Ecosystem service provisioning in the Grand Est, France

Ecosystem services are at the forefront of ecosystem management, and are a featured component of each research themes of the French National Institute of Research for Agriculture, Health, and the Environment (INRAE). The project Perceptions and Valuation of Ecosystem Services in Forests (PERCEVAL), funded by INRAE, focuses on the measurement and valuation of ecosystem services in the Grand Est region of France, including the preferences of individuals for forest ecosystem services and potential markets for them (demand) and how ecosystem services are provided in the region (supply). In this paper, we develop a baseline database of the supply of ecosystem services in the Grand Est region of France. Specifically, we estimate a set of twenty-one indicators of seven ecosystem services in the Grand Est, including agriculture production potential, biodiversity, aboveground and belowground carbon storage, livestock grazing potential, net ecosystem productivity, pollination potential, and soil loss by water erosion. We adopt a pedagogic approach in our methodology, discussing the different approaches available in the literature and making all of our data – including the raw, intermediate, and final data layers as well as commented scripts to transform them the initial data to its final forms – available online through the French national research data repository. Our goal is to present our work in a way such that it can be used as a learning tool – a how-to-guide if you will – for scientists, managers, and policy makers on how to measure, interpret, and understand the provisioning of ecosystem services. We discuss our findings in the context of ecosystem management in Grand Est, specifically the importance of forests and parks and reserves in the region, and how they fit into the broader question of what should be provided from the perspective of society.