One Ecosystem :
Review Article
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Corresponding author: Marion B. Potschin-Young (marion.potschin@fabisconsulting.com), Benjamin Burkhard (burkhard@phygeo.uni-hannover.de)
Academic editor: Davide Geneletti
Received: 31 May 2018 | Accepted: 06 Aug 2018 | Published: 17 Aug 2018
© 2018 Marion Potschin-Young, Benjamin Burkhard, Bálint Czúcz, Fernando Santos-Martín
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Citation:
Potschin-Young M, Burkhard B, Czúcz B, Santos-Martín F (2018) Glossary of ecosystem services mapping and assessment terminology. One Ecosystem 3: e27110. https://doi.org/10.3897/oneeco.3.e27110
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Mapping and assessment of ecosystems and their services (MAES) is a key EU initiative to synthesise vital environmental information and facilitate balanced policy decisions. As MAES integrates across many scientific and policy domains, the development of a common language and shared concepts is essential. Here we present a comprehensive MAES Glossary that was compiled in the ESMERALDA project; it is based on the integration of several previous glossaries and a wide-ranging consultation process. While there are several ecosystem services glossaries available from EU supported work such as Oppla, OpenNESS and ecosystem services related handbooks, the new material presented here focuses on mapping and assessment of ecosystem services and therefore more directly supports the MAES process.
Ecosystems, Ecosystem Services, Mapping, Assessment, Terminology, ESMERALDA, OpenNESS, EU Biodiversity Strategy
Mapping and the assessment of ecosystems and their services (MAES) are core to the EU Biodiversity (BD) Strategy 2020. Specifically, Action 5 of the Strategy’s Target 2 sets the requirement for an EU-wide knowledge base developed by Member States designed to facilitate balanced policy decisions that take into consideration indirect or non-monetary benefits from Nature that are often overshadowed by economic analysis. MAES outcomes are also intended to provide primary data for EU Biodiversity policy: for developing Europe’s green infrastructure; to identify areas for ecosystem restoration; and to provide a baseline against which the goal of ‘no net loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services’ can be evaluated.
In response to these requirements, the EU Horizon 2020 funded project ESMERALDA (Enhancing ecosystem services mapping for policy and decision-making,
At an early stage in the ESMERALDA Project which ran between February 2015 – July 2018, a preliminary draft Glossary with 225 working definitions was circulated to the consortium members. These definitions were mainly based on an existing Glossary produced by the OpenNESS project (
The draft ESMERALDA Glossary (Version 1) was open for on-line consultation and testing for three years. The following changes were made for the final version that is presented here:
As a result of the consultation, the Glossary now contains 301 terms. It should be noted, however, that the terms included do not only reflect ES literature but also the particular subjects that were focused on in ESMERALDA. However, there are no clear boundaries. The original list was constructed through a dialogue in the consortium.
For more details on the process and selection of terms, see
The entries in the Glossary are arranged in a tabular format so that users can see the background to the terms covered. The columns are as follows:
This ‘ESMERALDA Glossary’ with 301 terms and definitions, as well as references and comments, is the most current and comprehensive Glossary for ecosystem service related terms that is available. Furthermore and as a general experience, it can be said that producing a Glossary with working definitions early in the project was valuable because the consultation process within the consortium proved essential to obtain the ‘engagement and approval’ of partners.
In preparing this Glossary, we do not suggest that all the terms were originally developed by the ecosystem services researcher and practitioners community, but that they are often used in ES literature and most likely within the ESMERALDA and similar topic related projects. Although some terms may have been used by other people in other disciplines, the main concern has been not to trace their origins but to identify their relevance and applicability for ecosystem assessments. The purpose of the exercise was not to reinvent anything, but through review and refinement, to provide a set of working definitions for the consortium and ultimately for the implementation of MAES/Action 5 in EU member states and other related initiatives and projects.
The ESMERALDA Glossary can be found in the Suppl. material
The original glossary was prepared by the “OpenNESS Glossary editorial team” Marion Potschin (Fabis Consulting, coordinating), Roy Haines-Young (Fabis Consulting), Ulrich Heink (UFZ), Kurt Jax (UFZ) with contributions from P. Berry (UOXF), P. Bezak (ILESAS), B. Czúcz (MTA ÖK), M. García Llorente (UAM), E. Gomez Baggethun (UAB/NINA), C. Görg (UFZ), J. Hauck (UFZ), P. Harrison (UOXF), Z. Izakovicova (ILESAS), C. Kretsch (UNOTT), A.L. Madsen (HUGIN), J. Maes (JRC), B. Martín-López (UAM), G. Martinez Pastur (CONICET), P. Mederly (ILESAS), J. Niemelä (UH), J. Priess (UFZ), E. Primmer (SYKE), G. Rusch (NINA), E. Stange (NINA), M. Termansen (AU), F. Turkelboom (INBO) and V. Yli-Pelkonen (UH).
While we thank the whole consortium for debating meaning and concepts in ecosystem service mapping and assessment in general, we would like to express our particular thanks to the following from the ESMERALDA Consortium for contributing to the Glossary consultation within ESMERALDA: Abi Burns (WCMC), Davide Geneletti (UNIT) and Bettina Weibel (ETH). Special thanks to Joachim Maes (Joint Research Centre) for a very thorough proofreading and advice on the Glossary and both reviewers (Joachim Maes, Joint Research Centre and Stoyan Nedkov, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences) for improving the quality of the manuscript.
The ESMERALDA Project received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 642007. The preliminary work within the OpenNESS project received funding from the European Commission Seventh Framework Programme under Grant Agreement No. 308428 (The OpenNESS project; Operationalisation of natural capital and ecosystem services: from concepts to real-world applications).
This is the actual Glossary