Development of a new automated tool for ecosystem service evaluation (EcoSET)

Biodiversity provides vital goods and services, such as pollination, food provision, carbon sequestration and water regulation that strengthen economic prosperity.  While conservation planning for biodiversity is a well-established research field, our ability to plan for ecosystem service provision is dependent upon the development of a reliable framework for understanding how ecosystems provide services and useful indicators for quantifying the provision of these goods and services. 

The aim of this project is to form the framework for a new automated tool (Ecosystem Service Evaluation Tool, EcoSET). The development of the EcoSET tool will entail obatining data and developing algorithms for the following five ecosystem service values (pollination, cultural services, carbon storage and, soil erosion prevention). During this project, the potential for incorporating long-term environmental data and their use in providing a dynamic measure of the rate of the ecosystem responses to climate or anthropogenic change.

Publications:

Nogué, S; Long, P; Eycott, de Nascimento, L; Fernández-Palacios, J.M; Petrokofsky, G; Vandvik, V. & Willis, K.J. (submitted) Biological Conservation.

Steinbauer, M.J; Field, R; Grytnes, J.A; Trigas, P; Ah-Peng, C; Attorre, Birks, H. J. B; Borges, P.A.V; Cardoso, P; Chou, C.H; De Sanctis, M; Duarte, M.C; Elias, R.B; Fernández-Palacios, J.M; Gabriel, R; Gereau, R; Gillespie, R. G; Greimler, J; Harter, D.E.V; Huang, Tsurng-Juhn; Severin D. H; Jeanmonod, D; Jentsch, A; Jump, A.S; Kueffer, C; Nogué, S; Otto, R; Price, J; Romeiras, M. M; Strasberg, D; Stuessy, T; Vetaas, O. R. & Beierkuhnlein, C. (under review) Topography-driven ecological isolation, speciation and global plant biodiversity. Science.

Massey, A; Reynolds, R.W; Hamann, S; Wassie, A; Lowman, M.D; Nogué, S;  Willis, K.J. & Bhagwat, S.A. (under review)Ethiopian church forests provide pollination services across agricultural landscape. Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment.

de Nascimento, L; Nogué, S, J.M; Fernández-Lugo, Méndez, J;  Otto, R; Whittaker, R.J. &  Willis, K.J. Fernández-Palacios, J.M. (accepted) Modern pollen rain in Canary Island ecosystems and its implications for the interpretation of fossil records. Review of Palynology and Palaeoecology.

Jeffers, L; Nogué, S. & Willis K.J. (under review) How sustainable are ecosystem services in the face of environmental change? Evidence from the past. Quaternary Science Reviews.

Bhagwat, S.A; Nogué, S. & Willis, K.J. (in press) Cultural drivers of reforestation in tropical forest groves of the Western Ghats of India. Forest Ecology and Management.

Seddon, A.W.R. & the Palaeo50 Working Group. (2014) Looking forward through the past: identification of 50 priority research questions in palaeoecology. Journal of Ecology, 102(1).