Thanks Tobias, the information is very useful and i think the site already well mapping, but i think i should more specific about the data of my country, especially seagrass ecosystem services

Thanks Tobias

I like Anita's answer very much; therefore, I am not surprised that she is an independent researcher. "It is hard for someone to know something when his ability to earn a living depends upon not knowing it." I am reminded that, in my version of a natural pollitical economy, all waterfront property is held in trust for use in the common interest only. We depend upon nature to live; we need to pay back whatever we take.

Yudi,

If you're looking specifically at Indonesia, ask Dr. Rokhmin Dahuri, if he is still at IPB. I worked with him on exactly this project in 1995. It was called Coastal Environmental Management Planning (CEMP) for Indonesia. I'm sure there has been much progress since then but there is much useful data in the reports that have never been published. I would add the PDFs to ResearchGate but they are much too large.

To react Yudi's question, I suggest to read a paper I coauthored (in French unfortunately) on the mapping of economic value of coastal ecosystems (including mangroves and segrass) for management purposes.

The link to this article which is open-access is:

http://vertigo.revues.org/12234?lang=en

Hope this helps with your questions Yudi, happy to clarify if French is an obstacle.

Some years ago we assessed the ecosystem services produced by the Miramare natural marine reserve. Please find enclosed the paper

I hope you could find some interesting suggestions

Hi,

Some recent studies have conducted value transfer to assess impacts of coastal erosion on ecosystem services in Europe (see papers by P. Roebeling)

We have done an assessment in the UK of future coastal change impacts on carbon sequestration (Beaumont et al. 2014, in Estuarine and Coastal Shelf Science).

There is also a Marine Ecosystem Services Partnership website which is collating global ecosystem services data similar to your suggestion ...

http://mesp2.env.duke.edu/about/aboutus

See also this paper on Mangroves...

Everard, M., Jha, R. R. and Russell, S. (2014), The benefits of fringing mangrove systems to Mumbai. Aquatic Conserv: Mar. Freshw. Ecosyst.. doi: 10.1002/aqc.2433

To map ecosystem services first understand how the ecosystem works and where it fits in within the bigger picture. Classify the system by placing it within its context locally, in the landscape, in the region etc. This may need to be on a range of scales, because the ecosystem you have chosen to map its services has links to so many other systems. Identify what are the ecosystems and where they are. What are the factors that have led to that ecosystem being there in the first place?

Next step is to identify the natural ecosystem processes - at your chosen scales. Where does your ecosystem fit in? What are its natural variations? What is its biodiversity value? What human induced changes have been made, and where are their impacts? The Australian National Aquatic Ecosystems toolkit explains this process at http://www.environment.gov.au/resource/aquatic-ecosystems-toolkit-module-1-guidance-paper

It is only once you have answered these questions you can then move from ecosystem processes to ecosystem services. The processes and biodiversity values exist in their own right in the natural world. The services are what these processes perform for humans - if you know how important these processes are naturally then costs and benefits can be determined.

Dear all, i love very much your answer, that much made a clear objective to me to learn and further map ecosystem services.

As i know, God has created all the creation in this would with each wonderful function. I still remembered when tsunami faced Aceh, one of our province in Indonesia, there are a lot of lesson learnt for us that how function coastal plant, like mangrove, can reducing the power of wave. Few of beach planted by mangrove had relatively less damage than other beach not planted as well as mangrove. It really showed that one of mangrove services is as coastal protection as well as breakwater which a human made for the same purposed.

Indonesia has one of large and megabiodiversity of coastal ecosystem, such as mangrove, seagrass and coral reef. Most of local communities depend on these ecosystem to fulfil their daily need, such as food that can be extracted around these ecosystems. And its really exactly show that these ecosystem can provide human need of good and services as well as forest in the terrestrial ecosystem.

Thanks and kind regards,

Yudi Wahyudin

This article is very interesting and includes one value that mangroves provide through fisheries, an ecosystem service, but it is never that simple ... and brings up questions for me from an economic point of view around double-counting

http://theconversation.createsend4.com/t/r-l-xljjkkk-jdjrnkrx-o/

Where valuations are required for coastal and marine ecosystem services I use this website http://www.marineecosystemservices.org/explore

cheers, Toni

You might also be interested in this paper about the value of coastal ecosystems for storm surge protection:

Arkema KK, Guannel G, Verutes G, et al. 2013. Coastal habitats shield people and property from sea-level rise and storms. Nature Clim Change 3: 913-918.

The analysis uses the Natural Capital Project's InVEST software tool, which might be of use to you: http://www.naturalcapitalproject.org/InVEST.html

Best,

Kate

Economics is one approach to do such an evaluation. It emphasis an anthropocenic perspective, that is the value reflects the values humans attach to something. The approach favoured by economics is to calculate a monetary value as a common denominator. In addition to this fundamental starting point, estimating economic values of nature poses some difficult questions for economic methodology: what is it exactly which determines the value of a good? 

One approach is to look at the supply side, e.g. how much does it cost to produce a specific function/service. This is difficult, as nature is a non-marketed good. Thus, proxy indicators have to be used (e.g. costs of production for a good which could substitute for the specific function). Clearly there are many implementation problems with that approach.

A second approach is to look at the demand side, that is how much people do value the specific function/service. Typically, this is done by estimating the willingness to pay for a certain output/function provided by nature (and causes several implementation problems, such as indicators, survey biases, time lags etc.).

Economic theory argues that the price of something is determined by both demand and supply. However, both approaches can lead to very disparate figures, which makes it hard to come up with a clear result. Furthermore, problems arise whether or not typical evaluation techniques such as discounting in order to account for differences in time can be also applied for valuation of ecosystem services. 

There are additional problems with that kind of approach. They all require that the kind of services/functions  provided are identified and quantified, in order to be evaluated in monetary terms. However, many of the functions/services of nature are not identified, many feedbacks not well understood etc. Due to this lack of (natural science) knowledge, the identification of specific functions, and its quantification is only partial. Thus, there is something like an iceberg theorem: You can only value what you can see (above the sealine), but there is more under it, which you cannot catch with this approach.