West Coast Ecosystem Services: Feasible Metrics and Tradeoffs

In collaboration with the Natural Capital Project, this workshop convened ecologists, economists, and practitioners to adddress: (1) How do we measure key marine and coastal ecosystem services for the US west coast? and (2) How do we apply these metrics to assess important ecosystem service tradeoffs? The group developed a new, 3-step approach that provides the tools to measure and track the condition of the system (supply), the amount of resources actually used or enjoyed by people (service), and people's preference for a particular level of service (value). A manuscript from this workshop has been published in Marine Policy.

Read a one-page description of this work that was prepared for a COMPASS briefing in Feb 2011.