Economic Valuations in ARIES

ARIES is a web-based decision support system that is used for the assessment of ecosystem services. ARIES generates detailed, quantitative assessments of the flow of valuable services between ecosystems and human beneficiaries in a selected area and then links the flows to potential and realized economic values. ARIES users can explore likely trends for future values, and study the effects of actual or potential policy changes on ecosystem services.

Valuation is a flexible concept in ARIES: users will be able to specify values as weights and priorities to obtain a customized, spatial map ranking how well the ecosystem meets their specific priorities. If economic estimates of the value of ecosystem services and assets are requested, the results will take into account the supply, demand, and criticality of the services, factoring in both the thresholds that affect the capacity of ecosystems to produce given services and those that make the services essential to human life.

Further information on ARIES, including an informative video can be found at: http://ariesonline.org

Last modified November 03 2011 01:15 PM