Co$ting Nature | Ecosystems Knowledge Network

Overview

Description:

Co$ting Nature is a web based policy-support tool for natural capital accounting and analysis of the ecosystem services provided by natural environments. The focus is on costing nature (understanding the resource, e.g. the land area, and the opportunity cost of protecting nature to produce ecosystem services) as opposed to valuing nature (i.e. how much someone is willing to pay for it). The tool estimates the current provision of water, carbon and tourism services and identifies the beneficiaries, then analyses current environmental pressures, future threats and conservation priority. Users can then apply scenarios for climate, land-use or land management change, and examine the impacts on ecosystem services and the implications for beneficiaries. The tool can be used to assess the impacts of human interventions for conservation prioritisation and planning.

Input:

Global spatial data (GIS, remote sensing) at 1 square km or 1 ha resolution is provided by the tool. Users can also provide their own datasets.

Output:

Maps

Scale:

Local scale

Landscape scale

Regional scale

National scale

Multi-scale

Cost of the tool (and guidance):

Open access (free)

Context:

A range of land-uses

Resource requirement (software):

The internet (it works best in Chrome or Mozilla Firefox); GIS software to view or analyse output maps (not essential).

Level of technical expertise required:

Internet use skills

Types of ecosystem service included:

Regulating

Provisioning

Cultural

Habitat type (UK NEA habitats):

Mountains, moors and heaths

Semi-natural grasslands

Enclosed farmland

Woodland

Freshwater, wetlands and floodplains

Urban

How does it work?:

Co$ting Nature incorporates detailed global datasets, spatial models for biophysical and socioeconomic processes and scenarios for climate and land-use. It calculates a baseline for current ecosystem service provision (1950-2000). It also allows interventions (policy options) or scenarios of change to be used to understand their impact on ecosystem service delivery. By combining more than 80 input maps, the tool calculates the spatial distribution of ecosystem services for water, carbon and tourism and combines these with maps of conservation priority, threatened biodiversity and endemism to understand the spatial distribution of critical ecosystems. These data are combined with human pressures and future threats to determine conservation priorities. Outputs are a series of summary maps expressed in relative terms (0 - 1) which combine the outputs from the different modules (ecosystem service bundles).

Where can I get it?:

http://www.policysupport.org/costingnature

For references e.g. [01] see the reference list.

Case Studies

Number of case studies in the uk:

Unknown

Examples of case studies in the uk :

Co$ting Nature [107] is being used to examine baseline biodiversity, ecosystem services, pressures and threats in the UK and to examine lessons for biodiversity and conservation strategy, including the potential impacts of increased investments in agri-environment schemes.

Biodiversity: Species richness of IUCN sampled Red List mammals, amphibians, reptiles and birds is not high by global standards and tends to increase in the south. There is greater endemism in the north.

Ecosystem Services: Carbon value is greatest in peatlands and the greatest clean water provision value comes from protected areas upstream of large urban populations. The bundled ES Index shows that the Peak District National Park and areas west of London have the highest ES benefits.

Current and future pressures and threats: relate to intensive agriculture, urban expansion and a risk to protected areas near urban conurbations.

Conservation priority: the highest priority was identified to the west of London, in parts of the Peak District and South Wales as well as west of Dublin and south of the Highlands of Scotland. Protected Areas in the Chilterns and South Pennines have high priority for careful conservation management.

Detailed information

Key data sources:

Co$ting Nature website [94]

Co$ting Nature User Guide [98]

Co$ting Nature v.2 documentation [99]

Original purpose:

The aim of most ES work is to understand the benefits derived from nature using the same broadly economic measures as are applied to those activities which compete for space with nature (agriculture, forestry, extractives etc.) in order to optimise the space for nature and economy in the landscape. Co$ting Nature aims to provide the biophysical basis for this accounting, leaving the economics to users, since valuation is highly context and perspective dependent.

User groups:

Non-Governmental Organisations
Non-profit Organisations
Conservation Organisations
Government Agencies
Land managers
Academics
Researchers
Scientists
Students

Original geographic scope:

Global

Terrestrial, freshwater or marine focus?:

Terrestrial

Freshwater

Specific ecosystem services modelled:

Water quantity - water quantity in each pixel is calculated as the water balance (rainfall minus actual evapotranspiration) cumulated downstream [100].
Water quality - Water quality index represents the percentage of water coming from upstream that is influenced by point and non-point contamination sources (e.g. roads, urban, agriculture, mining). This is calculated as rainfall falling on these ‘polluting’ land areas as a percentage of total rainfall.
Water provisioning - Potential water service is calculated as the sum of clean water from upstream. The realised water service is an index of clean water provided to beneficiaries (based on dams, downstream population density and actual water available).
Carbon storage and sequestration - Index of potential and realised carbon service is estimated using carbon sequestration values [101] (calculated from dry matter productivity) and normalised above and below-ground [102], [103], [104] carbon stock values.
Recreation - Potential recreational services [106] are calculated according to the potential natural attraction of an area (defined according to its conservation priority index) and accessibility to populations. An index of realised recreation service values uses Panoramio online georeferenced photographs.

