Publications

The ecosystem services approach endeavors to incorporate the economic value of ecosystems into decision making. This is because many natural resources are subject to market failure. As a result, many economic decisions omit the impact that natural resource use has on the earth's resources and the life support system it provides. Hence, one of the objectives of the ecosystem services approach is to employ economic valuation of natural resources in micro- and macroeconomic policy design, implementation, and evaluation. In this article we examine valuation concepts, and ask why we might attempt to economically value the contribution of soils to the provision of ecosystem services. We go on to examine economic valuation methods and review economic valuation of soils. By surveying prices of soils on the web we are able to make a first, limited global assessment of direct market value of topsoil prices. We then consider other research efforts to value soil. Finally, we consider how the valuation of soil can meaningfully be used in the introduction of improved resource management mechanisms such as decision support tools on which valuation can be based, within the UN's System of Environmental and Economic Accounts (SEEA) and policy mechanisms like Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES).

Coastal habitats are at risk from both direct (temperature, rainfall), and indirect (sea-level rise, coastal erosion) impacts due to a changing climate. Beyond the environmental impacts and ensuing habitat loss, the changing climate will have a significant societal impact to coastal communities ranging from health to livelihoods, as well as the loss of important ecosystem services such as coastal defence – particularly relevant with predicted increase in storminess. Vegetated coastal ecosystems sequester carbon – another ‘ecosystem service’ that could be disrupted due to climate change. There has been considerable recent attention to the potential role these habitats could play in climate mitigation, and also in transferring carbon across the land–sea interface. To understand the relative importance of these habitats within the global carbon cycle, coastal habitats need to be accounted for in national greenhouse gas inventories, and a true multidisciplinary catchment-to-coast approach to research is required. Management options exist that can reduce the immediate impacts of climate change, such as managed realignment and sediment recharge. Fixed landward coastal defences are becoming unsustainable and creating ‘coastal squeeze’, highlighting the need to work with natural processes to recreate more-natural shorelines where possible.

Helming, K., K. Diehl, T. Kuhlman, T. Jansson, P. H. Verburg, M. Bakker, M. Perez-Soba, L. Jones, P. Johannes Verkerk, P. Tabbush, J. Breton Morris, Z. Drillet, J. Farrington, P. LeMouël, P. Zagame, T. Stuczynski, G. Siebielec, and H. Wiggering 2011. Ex ante impact assessment of policies affecting land use, Part B: application of the analytical framework. Ecology and Society 16(1): 29. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-03840-160129

Abstract Green-blue urban infrastructures potentially offer win-win benefits for people and nature in urban areas. Given increasing evidence of widespread declines of insects, as well as their ecological importance, there is a need to better understand the potential role of green-blue urban infrastructure for insect conservation. In this review, we evaluated 201 studies about the ability of green-blue infrastructure to support insect diversity. Most studies were focused on the role of local and landscape-level characteristics of green-blue infrastructure. Fewer studies explicitly compared one type of infrastructure to another, and even fewer compared insect communities between green-blue infrastructure and traditional infrastructure. Overall, the body of research highlights the importance of plant diversity and reduced intensity of management (e.g., mowing) for most insect taxon groups. While local characteristics seem to be generally more important than landscape factors, insect communities within green-blue infrastructures can also depend on their connectivity and landscape context. Some infrastructure types are generally more beneficial than others; for instance, ground-level habitats tend to support more insects than green roofs. Few studies simultaneously studied synergies or trade-offs with other services provided by green-blue infrastructure, but environmental variables, such as tree cover and plant diversity, that affect insects are likely to also affect the provision of other services such as improving thermal comfort and the well-being of people. Our review offers some initial evidence for how green-blue infrastructure could be designed for multifunctionality with insects in mind.

Abstract Coastal systems provide many cultural ecosystem services (CES) to humans. Fewer studies have focused solely on CES, while those comparing CES across countries are even rarer. In the case of shellfish, considerable ecosystem services focus has been placed on nutrient remediation, with relatively little on the cultural services provided, despite strong historical, cultural, social and economic links between shellfish and coastal communities. The ecosystem services provided by the common cockle, Cerastoderma edule , have recently been described, yet the cultural benefits from cockles remain mostly unknown. Here, we documented the CES provided by C. edule in five maritime countries along the Atlantic coast of western Europe, classifying evidenced examples of services into an a priori framework. The high‐level classes, adapted from the Millennium Assessment and the Common International Classification of Ecosystem Services, were: inspirational, sense of place, spiritual & religious, aesthetic, recreation & ecotourism, cultural heritage and educational. A further 19 sub‐classes were defined. We followed a narrative approach to draw out commonalities and differences among countries using a semi‐quantitative analysis. Examples of CES provided by cockles were found for all classes in most countries. Cockles supply important and diverse cultural benefits to humans across Atlantic Europe, making it an ideal model species to study CES in coastal areas. Most examples were in cultural heritage, highlighting the importance of this class in comparison with classes which typically receive more attention in the literature like recreation or aesthetics. We also found that the cultural associations with cockles differed among countries, including between neighbouring countries that share a strong maritime heritage. The extent to which cultural associations were linked with the present or past also differed among countries, with stronger association with the present in southern countries and with the past in the north. Understanding the wider benefits of cockles could deepen the recognition of this important coastal resource, and contribute to promoting sustainable management practices, through greater engagement with local communities. This study is an important step towards better integration of CES in coastal environments and could be used as a framework to study the CES of other species or ecosystems. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.

