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

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.