2.4.2.3 Lesson Learned 3: Ecosystem Services Assessment requires effective interdisciplinary research

Why

Ecosystem Services Assessment requires effective interdisciplinary research to understand relationships between ecosystem functions, services and benefits, and how these may change under given scenarios.

How

The ecologists benefited as it reinforced the societal importance of their studies.

During the VALMER project, the broad approach supported by Interreg funding was valuable in enabling scientists from different disciplines to exchange ideas through informal day to day contact and structured workshops.The VALMER project successfully built on established relationships and developed a shared vocabulary.

The input from natural science was essential in supporting the social science research. The ecologists also benefited as it reinforced the societal importance of their studies, and encouraged them to work at different scales. Ecologists who focus traditionally on small scales could see how their work contributed to the “big picture”.

For example, ecologists in the Golfe Normand-Breton wanted to see how the wealth of individual studies (years of results) could be combined into a larger picture they had not seen. This strategic approach was driven by stakeholders priorities and it helped also to prioritise when the issue at stake was a problem of Ecosystem Services supply, for which more ecological science was needed, or a problem of Ecosystem Services demand, to be mainly assessed by social scientists.

What next

It would be valuable to involve a broader range of social scientists, for example environmental psychologists, to provide wider assessment of people’s perceptions, health and well being.

It is recommended to work with people who are more interested in the integrative dimension of the approach than in the further advances of their own scientific realms. Funding sources of interdisciplinary research are rare and should be encouraged.