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Evaluating the return in ecosystem services from investment in public land acquisitions.

ABSTRACT: We evaluate the return on investment (ROI) from public land conservation in the state of Minnesota, USA. We use a spatially-explicit modeling tool, the Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs (InVEST), to estimate how changes in land use and land cover (LULC), including public land acquisitions for conservation, influence the joint provision and value of multiple ecosystem services. We calculate the ROI of a public conservation acquisition as the ratio of the present value of ecosystem services generated by the conservation to the cost of the conservation. For the land scenarios analyzed, carbon sequestration services generated the greatest benefits followed by water quality improvements and recreation opportunities. We found ROI values ranged from 0.21 to 5.28 depending on assumptions about future land use change, service values, and discount rate. Our study suggests conservation is a good investment as long as investments are targeted to areas with low land costs and high service values.

SUBMITTER: Kovacs K

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3679083 | biostudies-literature | 2013

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Evaluating the return in ecosystem services from investment in public land acquisitions.

Kovacs Kent K Polasky Stephen S Nelson Erik E Keeler Bonnie L BL Pennington Derric D Plantinga Andrew J AJ Taff Steven J SJ

PloS one 20130611 6

We evaluate the return on investment (ROI) from public land conservation in the state of Minnesota, USA. We use a spatially-explicit modeling tool, the Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs (InVEST), to estimate how changes in land use and land cover (LULC), including public land acquisitions for conservation, influence the joint provision and value of multiple ecosystem services. We calculate the ROI of a public conservation acquisition as the ratio of the present value of ec ...[more]

PMID: 23776429

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Project description:IntroductionOver 50% of people affected by cancer report unmet support needs. To address unmet information and psychological needs, non-government organisations such as Cancer Councils (Australia) have developed state-based telephone cancer information and support services. Due to competing demands, evidence of the value of these services is needed to ensure that future investment makes the best use of scarce resources. This research aims to determine the costs and broader economic and social value of a telephone support service, to inform future funding and service provision.Methods and analysisA codesigned, evaluative social return on investment analysis (SROI) will be conducted to estimate and compare the costs and monetised benefits of Cancer Council Victoria's (CCV) telephone support line, 13 11 20, over 1-year and 3-year benefit periods. Nine studies will empirically estimate the parameters to inform the SROI and calculate the ratio (economic and social value to value invested): step 1 mapping outcomes (in-depth analysis of CCV's 13 11 20 recorded call data; focus groups and interviews); step 2 providing evidence of outcomes (comparative survey of people affected by cancer who do and do not call CCV's 13 11 20; general public survey); step 3 valuing the outcomes (financial proxies, value games); step 4 establishing the impact (Delphi); step 5 calculating the net benefit and step 6 service improvement (discrete choice experiment (DCE), 'what if' analysis). Qualitative (focus groups, interviews) and quantitative studies (natural language processing, cross-sectional studies, Delphi) and economic techniques (willingness-to-pay, financial proxies, value games, DCE) will be applied.Ethics and disseminationEthics approval for each of the studies will be sought independently as the project progresses. So far, ethics approval has been granted for the first two studies. As each study analysis is completed, results will be disseminated through presentation, conferences, publications and reports to the partner organisations.

Dataset Information

Evaluating the return in ecosystem services from investment in public land acquisitions.

Publications

Evaluating the return in ecosystem services from investment in public land acquisitions.

Similar Datasets

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