Integrated assessment and valuation of ecosystem services. Guidelines and experiences

Abstract

As the ecosystem service concept has become more widely recognised, so the number of biophysical, socio-cultural and monetary methods available to assess ecosystem services has increased. There is relatively little guidance on how to select and combine these methods into hybrid approaches that address policy purposes. Based on experiences from 27 case studies with 33 different assessment and valuation methods in the OpenNESS project, this report aims to fill some of that gap in science and practice. This report provides a number of tools that practitioners can use to plan, commission and evaluate integrated assessment and valuation studies of ecosystem services. The report starts by providing a rapid guide to commonly used biophysical, socio-cultural and monetary methods. A number of different ‘bottom-up’ and ‘top-down’ approaches to selecting methods fit-for-purpose are provided. OpenNESS method experts have developed detailed fact sheets on each method in the report appendix and available online at http://www.oppla.eu/.