Natural Capital Theory and Practice of Mapping Ecosystem Services

About this book

In 2005, The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) provided the first global assessment of the world's ecosystems and ecosystem services. It concluded that recent trends in ecosystem change threatened human wellbeing due to declining ecosystem services. This bleak prophecy has galvanized conservation organizations, ecologists, and economists to work toward rigorous valuations of ecosystem services at a spatial scale and with a resolution that can inform public policy. The editors have assembled the world's leading scientists in the fields of conservation, policy analysis, and resource economics to provide the most intensive and best technical analyses of ecosystem services to date.

A key idea that guides the science is that the modelling and valuation approaches being developed should use data that are readily available around the world.

In addition, the book documents a toolbox of ecosystem service mapping, modeling, and valuation models that both The Nature Conservancy and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) are beginning to apply around the world as they transform conservation from a biodiversity only to a people and ecosystem services agenda. The book addresses land, freshwater, and marine systems at a variety of spatial scales and includes discussion of how to treat both climate change and cultural values when examining tradeoffs among ecosystem services.

Contents

Preface; SECTION ONE: A VISION FOR ECOSYSTEM SERVICES IN DECISIONS; 1. Mainstreaming Natural Capital into Decisions; 2. Interpreting and Estimating the Value of Ecosystem Services; 3. Assessing Multiple Ecosystem Services: An Integrated Tool for the Real World; SECTION TWO: MULTI-TIERED MODELS FOR ECOSYSTEM SERVICES; 4. Water Supply as an Ecosystem Service for Hydropower and Irrigation; 5. Valuing Land Cover Impact on Storm Peak Mitigation; 6. Retention of Nutrients and Sediment by Vegetation; 7. Terrestrial Carbon Sequestration and Storage; 8. The Provisioning Value of Timber and Non-Timber Forest Production; 9. Provisioning and Regulatory Ecosystem Service Values in Agriculture; 10. Crop Pollination; 11. Nature-Based Tourism and Recreation; 12. Cultural Services and Non-use Values; 13. Terrestrial Biodiversity; SECTION THREE: EXTENSIONS, APPLICATIONS, AND THE NEXT GENERATION OF ECOSYSTEM SERVICE ASSESSMENTS; 14. Putting Ecosystem Service Models to Work: Conservation, Management and Tradeoffs; 15. How Much Information Do Managers Need? The Sensitivity of Ecosystem Service Decisions to Model Complexity; 16. Poverty and the Distribution of Ecosystem Services; 17. Ecosystem Service Assessments for Marine Conservation; 18. Modeling the Impacts of Climate Change on Ecosystem Services; 19. Incorporating Ecosystem Services in Decisions; Index

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