Additional features:

Biodiversity - Biodiversity index combines relative species richness of threatened mammals, amphibians and reptiles and relative range size rarity using the C-value [105]. Richness and rarity values are corrected according to intensity of land-use type.
Conservation priority - Provides an index of conservation priorities for major conservation NGO's. Index is calculated by overlapping conservation priority areas for each NGO (more overlap results in a higher index).
Threats and pressures - The index of current pressure is given as the combination of relative population, relative fire frequency, relative grazing intensity, relative agricultural intensity, relative dam density and relative infrastructural density. Relative threat index combines threats of land-use change, climate change and infrastructural change.

Datasets (required):

Global datasets (e.g. for land-use and carbon storage) are provided with the tool as standard.

Datasets (optional):

Additional local data can be provided by the user.

Time requirements:

Low-moderate

Estimated working days to complete a project:

Unknown.

Tool accessibility:

Open access (scientist user level, free for non-commerical use including genuine education, research and charitable applications). Commercial users must use the licensed commercial-use version - this excludes many of the datasets.

License information:

Unknown.

Current version:

Version 2.

Updates:

Yes - Version 3 is in development.

Technical support provided?:

Users can report a problem on the website.
Regular users can assist with co-designing new features or policy support.
Self-paced training videos.
Email sophia.burke@ambiotek.com for help with training and software.

Developer (organisation):

Kings College London (models), AmbioTEK (software) and United Nations Environment Programme - World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) (applications).

Developer (organisation type):

Academic
Non-profit Organisation

Developer (individuals):

Mark Mulligan

Primary contact:

mark.mulligan@kcl.ac.uk (general enquiries, use of results and intellectual property, requests for new features)
sophia.burke@ambiotek.com (help and training with the software)

Publications:

The website includes:

Links to user guides and tool documentation.
Links to example applications and case studies.
Practical training exercises.
Training videos and presentations.
GeoData portal (public domain environmental data freely accessible to all for non-commercial use).
A sign-up option where users can stay informed and register their interest in training courses and tool updates.

Number of case studies outside the uk:

More than 100 countries.

Examples of case studies outside of uk:

Amazon rainforest, Brazil

Based on historic rates of deforestation, Mark Mulligan of Kings College London employed Co$ting Nature [95] to assess the rates and impacts of forest degradation. At the current rate, the Amazon will disappear in just over two centuries and will stop providing vital ecosystem services that sustain life on the planet. Amazonia is strategically important for carbon storage and sequestration which helps to mitigate the effects of climate change. Brazil is one of the largest emitters of CO2 globally with a large contribution resulting from fires and illegal deforestation in the Amazon. An index of carbon ecosystem services identified high service value in the peat soil zones of Peru and Bolivia. Conclusions were that protection of 50% forest area would be needed to provide ecosystem services to secure our needs. Currrently 15% of the Brazilian portion is protected, much of which is under pressure from farming, agricultural plantation, illegal logging and urbanization and may no longer contain forest within a few decades. Co$ting Nature can help us find such technical solutions but business and political engagement will be critical to implementing them.

Other international examples

Examples of other Co$ting Nature applications can be found in reference [96].

Tool limitations:

Co$ting Nature is a simple data-based phenomenological model for ES, not a fully parameterised, physically-based model.
It does not support mapping of individual services, tradeoffs or valuation.

Other information:

Available in English and Spanish
While it does not support mapping of individual services,their tradeoffs, or valuation, Co$ting Nature can be used to compare overall service generation with biodiversity and conservation priorities and can be rapidly applied in terrestrial environments globally (Bagstad et al., 2013 [2]).
It can act as a low-cost, spatially-explicit screening tool to identify potential ecosystem service hotspots (Bagstad et al., 2013 [2]).
Version 1 is also available for use (faster but less sophisticated - does not include land-use or climate scenarios).

Third party reviews / cross:

Farpón (no date) [97] conducted a comparative study of Co$ting Nature and InVEST models in the Manu National Park (Madre de Dios, Peru). The aim was to determine what benefits protected areas provide in terms of biodiversity, carbon and water quality in two conservation corridors. Baseline scenarios for deforestation, land management change and land-use change revealed different results for each area (results not reported). Methodologically, Farpón identified that the level of difficulty, time and data requirements for both tools depends on the models that are used. Both tools produce outputs that can be analysed in GIS format.