Park and recreation agencies are facing many challenges in today’s fiscally constrained environment. With limited time and resources available to meet an ever-expanding mandate from their communities, it is critical to have data and documentation to support funding requests.
For park and recreation professionals looking to determine the economic value of their agency’s ecosystems, NRPA is here to help with two calculators inside PRORAGIS. The first is the Park Values Calculator that helps value your park agency’s assets in terms of the benefits associated with air quality, water quality and improved health.
This month, we have added a new Water Values Calculator to PRORAGIS that assigns a monetary value to your agency’s ecosystem services. NRPA worked closely with Dr. Daniel Ames and his team at the Brigham Young University Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering to develop a simplified process to evaluate ecosystem services.
Why Is NRPA’s Water Values Calculator of Interest to You?
Park agencies, in their role of managing and protecting natural resources, must make informed decisions when determining where to invest time and capital. Effectively doing so means comprehensively assessing the value of local parks, a complex undertaking that should not only consider the economic value of the land, but also account for the numerous ecosystem services provided. This is not a trivial exercise, as ecosystem services provide direct and indirect benefits to both the local environment and human well-being. These benefits span from tangible products like fresh water and food to more imperceptible services like climate regulation, pest control and waste management.
The new, easy-to-use interactive calculator developed by BYU and NRPA can help you determine local ecosystem service values of park and recreation assets within your community. After navigating to an area of your choosing and loading park and water body data with a few simple clicks, the system automatically calculates the acreage and subsequent value of the ecosystem services provided.
What does this value mean? The ecosystem services provided by your wetlands, streams, open water and park acreage are a combination of the direct and indirect affects on our survival and quality of life. Ecosystem services can be broken down into four main types:
1. Provisioning services. This includes products from the ecosystem such as food or water.
2. Regulating services. Water purification, climate regulation and similar actions are included here.
3. Habitat services. This refers to ecosystems that provide habitat for migratory species and maintain the viability of gene pools.
4. Cultural services. These include non-material benefits like spiritual enrichment, intellectual development and recreation.
The values for open water, wetlands, streams and park acreage are supplied according to The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) database. You have the option to change the value to fit your local situation; however, we recommend you use the value supplied by TEEB. Economists measure the value of ecosystem services by estimating the amount people are willing to pay to preserve or enhance them. Arbitrarily assigning a monetary value to these services can lead to a harsh critique from economists and policymakers.
One of the unique features of the calculator is the ability to draw new areas directly on the map for planning scenarios. For example, if you zoom to a local park and have been playing with the idea of adding a small pond or wetland, you can draw the feature in your chosen location and the system will calculate the ecosystem service value of the newly added water body.
The NRPA Water Values Calculator is the latest tool in the PRORAGIS suite designed to help your agency in the effective management and planning of resources and facilities. By streamlining the process of ecosystem service valuation, you now have the ability to provide evidence of the true value of your local parks and water bodies. Check out the NRPA Water Values Calculator.
Daniel Espada is NRPA’s Research Analyst.