The article enhances the knowledge base for assessment of urban ecosystem services, within UN System of Environmental-Economic Accounting Experimental Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA EEA), which is based on spatial extent accounts (area of ecosystems) and biophysical condition accounts (ecological...

Specialization in agricultural systems leads to trade-offs between economic gains and ecosystem functions. Economic gains can be maximized when production activities are specialized at increasingly broader scales (from the household to the village, region or above), particularly when markets for...

This study seeks to value ecosystem services in the Kgalagadi area in South Africa by applying the choice experiment technique. The values placed on dryland ecosystem services by indigenous communities are estimated using a conditional logit model, a random parameter logit model and a random...

Wetlands are commonly understood to have the capacity to reduce the loads of excess nutrients, pathogens, sediments, and other contaminants generated by various activities in their catchment areas. However, quantifying these “services” is difficult and most research in this field has...

This paper advocates consistently defined units of account to measure the contributions of nature to human welfare. We argue that such units have to date not been defined by environmental accounting advocates and that the term “ecosystem services” is too ad hoc to be of practical use in...

Green gross domestic product (green GDP) is meant to account for nature’s value on an equal footing with the market economy. Several problems bedevil green GDP, however. One is that nature does not come prepackaged in units like cars, houses, and bread. Even worse, green GDP requires...

There has been considerable recent interest in the valuation of ecosystem services. We focus here on the value of such services in the production of market goods. Although the conceptual basis for conducting such exercises is straightforward, the data with which to implement them empirically is...

Habitats and the services they provide are part of our nation’s portfolio of natural capital assets. As for many components of this portfolio, it is difficult to assess the value of their services, and this complicates regulators’ investment decisions, especially when the alternative use is...

Concern about “open space” is growing. Conservation advocates worry that private land use decisionmakers preserve too little open space. Yet private land developers are deciding on their own to preserve open space in new developments because it provides amenities to purchasers of lots....

The study describes existing federal policies that permit or promote ecosystem services analysis, management, investments, and markets. Our survey discusses: 1) current programs that stimulate or support the measurement of ecosystem services; 2) existing federal drivers of ecosystem services...