 An expansive desert, a thriving grassland, a fertile prairie, a humming wetland. Often we don't realize an ecosystem's many values until they begin to disappear. Hundreds of millions of people depend on grasslands, which make up more than 40% of global land cover. In Mongolia, the Gobi Desert Ecosystem performs a delicate balancing act. The rangelands supports nomadic herders and their livestock, sensitive and endangered wildlife, a massive mining operation, and a burgeoning cashmere industry. Here, the livelihoods of these nomadic goat herders are closely intertwined with the health of the rangelands. As worldwide demand for cashmere increases, overgrazing pressures and climate change impacts are threatening this vital ecosystem. These threats illustrate a global challenge for rangeland management everywhere. So how do we develop systems that work for both people and planet? The Natural Capital Project enables nature-based solutions. Stanford University scientists are working with the Sustainable Cashmere Project, a unique partnership between a luxury brand group, an environmental non-profit, and a mining company. The project was born of a shared vision for healthy rangelands and sustainable livelihoods. The Sustainable Cashmere Project is a market-based conservation project. As the main implementing partner in the field, the Wildlife Conservation Society educates and supports herders in sustainable pasture management and wildlife conservation. The goal is to lessen impacts on the ecosystem while producing a higher-quality cashmere. In return, herders in the program are offered a premium price for their cashmere will. Creating the Sustainable Supply Chain is key for global luxury brand Caring, a project funder and founding partner. Gobi-based mining company OU Tolgoi also funds the project. Motivated in part by the environmental standards of its international lenders, OU Tolgoi wants to see a net positive impact on biodiversity across the region. The main outcome from this project for OU Tolgoi is improvement of rangeland quality. The team's diverse perspectives create a unique mix of expertise and innovation to tackle this complicated issue. Changing a whole value chain is very difficult. We're trying to disrupt something that has been in existence for a couple of decades. To ensure goals are met, the project needs a high-quality monitoring and evaluation protocol. But in an area as large as the Gobi Desert, traditional field-based monitoring is time-consuming and costly. The rangeland ecosystem is really complex and it's huge landscape. We need a technology, a model that can cover big landscape in a short amount of time. To address this challenge, NACCAP is using Earth observations powered by NASA satellites. NACCAP links data collected from the field with remote sensing data. Funded by NASA, this first-ever integrated approach allows the team to monitor a much larger area more frequently and more precisely. The National Capital Project really brings a unique perspective on the environment and the ecosystem by looking at ecosystem services, which is a new approach for looking at the ecosystem for NASA. State regions of the Gobi provide sustenance for animals, sequester carbon, and lower the risk of sandstorms and flooding. The contributions that nature provides to people, also known as ecosystem services, can be modeled and mapped using NACCAP's software platform, Invest. Once we have an idea of how rangeland condition varies across the landscape, we can use that to feed ecosystem service models like we build at the Natural Capital Project in the Invest software suite. Around the world, decision makers use Invest to consider nature when planning for the future. For the Sustainable Cashmere Project, NACCAP's Rangeland Invest model lets project partners explore scenarios such as changes in livestock numbers, climate, and grazing practices. As team members implement Invest-modeled scenarios on the ground, they're able to use satellites to monitor rangeland health, establishing what actions have impact and where. Measuring and verifying impacts is crucial to the success of the Sustainable Cashmere Project. NACCAP's work verifies the true sustainability of the Cashmere supply chain. At the same time, it verifies that OU Tolgoi is meeting its biodiversity commitments and lender performance standards. Natural Capital Project helps us on finding a finer and science-based tool that helps us to measure the change we're seeking. Using market forces, financing standards, and behavior change, this pioneering partnership serves as a model for cross-sector collaboration around global land management. From development offsets to biodiversity conservation, NACCAP is exploring new frontiers in ecosystem services science. One of the things that excites me most about this project is really the opportunity to advance the ecosystem service science. By having better ideas of the ecosystem, we can get a much better picture of how the services, how the benefits to people are actually being delivered and where. Ultimately, the goal is to use this understanding and to change the way we approach ecosystem service modeling, not just here in the Gobi, but everywhere we do ecosystem service modeling. We can use Earth observations to give us a better representation of what the system really looks like and how our management can change it. In Mongolia, NACCAP's work with the Sustainable Cashmere Project is helping restore a healthy homeland for people, livestock, and wildlife. We have a lot of work to do, a lot of work to do. We have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of resources to build, and we have a lot of tools and tools to use to make more money. We really want to do that.