Modeling benefits from nature: using ecosystem services to inform coastal and marine spatial planning

TLDR

Marine ecosystems are increasingly valued for diverse societal benefits, prompting the need for new management approaches that can quantify and sustain these benefits through an ecosystem services framework now being adapted to marine contexts. The authors introduce marine Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs (InVEST), a tool designed to map, model, and value multiple marine ecosystem services. InVEST estimates how service levels change under different management scenarios, evaluates trade‑offs and climate drivers, and provides detailed inputs and outputs, as demonstrated in a case study of Vancouver Island’s West Coast. The case study shows that marine InVEST can inform marine spatial planning by shaping stakeholder dialogue and supporting decision making.

Abstract

People around the world are looking to marine ecosystems to provide additional benefits to society. As they consider expanding current uses and investing in new ones, new management approaches are needed that will sustain the delivery of the diverse benefits that people want and need. An ecosystem services framework provides metrics for assessing the quantity, quality, and value of benefits obtained from different portfolios of uses. Such a framework has been developed for assessments on land, and is now being developed for application to marine ecosystems. Here, we present marine Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs (InVEST), a new tool to assess (i.e., map, model, and value) multiple services provided by marine ecosystems. It allows one to estimate changes in a suite of services under different management scenarios and to investigate trade-offs among the scenarios, including implications of drivers like climate. We describe key inputs and outputs of each of the component ecosystem service models and present results from an application to the West Coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. The results demonstrate how marine InVEST can be used to help shape the dialogue and inform decision making in a marine spatial planning context.