A spatial assessment of ecosystem services in Europe : methods, case studies and policy analysis: phase 1

Ecosystems are critically important to our well-being and prosperity as they provide us with food, clean air or fresh water and they maintain a livable biosphere. Consequently, ecosystem services are increasingly considered as crucial argument to support decision making in policies that affect the use or the state of natural resources. In particular, new biodiversity policies, which are now adopted at global and EU scales, have set targets to safeguard biodiversity as well as to maintain the supply of ecosystems services. The inclusion of ecosystem services into biodiversity policies has increased the demand for demonstrating the value of natural capital in order to justify investments in biodiversity protection. Hence, in order to make a comprehensive and compelling economic case for the conservation of ecosystems and biodiversity it is essential that we are able to understand, quantify and map the benefits received from ecosystems and biodiversity, and assign values to those benefits. The PRESS initiative addresses some of the knowledge gaps which stand in the way of performing such a spatially-explicit, biophysical, monetary and policy assessment of ecosystem services in Europe. This report presents the first results focused on a selection of cases at different spatial scales to test and further develop methodologies for mapping indicators and policy analysis.