The international scientific conference "Mapping and assessment of ecosystem services - science in action" aims to bring together researchers from different countries to discuss the scientific aspects of mapping and assessment of ecosystems and their services. It will be focused on the methods for mapping of ecosystem services, the challenges and problems of their implementation in the national assessments related to MAES. The program includes plenary sessions with keynotes and workshops on the main conference topics:

 - Mapping of ecosystems

 - Assessment of ecosystem’s condition

 - Mapping and assessment of ecosystem services

• Biophysical perspectives

• Socio-cultural perspectives

Mapping of ecosystems

The assessment of ecosystems and their services needs spatially explicit data representing the landscape heterogeneity of different areas. This topic aims to address the ecosystem typologies used at European and national scales, the variety of spatial datasets and methods used for delineation of ecosystems and correspondence between the approaches applied in different countries.

Assessment of ecosystem’s condition

The assessment of ecosystem’s condition requires information about drivers (land use, mmanagement), pressure (land-take, pollution, climate change) and their impact on the structure and function of the ecosystems. The main objective of this topic is to discuss about appropriate indicators for ecosystem condition, quantification of these indicators and spatial representation of the indicators data.

Mapping and assessment of ecosystem services – biophysical perspective

Ecosystem services need to be mapped in their integrity based on the capacity to ecosystems to provide multiple services. Biophysical methods for mapping ecosystem services are used to quantify ecosystems’ capacity to deliver ecosystem services and the amount of this capacity to ensure human benefits. In this topic, the objective is to discuss the variety of methods for quantification of indicator for ecosystem services, the challenges and problems in their spatial representation as well as their application in national assessments.

Mapping and assessment of ecosystem services – socio-cultural perspective

Socio-cultural methods are related to analyzes of human preference, uncover of individual and collective values and perceptions towards ecosystem services in non monetary units. This topic addresses the problems and challenges in the application of socio-cultural methods for mapping and assessment purposes and their potential to derive indicators for ecosystem services supply, flow and demand.

More information is availabe on the official conference website.