Developing biodiversity indicators and economic valuations for created grasslands in the UK

  • Samantha Cruickshank

Student thesis: Doctoral ThesisDoctor of Philosophy

Abstract

The thesis is an investigation in to a quick and easy means of establishing the ecosystem service provision of a created grassland and applying an economic value to these services. Biodiversity indicators are first explored in a literature review. Common statistical techniques are then employed to identify relevant bio-indicators of created grasslands from first-hand data collected from sourced fieldwork study sites. Economic values of ecosystem service provision in grasslands are then extracted from papers sourced from a systematic review. These values, and their explanatory variables, are modelled to establish variation in economic estimates. Benchmarking figures of goal grassland ecosystem service provision are established based on theory. Crucially, a link between ecological data and economic values is ascertained. This allows an Excel model to be designed allowing users to estimate economic value of grasslands based on on-site recordings of identified bio-indicators.

Date of Award14 Feb 2017
Original languageEnglish
SupervisorGraham Leask (Supervisor) & Nigel L Driffield (Supervisor)

Keywords

  • bio-indicators
  • non-market valuation
  • habitat creation;
  • biodiversity
  • ecosystem services

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