Project (WESP), an
ambitious, large-scale, integrated, and multi-disciplinary
research effort to quantify the benefits people derive from the
environment. The study also focuses on exploring how human
activities stress those benefits. The overall goal is to provide
decision makers, stakeholders, and others across the Willamette
River Valley with rigorous scientific information they