Society for Conservation Biology 2009 Annual Meeting

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An invitation to:
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The Chinese Academy of Sciences, State Forestry Adminstration P.R.China and the Society for Conservation Biology (SCB) invite you to Beijing, China 11-16 July 2009 for the International Congress for Conservation Biology (23rd Annual Meeting of the Society for Conservation Biology), it is recognized as the most important global meeting for conservation professionals and students.

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Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs (InVEST): Tool for Conservation and Development Decision-Making (English) 1d (11,Jul) 30
Session Organizer: Christine Tam

Description: Valuing ecosystems as capital assets has emerged as one of the biggest new ideas in conservation. The idea is simple and compelling: people depend on nature for the stream of vital "ecosystem services" it supplies, such as food, fuel, clean water, and flood control. If nature is properly valued, then we can greatly enhance investments in conservation and secure human welfare at the same time as we protect biodiversity. Turning this idea into effective policy and finance mechanisms for conservation is a large-scale, global challenge, but significant progress can be made once we can quantify, map, and value ecosystem services across the landscape. The Natural Capital Project has developed InVEST, a new software-based tool to support integration of these values into natural resource decisions. In this workshop, participants will learn how to use InVEST to map ecosystem services as well as biodiversity, focusing on carbon sequestration and the provision of water supply (for drinking and irrigation). Other services will be broadly addressed, including water quality control for meeting regulatory standards, sediment retention for infrastructure maintenance, pollination of agricultural crops, timber, agriculture, and non-timber forest product production. We will walk through exercises with sample data, highlighting freely available datasets and providing ideas for alternatives in data-scarce regions. Exercises will be interspersed with discussion on policy and conservation and development applications, issues China and other nations are grappling with now.

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