Natural Capital Project Toolbox
Click here to download InVEST Tier 1 Tools Version 1.001 beta
Click here to download InVEST Tier 1 Tools Version 1.001 beta User's Guide
Which parts of a watershed provide the greatest carbon sequestration, biodiversity, and tourism values?
Where would reforestation or protection achieve the greatest downstream water quality benefits?
We are developing new tools to answer questions like these. Our working group includes experts from Stanford, TNC, WWF, University of Minnesota, National Center for Ecological Assessment and Synthesis (NCEAS), University of Sheffield, University of British Columbia, and Duke University.
Building on pioneering efforts led by TNC and WWF, and the modeling tools used in the United Nations Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA), our approach is designed to illustrate the impacts of potential land-use decisions on human well-being and biodiversity. Our goal is to provide the most comprehensive, systematic, and broadly applicable method to date for understanding the environmental and economic costs and benefits of changes in land-use and policy.
Natural Capital Modeling and Mapping Tool
Our first tool, InVEST, models and maps natural capital: the delivery, distribution, and economic value of ecosystem services (life-support systems). We also model and map biodiversity because it is a traditional target of conservation projects and can drive the provision of many ecosystem services.
These life-support systems address our most fundamental human needs, and most are linked to economic markets. They range from the most basic to the most ethereal functions of the natural world: from those which sustain life, to those that make life worth living. In the future, we plan to expand our approach to include other life-support systems.
>>Read more about our modeling and mapping tool, InVEST
Natural Capital Database
Additionally, we are compiling strategies and outcomes from the experiences of conservation programs all around the world. This database will be the world’s most complete archive of information about conservation projects that focus on ecosystem services. It will be publicly available and serve as a source of knowledge and guidance by demonstrating when and how conservation programs have been most successful.
>>Read more about the Natural Capital Database
Life-Support Systems (Ecosystem Services) provide:
Carbon Sequestration is the work forests do naturally, taking in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and holding it captive in all the cells that make up the trunk, branches, leaves, roots, and bark (biomass). Commonly measured in tonnes, the World Bank reported in May 2007 that the value of the global carbon market tripled in size to US $30 billion in 2006.
Clean drinking and irrigation water is a vital benefit granted by healthy streams, watersheds and river basins. The hard work of water filtration is performed by roots, soil and bacteria which pull out nasty toxins, pollutants, and dangerous microbes.
Hydropower costs can be kept low by intact watersheds because when there is too much sediment from erosion, utilities are forced to mechanically filter the water before it reaches the power turbines.
Flood and erosion mitigation are both provided in watersheds by the soil, trees, brush and other vegetation that keep water from rushing downhill all at once.
Native pollination refers to the contribution of native bees to agriculture, which is as important to growing food as inputs of fertilizer or even irrigation. The work of bees depends on the availability of natural habitat, without which, many farmers must depend on imported bees that are currently disappearing across the United States
Agriculture, timber, non-timber forest products (charcoal, bushmeat, and medicinal plants, for example), real estate and recreation all depend on the broad interplay of nature’s work - encompassing everything from a stable climate to scenic beauty. Unlike carbon sequestration or pollination, these five products that all come from healthy natural areas have traditionally been valued and monitored economically.
Cultural and aesthetic value relates to the cultural or social importance of undisturbed natural areas or viable wildlife populations. People can readily estimate the economic value of merely knowing that a Panda or a forest exists, even though they might never experience them, or of being able to continue with a way of life that depends on the natural environment - say, being a logger or adventure guide.