What are ecosystem services?
How can we place a value on ecosystem services?
What are “social values” of ecosystem services?
Why is it important to quantify the social values of ecosystem services?
What is coastal and marine spatial planning (CMSP)?
What is SolVES? What does it do?
The concept of ecosystem services has emerged as a model for linking the functioning of ecosystems to human welfare. Various definitions have been developed through the discourse and include the following:
- Benefits provided by nature, which contribute to human well-being; range from tangible products (examples: food, fresh water) to socio-cultural services (examples: recreation, aesthetics) (MA, 2005).
- The aspects of ecosystems utilized (actively or passively) to produce human well-being (Fisher, Turner, and Morling, 2009).
- The conditions and processes through which natural ecosystems, and the species that make them up, sustain and fulfill human life (Daily, 1997)
- The benefits human populations derive, directly or indirectly, from ecosystem functions (Costanza et al., 1997)
- Components of nature, directly enjoyed, consumed, or used to yield human well-being. (Boyd and Banzhaf, 2007)
While these definitions provide a foundation for understanding and researching ecosystem services it is important to understand that this concept is not intended to be a static one. Instead, ecosystem service scholars advise its consideration as an evolving concept and as such interested parties should frequently check the validity of early concepts by consistently reviewing and modifying its definition while examining its utility to a wide range of stakeholders (scientists, practitioners, land managers, policy makers, and environmental educators).
How can we place a value on ecosystem services?
An number of different methods have been developed for assigning value to various ecosystem services. Most often these methods are based on a utilitarian view of the goods provided by ecosystems and their monetary value based on market price mechanisms and economic methodologies. Recent advancements in the field of ecosystem service valuation have extended to include stated preference and other classical economic calculations of goods.
This research project offers and alternative way, through SolVES modeling, to measure the social value of ecosystem services that are not readily assigned a market, or monetary, value as they generally fall outside such economic methodologies.
What are “social values” of ecosystem services?
The ways in which “humans value landscapes and the places therein for reasons ranging from instrumental value (e.g., places that provide sustenance) to symbolic value (places that represent ideas) and which fall outside of utilitarian, market-based assessment of the monetary value derived from ecosystem services.
Most often ecosystem service value has been determined by measuring the economic and ecological derivatives of ecosystem services through the use of various assessment methods. The social value of ecosystem services, as a missing element of such assessments, are akin to the sociocultural attributes of a given space (the values, meanings, and symbols assigned to a place), which means assessment of their value largely falls outside traditional forms of measurement such as valuation based on market price. Similar to Brown (2004), this research adopts its definition of “social values” of ecosystem services from the concept of landscape values based on work done by Rolston and Coufal (1991). In their research, Rolston and Coufal (1991) identified 10 basic landscape values based on terrestrial ecosystems; this initial typology was then modified and expanded to include 13 values and represents the contemporary typology most widely used for assessing the social value of ecosystem services in a given landscape. The goal of this research is to create a new typ0ology (possibly through modification and possible expansion or contraction of the existing terrestrial-based typology) to fit a coastal and marine context. Much like the development of the initial typology, this project asks not what economic value an ecosystem can provide but instead what values are present intrinsically (regardless of humans) and instrumentally (as human resources) in a given ecosystem – in this case ecosystems found in the coastal zone.
Why is it important to quantify the social values of ecosystem services?
Borrowing from the three-pronged approach to sustainability it has been determined that in order for something to be comprehensively sustainable it must be so along three parameters: social, economic, and environmental (or ecological). While traditional valuation of ecosystem services has relied on economic assessments of value (and more recently ecological value represented monetarily) it has missed any assessment of the social value derived from given landscapes. In order for any assessment of the value derived from ecosystem services to be truly comprehensive and inclusive, and therefore sustainable, all three value types should be represented. This project adds the missing social dimension of such assessments by offering a spatially-based modeling tool, SolVES, as a way to include the social value of ecosystem services to the overall aggregate value of given landscapes.
What is coastal and marine spatial planning (CMSP)?
Considered a public process of analyzing and allocating the spatial and temporal distribution of human activities in coastal and marine areas with the goal of achieving ecological, economic, and social objectives that are often specified through a political process. CMSP is essentially a planning tool that enables integrated, forward-looking and consistent decision-making on the use of the sea.
What is SolVES? What does it do?
- A geographic information system based tool for incorporating non-monetary social value information into the spatial context of ecosystem services assessment to assist land and resource managers with analyzing and communicating tradeoffs (ArcGIS toolbar application; SolVES).
- Developed by the United States Geological Survey’s Rocky Mountain Science Center and Colorado State University using the results from a social survey of the Pike and San Isabel National Forests.
- Calculates and maps a 10-point ratio scale “Value Index” – a standardized, quantitative metric of social values.
- Derives the Value Index from stakeholder survey responses – kernel density of mapped points defining valued locations weighted by value allocations.
- Differentiates stakeholder subgroups according to their attitudes and preferences regarding public uses.
- Relates Value Index to underlying environmental data.