Ecosystem Benefits and Risks
Ecosystem Services Conservation Atlas
Explore landscapes through a collection of maps and data layers showing the “lay of the land” from an ecosystem services perspective.
Conservation Design
Access spatial data on the Landscape Partnership with a map viewer and by downloading data.
Ecosystem services are the benefits people receive from nature. These include clean drinking water and sustainably harvested forest products to nature-based tourism. They also include the sense of home that communities find in rural landscapes and the values that Americans place on conserving biodiversity.
These essential services and the natural resources they depend on are extremely valuable to society, but are placed at risk by processes driving landscape change such as urbanization and climate change. Some processes, such as energy development, produce both risks and benefits to society. Our challenge is to find a balance that sustains all of the benefits that people value.
To meet this need, the Landscape Partnership has collaborated with the US Forest Service to provide information and tools that fully integrate society’s value of ecosystems with future threats to better inform natural resource planning and management. Through links on this page, users can access information, maps, data, and additional resources brought together through this collaboration.
Benefits
Explore the multitude of benefits that people derive from its diverse ecosystems.
The Human Landscape
Explore social dimensions of natural landscapes including demographic, economic, and land use patterns that influence how people value, use, and impact ecosystem services.
Framework
New assessment research supported by the Landscape Partnership builds on existing knowledge to better understand how ecosystem services change with urbanization, energy development, and other ongoing processes.
Risks
Explore ways in which ecological benefits to people change with societal and environmental change, often associated with drivers like climate change, urbanization, and other factors.
Assessments
Explore findings from a wide range of efforts to assess the use and sustainability of natural resources and ecological benefits.
