Agriculture Commons^™

Mapping The Margin: Comparing Marginal Values Of Tropical Forest Remnants For Pollination Services, Taylor H. Ricketts, Eric Lonsdorf

Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources Faculty Publications

Natural ecosystems benefit human communities by providing ecosystem services such as water purification and crop pollination. Mapping ecosystem service values has become popular, but most are static snapshots of average value. Estimating instead the economic impacts of specific ecosystem changes can better inform typical resource decisions. Here we develop an approach to mapping marginal values, those resulting from the next unit of ecosystem change, across landscapes. We demonstrate the approach with a recent model of crop pollination services in Costa Rica, simulating deforestation events to predict resulting marginal changes in pollination services to coffee farms. We find that marginal losses …