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Biodiversity and ecosystem services

Ecosystem services are the contributions that ecosystems make to human well-being, including provision of food and fiber, regulation of the biosphere and cultural services.

Ecosystem service research is inherently transdisciplinary; it combines natural and social science disciplines to increase the understanding of how utilization and management of ecosystems influences environmental processes and in turn, the services humans derive from the ecosystems. Ecosystem services research is a relatively new field aiming to address the challenges of governing complex and interdependent environmental and societal systems.

Research themes:

  • Development of spatially explicit ecosystem service models, operational in policy analysis,
  • Creation and application of spatial analytical approaches for studying and governing ecosystem services
  • Marine ecosystem services
  • Retention of nutrients in agricultural landscapes as an ecosystem service
  • Climate adaptation in agricultural landscapes as an ecosystem service
  • Accounting methods for monetary evaluation of ecosystem services.