Dr. Gretchen Daily co-edited this book which aims “to provide the most intensive and best technical analyses of ecosytem services to date”.

On Monday, The New York Times published this article that features Dr. Gretchen Daily’s work in which she investigates the value of natural capital, or “nature’s goods and services that are fundamental to human life”. Her interest, the article details, developed while working in Costa Rica and blossomed into her co-founding of the Natural Capital Project.

The Natural Capital Project has developed a suite of geospatial tools, InVEST (Integrated Valuation of Ecosytem Services and Tradeoffs), that quantifies the impact of land use change on natural capital. This set of tools run in ArcGIS and aim to answer questions like the following examples from the InVEST website:

• How will a new coast management plan impact seafood harvest, renewable energy production and protection from storms?
• Where would reforestation or protection achieve the greatest downstream water quality benefits?
• Which parts of a watershed provide the greatest carbon sequestration, biodiversity and tourism values?

Conceptualizing the InVEST models

The InVEST toolbox is available to download for free here, but you must have ArcGIS 9.3 or 10 with Spatial Analyst installed to use it. The download includes sample data that can help you become accustomed to how the tools work. Although technical support is limited, once you have registered, you gain access to the InVEST forum of users. Lastly, Natural Capital provides information on how to incorporate analyses using InVEST into science-policy and planning.