Economic Analysis for Ecosystem Service Assessments

Economic analysis for ecosystem service assessments

Incorporating plant functional diversity effects in ecosystem service assessments.

Global environmental change affects the sustained provision of a wide set of ecosystem services. Although the delivery of ecosystem services is strongly affected by abiotic drivers and direct land use effects, it is also modulated by the functional diversity of biological communities (the value, range, and relative abundance of functional traits in a given ecosystem). The focus of this article ...

Mobilising knowledge for ecosystem assessments

In assessments such as the southern African Millennium Assessment or SAfMA, knowledge relevant to an issue of societal importance is collected, evaluated, organised and communicated in order to support decision-making. Formal assessments are, by nature, part of the ‘scientific’ world view. In order to retain their credibility and power, they have to conform to the norms of evidence, logical inf...

Mobilizing Knowledge for Integrated Ecosystem Assessments

1999). Researchers, natural resource managers, and environmental practitioners face a number of challenges, including how to deal with information “fuzziness,” how to reconcile seemingly contradictory data, how to smooth over geographic and spatial variability or “lumpiness,” and how to consolidate information gathered at different spatial scales. One proposed solution has been to amalgamate di...

Adapting Human Well-being Frameworks for Ecosystem Service Assessments across Diverse Landscapes

There is broad support for the notion that ecosystem services influence human well-being (HWB), however, the means to measure such an effect are elusive. Measures of HWB are commonly used within the fields of psychology, economics, and international development, but thus far have not been integrated fully into ecosystem service assessments. We examine the multidimensional nature of HWB and disc...