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Summer 2011

Newsletter Archive

 

Understanding Landscape Value

 
article image Increasingly in Alberta, land use planning views landscapes from the perspective of the ecological services they provide. We are seeing these 'Ecosystem Services' playing an ever-increasing role in decision making related to industrial development, conservation tools, agri-environmental business, regional planning, private land conservation, and a host of other circumstances. However, our understanding of how to value landscapes from an ecosystem services perspective is limited. Perhaps more importantly, we struggle without a 'shared' view across sectors on how to approach this challenge. Working with the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute, Miistakis has embarked on an exploratory project to understand what are the characteristics of an effective decision support system (DSS) for land use decisions in an ecosystem services context. Over the next several months, we will be contacting several of our partners to get their views on this topic, and would welcome any input you may have. A second phase will explore the potential for creating such a tool.