Project ARIES: An Integrated Digital Collaboratory to Support the Economic Valuation of Ecosystem Services

University Of Vermont & State Agricultural College, Burlington VT

Investigators

Abstract

The University of Vermont and State Agricultural College is awarded a grant to develop ARIES (Assessment and Research Infrastructure for Ecosystem Services), a web-enabled framework capable of guiding its users through all phases of ecosystem services assessment. The tool will allow users to define of an area and social context of interest, and guide them through the analysis of existing valuation and geographical data to obtain an ecosystem service provision assessment, with the spatially-explicit estimation of the correspondent, immediate and projected economic values. Through a coordinated IT and interdisciplinary field effort the project will extend the capability of a previously developed database for ecosystem services with an expert framework that captures knowledge on ecosystem assessment and valuation into formal rules. These rules will be presented to users and applied to ongoing case studies to help creating ecosystem services assessments for specific contexts. Case studies in Puget Sound, Madagascar, and Mexico will provide both developed and undeveloped contexts to populate, test, and validate the framework. Through this framework, the team will develop momentum for a sustainable initiative for transparent and fair ecosystem service valuation. The project team includes collaborators from Conservation International, and Earth Economics, both 501(c)3 not-for-profit organizations.