The natural systems that underpin the delivery of those services and benefits that society enjoys, such as clean water, food production, protection from flooding and recreation, are being increasingly challenged by an increasing population, demand for housing and infrastructure, the need to feed a rapidly growing planet and climate change.
Our landscapes need to be managed appropriately to ensure the sustainable delivery of these servcies into the future. But we do not truly understand the linkages between the stocks of biodiversity within those landscape and the flows of services from those stocks. Until we have a better grasp of those linkages, those responsible for managing our landscapes will be doing so under great uncertainty.
Biodiversity & Ecosystem Service Sustainability (BESS) is a six-year (2011-2017) NERC research programme, designed to reduce that uncertainty. It will answer fundamental questions about the functional role of biodiversity in key ecosystem processes and the delivery of ecosystem processes at the landscape scale and how these are likely to change in an uncertain future.
By providing a much improved evidence base, those responsible for how landscapes are used and developed should be in much better position to make decisions about the inevitable trade-offs that are required to ensure sustainable futures.
The 'Ecosystem Service Mapping Gateway', developed by the NERC Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (BESS) Directorate, with funding from Natural England, brings together information on the growing number of projects concerned with mapping ecosystem service delivery at the landscape level.
New! May 2013
Ecosystem Service Mapping Gateway
