Scaling-up ecosystem service values 1 Scaling-up ecosystem service values : Using GIS and meta-analysis for value transfer

There is a growing policy and academic interest in transferring ecosystem service values from existing valuation studies to other ecosystem sites at a large geographic scale. This paper proposes a methodology for scaling up ecosystem service values to estimate the welfare effects of ecosystem change at a national or regional level. The procedure is illustrated with a case study valuing wetland change in the Baltic countries and the Netherlands for the period 2000-2006. The proposed methodology makes use of metaanalysis to produce a value function. The parameters of the value function include spatial variables on wetland location, size, type, abundance, GDP per capita, and population density. A GIS is used to construct a database of wetland sites in the case study countries with information on these spatial variables. Site-specific ecosystem service values are subsequently estimated using the meta-analytic value function. The proposed method is shown to be practicable and to enable the adjustment of transferred ecosystem service values to reflect variation in important spatial variables.