In advance of the holiday festivities, ForES Project PhD candidate Kathleen Conroy of Trinity College Dublin came up with this cute robot character Dot the Botany Bot to walk us through an animated explanation of how accounting for ecosystem services works in a forestry context... as Dot searches for the forest of her dreams. Does it exist? Click below to watch...
What are ecosystem services? Ecosystem services are anything that the natural world provides that brings about a benefit to people. In forests, these can include timber, food and medicinal products, water mitigation, air quality, carbon sequestration, biodiversity such as pollinating insects and recreation.
Ecosystem accounting uses a framework to track and understand how these ecosystem services are changing over time, as the video explains - and you can find out more about the UN-standard method used, the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting - Ecosystem Accounting or SEEA EA HERE.
ForES is a collaboration between Trinity College Dublin, University College Dublin and Coillte. Funded by DAFM, our multi-disciplinary project aims to create a decision-support tool to enable management of the Coillte estate as well as privately owned forests, for balanced delivery of multiple ecosystem services using a Natural Capital Accounting (NCA) framework. Sign up for updates HERE.