Encourage the U.S. Geological Service to work with state water surveys to define high-risk flooding locations

Federal and state agencies should identify and address areas in which interagency cooperation is needed for sustaining ecosystems, natural resources productivity, and biodiversity; and they should allocate funds to ensure successful cooperation. Since many agencies operate under laws passed decades ago, they should help revise policy frameworks to address the needs of maintaining ecosystem processes and the resources that depend on them.

Conservation groups, private landowners, and local governments should identify actions and conditions that will advance their objectives and so are most important for their participation in ecosystem approaches to natural resources management.

Government agencies at all levels should help cooperative local efforts use ecosystem approaches to natural resources management by providing access to information, technical assistance, and funding and by removing policy and administrative obstacles to successful ecosystem approaches.

Federal and state agencies, in collaboration with localities, should develop indicators which can be used to monitor the status of ecosystems and natural resources productivity. They should encourage consensus goals and shared responsibilities for restoring damaged ecosystems.

Government agencies, conservation groups, and the private sector should expand the use of ecosystem approaches by using collaborative partnerships, developing compatible information databases, and carrying out appropriate incentives for responsible stewardship.

Federal, state, local, and tribal officials, in making decisions on public infrastructure projects, should weigh the economic benefits of the project against the full costs - incorporating both market and nonmarket costs, such as the net impacts on the ecological system. Existing projects should be reengineered to the extent possible to restore ecological functions and habitat using cost-benefit analyses, including both market and nonmarket values.