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A timber truck fully loaded with logs drives over a very simple wooden bridge in a forest.
© Thünen-Institut
A timber truck fully loaded with logs drives over a very simple wooden bridge in a forest.
Institute of

WF Forestry

Regionalisation of Values of Forest Ecosystem Services

Forests render manifold services for the society. In accordance with its forest strategy, the German Federal Government plans to increasingly use economic values of these services for political decision making. The Thünen Report no. 79 describes a project under which such values were assessed for all administrative districts of Germany.

© Thünen-Institut

Under their three-year joint research project „Quantification and regionalisation of values of forest ecosystem services in Germany“ (ReWaLe), Thünen Institute and Technische Universität Berlin developed a mathematical model which can demonstrate the effects of decisions of forest and environmental politics on various forest ecosystem services. The project was co-financed by the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL) via its promoter FNR International.

The model calculates economic values of wood production, climate protection, nature conservation and recreation. While the values of wood production and recreation stand out particularly in low mountain ranges and in densely-wooded plains, recreation dominates in the surroundings of congested areas. The results of such analyses may reflect for instance economic effects on the spatial distribution of conservation areas or on the demand of forest ecosystem services of a particular region due to demographic change. Moreover, the Thünen Report contains a specific proposal how the valorisation of these services can be reduced to practical politics.

  • Thünen Report 79 · Peter Elsasser, Kerstin Altenbrunn, Margret Köthke, Martin Lorenz, Jürgen Meyerhoff
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