The GBNVPD (GIVD-code EU-GB-007) is the new centralised repository for the collection and storage of standardised vegetation plot data in Great Britain and the Crown Dependencies. The initial version of the GBNVPD (v1.0) described in this long database report comprises data from 63 individual sources and contains 277,070 samples from 200,733 plots, with a total of 4,463,300 occurrences of 4,086 accepted taxa (3,464 accepted species), surveyed between 1949 and 2024. Of the 63 constituent datasets 52 are newly submitted to the EVA and 9 to ReSurveyEurope. The database is available under a discretionary mixed-access regime and will be maintained and updated continuously in response to further digitisation of historic paper records, collection of pre-existing digitised survey data, and addition of future survey data. Abbreviations : EVA = European Vegetation Archive; GB = Great Britain; GBNVPD = National Vegetation Plot Database for Great Britain and the Crown Dependencies; NVC = National Vegetation Classification; UKCEH = United Kingdom Centre for Ecology and Hydrology; UKSI = United Kingdom Species Inventory.

“Value” is a multi-faceted concept. Even though we often think of value in terms of ascribing a monetary worth to goods and services, it is a term that relates to a variety of different forms of evidence about how people experience, interpret, and perceive entities such as Nature based Solutions (NBS). More broadly, ‘values’ relating to NBS can reflect principles and moral perspectives on importance and priorities. This document, a key output from REGREEN Task 4.4, brings together the activities from across Work Package 4 “Wellbeing assessments and valuing benefits of nature-based solutions”. The primary objectives of the report are: 1) to summarise the multiple ways in which the health and wellbeing related values of NBS were investigated; 2) to illustrate the benefit of taking these multiple approaches to understanding NBS values; and 3) to present an integrated picture of what was learned. Producing and using different types of evidence of the value of NBS facilitates a more comprehensive understanding of the complexities of their selection, delivery, and reception. The different forms of evidence, individually and in combination, can reveal if and how an NBS action had the intended impact, clarifying who or what benefited, to what degree, and in what ways. A further purpose is that different audiences need, and will respond to, different types of evidence. There are risks to using constrained types of values and evidence in decision making relating to NBS. This includes the potential that decisions are made which fail to achieve optimum benefits, or at worst, could result in severe unintended consequences including wasted resources, or even harm to individuals or communities. Some of the specific methodologies used in WP4 to understand the multiple values of NBS include: · Theory building and complex systems to understand the multiple outcomes, feedback loops, and unexpected consequences of implementation of a specific NBS, street trees. · Ecological momentary assessment of the experiences, behaviours, and moods of people in urban parks in three of the Urban Living Labs. · Photo-elicitation to capture the responses of community groups to green space, specifically street trees. · Deliberative valuation to explore people’s perceptions and preferences regarding ecosystem services and subsequent benefits, and disbenefits of NBS. · Ecosystem service valuation of the public green spaces in Paris in terms of their cooling effect on nearby residents and the associated reduced risk of heat related mortality. Individually, the results of each study carry great meaning, but when considered as a whole, knowledge built from different types of evidence of value have revealed the multifaceted nature of the value of NBS.

Urbanization is a global trend, and consequently the quality of urban environments is increasingly important for human health and wellbeing. Urban life-style is typically associated with low physical activity and sometimes with high mental stress, both contributing to an increasing burden of diseases. Nature-based solutions that make effective use of ecosystem services, particularly of cultural ecosystem services (CES), can provide vital building blocks to address these challenges. This paper argues that, the salutogenic, i.e. health-promoting effects of CES have so far not been adequately recognised and deserve more explicit attention in order to enhance decision making around health and wellbeing in urban areas. However, a number of research challenges will need to be addressed to reveal the mechanisms, which underpin delivery of urban CES. These include: causal chains of supply and demand, equity, and equality of public health benefits promoted. Methodological challenges in quantifying these are discussed. The paper is highly relevant for policy makers within and beyond Europe, and also serves as a review for current researchers and as a roadmap to future short- and long-term research opportunities.