BRS: Rebecca Chaplin-Kramer "Science frontiers for ecosystem services: think locally, model globally"

host: Kai Chan

abstract: The magnitude and pace of global change demands rapid assessment of nature and its benefits to people.  As governments, business, and lending institutions are increasingly considering investments in natural capital as one strategy to meet their operational goals and society’s demands for sustainable development, the importance of actionable information on ecosystem services has never been greater. Rapid improvements in spatial data, computation and visualization present new opportunities for ecosystem service modeling—especially in terms of its integration with Earth observations (EO) from satellite remote-sensing. EO can provide near real-time information of the current states of ecosystems at global extents but cannot necessarily predict benefits provided to people or how these may change under different management or other drivers. Ecosystem services models are designed to do exactly that, but are often hindered by lack of data at the appropriate spatial or temporal resolution or extent or that can resolve differences in management or condition within land cover types, and EO can help fill these gaps. In this talk, I’ll share recent advances in ecosystem service modeling, including the scaling up of local processes in global assessment and the characterization of ecosystem quality in service provision, highlighting water quality regulation, carbon sequestration, rangeland production, crop pollination, coastal risk reduction, and nature-based tourism. Scaling up and integrating EO in ecosystem service modeling can provide more relevant, accurate, and readily available information for decisions, and I’ll touch on a few of the growing number of opportunities for such science to inform investments in nature to support human well-being around the world.