Modeling Ecosystem Services
Nature’s benefits to people
NatCap is a global leader in defining, quantifying, and mapping nature’s benefits to people (also known as ecosystem services), including flood protection, food and water security, physical and mental health, spiritual and cultural meaning, opportunities for tourism and recreation, urban cooling, and climate change mitigation. We make research advances in quantifying and mapping ecosystem services accessible and actionable through our open-source software.
Global modeling of nature’s contributions to people | Science, 366(6462), 255-258. (2019).
Green Growth That Works. (2019, March 25). Island Press.
Natural capital and ecosystem services informing decisions: From promise to practice. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(24), 7348–7355. (2015).
Nature’s Services. (2015, July 9). Island Press.
Nature & human health
NatCap is illuminating less-studied yet vital ecosystem services relating to health – including improving mental health and promoting physical activity through access to urban nature, as well as investigating the effects of land use change on vector-borne disease. NatCap’s work ranges from pioneering experiments showcasing the direct effects of nature experiences on mental health to large-scale urban planning research that can inform policies to create sustainable and healthier cities in the future.
Highway paving dramatically increased dengue transmission in the Amazon. medRxiv. (2024).
An ecosystem service perspective on urban nature, physical activity, and health. PNAS, 118(22) e2018472118. (2021).
Nature and mental health: An ecosystem service perspective. Science Advances, 5(7). (2019).
Nature experience reduces rumination and subgenual prefrontal cortex activation. PNAS, 112(28) 8567-8572. (2015).
The benefits of nature experience: Improved affect and cognition ScienceDirect, 138. (2015).
Water
NatCap studies how changes in land use and infrastructure, including hydropower dams, affect the continued provision of ecosystem services such as clean energy, water security, and irrigation for agriculture.
Strategic restoration-development mitigates tradeoffs between hydropower and fish habitat fragmentation in the Mekong ScienceDirect, 7(6) 1096-1107. (2024).
Shedding light on the complex relationship between forest restoration and water services. Restoration Ecology, 31(5) e13890. (2023).
Leveraging new technologies
NatCap is developing new approaches to illuminate ways of achieving multiple societal and economic goals, and using artificial intelligence to generate insights from new data sources such as social media, satellite imagery, and human movement data. We are also modeling ecosystem services at the global scale using high performance computing.
Accelerating Biodiversity and Ecosystem Reporting. The Natural Capital Project (2024).
Global modeling of nature’s contributions to people. Science, 366(6462) 255-258. (2019).