Ecosystem Services

Science, Policy and Practice

Ecosystem Services, associated with the Ecosystem Services Partnership (ESP), is an international, interdisciplinary journal that deals with the science, policy and practice of Ecosystem Services defined as the direct and indirect contributions of ecosystems to human wellbeing.

The aims of the journal are:
(1) To improve our understanding of the dynamics, benefits and social and economic values of ecosystem services,
(2) To provide insight in the consequences of policies and management for ecosystem services with special attention on sustainability issues,
(3) To integrate the fragmented knowledge on ecosystem services, synergies and trade-offs, currently found in a wide field of specialist disciplines and journals.(4) To support and promote a dialogue between science and policy, providing empirical evidence to decision makers in the field of ecosystem services assessment and valuation and support its mainstreaming into economic and land-use management policies.

Manuscripts should always address ecosystem services and deal with at least one of the following themes:

(a) The link between ecosystem services and social and economic benefits and associated values, including monetary values; i.e. what is the role of ecosystem services and biodiversity in providing and sustaining benefits for humans and how these benefits and values are perceived by the public and policy makers?
(b) The link between ecosystem services and economic, environmental and land use policies and practices; i.e. how is the provision and sustainability of ecosystem services in natural, agricultural and urban systems affected by these policies and what are the trade-offs in service provision, and subsequent benefits and economic values, between different policy schemes?
(c) The development of policies, business strategies and innovative financing arrangements to support sustainable use of ecosystem services and biodiversity conservation, i.e. the use of ecosystem services in nature conservation, integrated land use planning and sustainable ecosystem management and restoration.

Articles may address these topics from different (paradigmatic) perspectives, including basic research, integrated assessment approaches and (ex ante and ex post) policy evaluations. They may be inter-disciplinary or draw from specialized fields within economic, ecological, social and political sciences. Systems addressed may range from natural and semi-natural ecosystems to cultivated systems and urban areas and from local to global scales. However, the research has to be placed adequately, with substance, within the ES framework. Manuscripts dealing with only one aspect of ecosystem services, for example recreation, without putting this single aspect in the broader context of the ES Science, Policy or Practice are not within the scope of this journal.

Elsevier supports both gold and green open access, and works with institutions and funding bodies to help authors publishing in our journals comply with open access policies. Elsevier has established agreements with funding bodies, including Wellcome Trust and Research Councils UK.