Valuing Ecosystem Services

You've probably heard the expression, "Money doesn't grow on trees." It's the brother phrase to "There's no such thing as a free lunch". In today's world when nature is increasingly being pushed to the sidelines as economic growth requires more room to recline, such an idea is actually more provocative that one may immediately realize. How does one value nature, or rather, put a value on it? Is it a good idea to put a monetary price tag on the parts of life that are indeed priceless? And how can we take into account (literally) the invaluable services that mother nature freely provides? In this video, Ken Bagstad brings viewers into the world of Ecosystem Services and discusses the tools being used to value them in today's economic context.

Ken is a post-doctoral associate, working as the project economist for the joint U.S. Geological Survey-Bureau of Land Management Ecosystem Services Valuation Pilot. For this work, Ken is evaluating alternative tools to assess and value ecosystem services using monetary and non-monetary methods. This work is focused on the San Pedro River, in southeast Arizona, and has the long-term goal of determining how to use bring ecosystem services concepts into the field of public land management. Ken also serves as the lead modeler for the NSF-funded Artificial Intelligence for Ecosystem Services (ARIES) project, which is building a series of web-accessible tools to map, assess, and value ecosystem services for environmental decision-making.

A Production of the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics, an affiliate of the Rubenstein School for Environment & Natural Resources at the University of Vermont

The Gund Institute is a transdisciplinary research, teaching, and service organization focused on developing integrative solutions to society's most pressing problems. We conduct integrative research and service-learning projects on a broad range of topics, offer hands-on learning through our problem-solving workshops and courses, develop online teaching resources and international collaborations through metacourses, and support professional and graduate education through our Graduate Certificates in Ecological Economics and Ecological Design. Learn more about the Gund community of students, scholars and practitioners by exploring our news, publications, and video archives, then contact us to help us build a sustainable, widely shared quality of life.

For more information visit: http://www.uvm.edu/giee/

Category:

Education

Tags:

• ken bagstad
• ecosystem services
• ecological economics
• gund
• gund institute
• uvm
• university of vermont
• valuing nature
• BLM
• USGS