Link to knowledge resource
ESMERALDA (Enhancing ecosystem services mapping for policy and decision-making) is an EU Horizon project aiming to deliver a ‘flexible methodology’ that can provide innovative building blocks for pan-European, national and regional ES mapping and assessment. The Special Isssue "Mapping and assessing ecosystem services: methods and practical applications" is one of the main outcomes of the EU-funded project ESMERALDA. This Special Issue contains a total of twenty four papers, divided into three main sections. The first section concentrates on mapping and assessment general issues and frameworks and contains six papers. The second section focuses on methodological aspects and includes nine papers that dentify and document methods for ES mapping and assessment (biophysical, economic and socio-cultural methods) used in the EU. Finally, the third section, consisting of nine papers, illustrates the application of the approaches in a range of case studies representative for different contexts and conditions. With this Special Issue, the ESMERALDA team aims to support the timely delivery by all EU member states to Action 5 of the European Biodiversity Strategy 2020, by providing an overview of up-to-date ecosystem mapping and assessment methods and their applications in local assessments required, for instance, for spatial planning, agriculture, climate, water or nature policy.