Advancing freshwater restoration

#Make_Nature_Count – an online webinar May 24th from the Netherlands Foundation for Sustainable development was a brilliant tour de force from Dolf de Groot. Vince van t' Hoff and Victoria Guisado Goni among others.

They have taken the concept of ecosystem services valuation and made it real through collating, analyzing, classifying and reporting thousands of ecosystem services valuation studies from around the world.
 
Their database, ESVD.net collects all these valuation studies, analyzes them, standardizes them and makes it easy for restoration proposers and funders to compare values of the ecosystem services that can be provided by restoration with alternative scenarios. Their methodology preserves the full breath of context-driven valuations and provides a good foundation for funders, #biodiversity policy makers and restorationist to find country, service and biome specific data and even get the original studies to check details and context if they want.
They have almost 3000 studies from Europe alone!   And the new interface and upgrade they introduced to include updated classification systems and standardize over 70% of the studies on a single baseline scale are really user friendly, especially with their mapping tool.
 Kudos to the Dutch government, represented by Franc van der Steen for financing the system and keeping it open for free public access. A clear showcase for how and public of how developing foundational data can help Europe restore its
 
 What a resource for freshwater ecosystem restoration practitioners and funders! A clear showcase for initiatives that make a real difference and advance freshwater ecosystem restoration in Europe.

Register at www.ecoadvance.eu to contribute and find out more about the people and projects that are improving the repeatability of in freshwater ecosystem restoration success in Europe and beyond.