Our Training Program

We have learned that to truly build capacity within our community of practice, multiple engagements that gradually grow the skills of our learners is required. We offer a wide range of courses to help you learn to use our approaches and tools. Starting with basic concepts and building to project-specific, in-depth support, we hope to help you find what you need to use ecosystem services to inform decisions.

Our 100-level offerings focus on foundations and includes our online course, webinars, regional workshops, and big-picture components of the natural capital approach. Our 200-level offerings build on those foundations to include hands-on practice applying our approach and tools in remote courses and seminars, customized workshops, and in the “training track” at our Natural Capital Symposium. Finally, our 300-level offerings represent tailored, project-specific support in which NatCap experts work with you in an on-site seminar or small-group session to generate results using your own data.

Online Courses

NCP101

The best starting place for learning more about the Natural Capital Project’s approach and tools, is through our free, open, self-guided online course, offered through Stanford Online on the edX.org platform: NCP101: An Introduction to the Natural Capital Approach.

NCP101 is divided into four modules, each of which may be done in sequence or as a standalone unit. The course starts with introductions to the concepts of natural capital and ecosystem services, and progresses through hands-on introductions to our primary software tool, InVEST.

Tradeoff! Training Game Series

Tradeoff! is a series of mapping games developed by the Natural Capital Project that simply introduce concepts related to nature’s benefits to people, while mirroring our analytical approach with InVEST. The process of preparing spatial data, running software tools, and appropriately interpreting results can be challenging; Tradeoff! represents a more effective means to convey our approach to a broader audience, especially those who are not computer saavy or experience scientific modelers. Currently, we offer four versions of Tradeoff!: 1) Best Coast Belize (coastal zone management), 2) Tradeoff! Agriculture Edition (terrestrial/freshwater services), 3) Northland: Arctic Choices (arctic development), and 4) Roads to a Resilient Future (linear infrastructure development).

If you are interested in playing Tradeoff!, we are happy to help! Please complete the short form below to submit a request for more information. You can also read more about the development of Tradeoff! in the following paper:

Verutes, Gregory M., and Amy Rosenthal. “Using simulation games to teach ecosystem service synergies and trade-offs.” Environmental Practice 16.03 (2014): 194-204. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1466046614000222