Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

TESSA Webinar, BirdLife International - Full Birdlife International Published on Jul 23, 2014 An introduction to TESSA - the toolkit for assessing ecosystem services at the site scale.

A webinar hosted by the Sub-Global Assessment Network, delivered by Jenny Birch of BirdLife International on the 1st April 2014. Category Nonprofits & Activism License Standard YouTube License

https://youtu.be/yKjCHuOyV0Q

Abstract

Sites that are important for biodiversity conservation can also provide significant benefits (i.e. ecosystem services) to people. Decision-makers need to know how change to a site, whether development or restoration, would affect the delivery of services and the distribution of any benefits among stakeholders. However, there are relatively few empirical studies that present this information. One reason is the lack of appropriate methods and tools for ecosystem service assessment that do not require substantial resources or specialist technical knowledge, or rely heavily upon existing data. Here we address this gap by describing the Toolkit for Ecosystem Service Site-based Assessment (TESSA). It guides local non-specialists through a selection of relatively accessible methods for identifying which ecosystem services may be important at a site, and for evaluating the magnitude of benefits that people obtain from them currently, compared with those expected under alternative land-uses. The toolkit recommends use of existing data where appropriate and places emphasis on enabling users to collect new field data at relatively low cost and effort. By using TESSA, the users could also gain valuable information about the alternative land-uses; and data collected in the field could be incorporated into regular monitoring programmes.