Natural landscape features like wetlands, rivers and forests provide valuable services to humanity, from water filtration, to nutrient cycling, to flood risk reduction. Many of these services can be quantified economically using the latest economic literature and geographic mapping tools. Where the necessary information exists, these quantifications can be extremely valuable in helping to weigh the tradeoffs associated with projects that impact the environment.

SIG's NaturalAssetstm Information System provides clients with the ability to account for and track these environmental assets in a fully customized, spatially explicit format. Combining Geographic Information Systems (GIS)technology with our extensive database of summary results from peer-reviewed environmental valuation studies, Natural Assetstm provides SIG consultants with the ability to generate interactive maps, graphs and economic statistics at a variety of geographic scales, from the individual land parcel, to the state level. It can be integrated with a number of value-added components, from original economic, engineering, and biological research studies, to creation of new geographic data, to development of simulation models. More information on the architecture of its core and value added components is available from this diagram.

The database for NaturalAssetstm stores the best-available economic information about environmental assets from the peer-reviewed literature in a relational structure so that SIG consultants can query, assess and report the economic value of ecosystem goods and services in specific geographic contexts. Using these tools, we provide clients with maps, graphs and figures that can be used to track environmental assets and liabilities.

The underlying approach in the NaturalAssetstm Information System is the 'value transfer method' which is increasingly being used by economists throughout the world to estimate the economic value of environmental assets and liabilities (Desvouges et. al. 1992). Our approach involves the adaptation of existing economic information or data to new policy contexts that themselves have little or no primary data. The NaturalAssetstm Information System therefore allows SIG consultants to obtain an estimate for the economic value of environmental assets or liabilities through the analysis of a single study, or group of studies, that have been previously carried out to value similar goods or services.

Using the NaturalAssetstm Information System , SIG consultants can now estimate reliable and defensible economic values for almost any 'policy site' selected by the client. With the increasing sophistication and volume of empirical studies in the peer-reviewed literature, value transfer has become an increasingly practical way to inform decisions when primary data collection is not feasible due to budget and time constraints, or when expected payoffs are small. As such, the NaturalAssetstm Database provides an invaluable tool for SIG clients since it can be used to reliably estimate the economic values associated with any particular landscape or land parcel, for considerably less time and expense than it would take to conduct a site-specific study.

In its ecosystem service assessment work, SIG teams up with two other companies as part of the Ecovaluation Group. With partners Northern Economics, Inc. and Herrera Environmental Inc., the Ecovaluation Group provides a holistic approach to ecosystem service assessment that can include on-the-ground biological and hydrologic surveys, in-depth socio-economic analysis, and state-of-the-art geographic analysis.

Sample Completed Projects

Massachusetts Audubon Society
In 2003, SIG used the NaturalAssetstm Information System to provide the Massachusetts Audubon Society with a reliable estimate for the economic value of environmental goods and services in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts

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Ecosystem Valuation for Maury Island - King County, WA
In 2004 SIG completed a valuation project with Partners Herera Environmental Consultants and Northern Economics, Inc. for King County, Washington

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