A European assessment of the provision of ecosystem services : towards an atlas of ecosystem services

Until recently, biodiversity policies were essentially driven by conservation of rare and endangered habitats and species. Although substantial efforts have been undertaken to protect nature, the 2010 target of stopping the loss of biodiversity has not been met. New policies at global and European level have therefore complemented conservation based biodiversity targets using the argument of ecosystem services. Ecosystem services are the benefits people receive from nature. So far, data for mapping such services are strongly biased towards provisioning services such as food and timber production while spatial information of so called regulating and cultural ecosystem services is, largely lacking. This report summarizes the key data needed for mapping ecosystem services at a European scale and presented a first set of maps showing the capacity of ecosystems to provide services.