Knowing the geographic distribution and spatial pattern of important service-rendering resources is vital information for land owners, planners, and policy makers. Such information can help in deciding where to channel development, where to avoid it, and where to target ecological restoration efforts.

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) refers to a suite of technologies for digital mapping, analyzing spatial patterns, and spatial database development. GIS is an integral part of the Natural Assets Information System™ (NAIS). It is used to map the distribution, spatial context, and abundance of environmental resource types, or land covers, calculate the quantities of these types, and the amount of ecosystem services flowing from them. Further, it is used to summarize the flows or stocks of ecosystem services by meaningful geographic aggregation units, such as watersheds, towns, counties, or property parcels, and to create output maps.

One of the key inputs into the NAS is land cover characteristics. As part of the NAIS, we process land cover data to be compatible with our database, since the categorization of environmental resources in land cover maps is generally not the same as that in the valuation literature. As part of this process, we have developed an innovative new typology of land cover characteristics designed to correspond with valuation literature, which can be applied to existing land cover maps. Often however, existing land cover data is insufficient, either in terms of spatial resolution (i.e. grain size) or categorical precision (e.g. categorizing land as "forest" versus "old growth" and "secondary growth" forest). Where clients need either higher levels of spatial or categorical precision, or are interested in designated land characteristics that are not usually included in public data,  we can work to develop new spatial data sets through either augmenting existing data sets with ancillary data, interpretation and classification of remote sensing imagery, or field data collection.

Sample project map of estimated ecosystem service by parcel from the Maury Island Ecological Economic Study (left) and image of land cover at various levels of detail for three studies (right). Click to enlarge