Combining natural capital accounting tools and ecosystem restoration approaches builds on existing frameworks to track changes in ecosystem stocks and flows of services and benefits as a result of restoration. This approach highlights policy‐relevant benefits that arise due to restoration efforts and helps to maximize opportunities for return on investment. Aligning the System of Environmental Economic Accounting–Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA EA) framework with risk assessment tools, we developed a risk register for peatlands in two contrasting catchments in Ireland, based on available information relating to peatland stocks (extent and condition) and flows (services and benefits), as well as knowledge of pressures. This approach allowed for identification of areas to target peatland restoration, by highlighting the potential to reduce and reverse negative trends in relation to provisioning, regulating, and cultural services, flows relating to non‐use values, as well as abiotic flows. We also highlighted ways to reduce and reverse the effects of historical and ongoing pressures through restoration measures, aligning our approach with that outlined in the SER International Principles and Standards for the Practice of Ecological Restoration . Building on the synergies between the SEEA EA and the SER Standards is highlighted as a means to develop transdisciplinary collaboration, to assist in setting and achieving targets set out under the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration as well as integrating regional policy targets set under the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030, and the related EU Habitats and EU Water Framework Directives.

Abstract Ecosystem accounting is a structured approach to compiling environmental and economic information. While accounts are typically used to compile data on past trends, they have an unrealised capacity to also be used to inform decisions by providing a structured approach to scenario evaluation of potential futures. We used the global standard for ecosystem accounting (System for Environmental Economic Accounting), to examine past trends and potential future restoration options in two large metropolitan bays, where data existed for tidal marshes, mangroves and seagrass. We assessed options for reversing the loss of these ecosystems and although the net benefit varied between sites, we found that if all sites were restored, the overall investment-benefit ratio would be 10.5, resulting from AUD$100 million of ecosystem services from an investment of AUD$8.5 million. This study highlights the advantage of structured approaches to data compilation through ecosystem accounts, and consideration of ecosystem dynamics and response to restoration actions, to inform management decisions.

The United Nations System of Environmental and Economic Accounting - Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA EA) is a geospatial approach, whereby existing data on ecosystem stocks and flows are collated to show changes over time. The framework has been proposed as a means to track and monitor ecosystem restoration targets across the EU. Condition is a key consideration in the conservation assessment of habitats protected under the EU Habitats Directive and ecosystem condition accounts are also integral to the SEEA EA. While SEEA EA accounts have been developed at EU level for an array for ecosystem types, condition accounts remain the least developed. Collating available datasets under the SEEA EA framework, we developed extent and rudimentary condition accounts for peatland ecosystems at catchment scale in Ireland. Information relating to peatland ecosystem sub-types or habitat types was collated for peatland habitats listed under Annex I of the EU Habitats Directive, as well as degraded peatlands not included in EU nature conservation networks. While data relating to peatland condition were limited, understanding changes in ecosystem extent and incorporating knowledge of habitat types and degradation served as a proxy for ecosystem condition in the absence of more comprehensive data. This highlighted the importance of the ecosystem extent account, which underpins all other accounts in the SEEA EA framework. Reflecting findings at EU level, drainage, disturbance and land conversion were identified as the main pressures affecting peatland condition. We highlighted a number of options to gather data to build more robust, time-series extent and condition accounts for peatlands at varying accounting scales. Overall, despite the absence of comprehensive data, bringing information under the SEEA EA framework is considered a good starting point, with the integration of expert ecological opinion considered essential to ensure development of reliable accounts, particularly when working at ecosystem sub-type (habitat type) and catchment scale.

Ecosystem accounting is a tool to integrate nature into decision-making in a more structured way. Applying the use of nationally available datasets at catchment scale and following the System of Environmental Economic Accounting-Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA-EA) framework, we present results from a catchment case study in Ireland, highlighting findings specifically in relation to the development of ecosystem extent and condition accounts. In the absence of a national ecosystem map, CORINE landcover mapping formed the basic data for extent and type of ecosystems, distinguishing woodlands and forest, peatland and heathland, grasslands and cropland and urban areas, with limited coverage of linear freshwater rivers, hedgerows and coastal ecosystems. Additional remote sensing data provided higher resolution at catchment scale, while limited site-level survey data were available. Condition data gathered for reporting under the EU Water Framework Directive were available at sub-basin level for surface waterbodies. Data were available at national level for habitats reported for the EU under the Habitats Directive (59 habitats reported), covering ~ 25% of the study area. Data for ecosystem types outside of these reporting frameworks were in the form of ancillary data only, providing information on pressures, threats and intensity of use. Our findings in Ireland reflect work across the European region, highlighting the role of data gathering and stakeholder engagement. We outline some of the data gaps to provide information for future research and alignment of data for the purpose of NCA, both at catchment and national scale.

Biodiversity underpins the supply of ecosystem services essential for well-being and economic development, yet biodiversity loss continues at a substantial rate. Linking biodiversity indicators with national economic accounts provides a means of mainstreaming biodiversity into economic planning and monitoring processes. Here we examine the various strategies for biodiversity indicators to be linked into national economic accounts, specifically the System of Environmental-Economic Accounts Experimental Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA EEA) framework. We present what has been achieved in practice, using various case studies from across the world. These case studies demonstrate the potential of economic accounting as an integrating, mainstreaming framework that explicitly considers biodiversity. With the right indicators for the different components of biodiversity and scales of biological organisation, this can directly support more holistic economic planning approaches. This will be a significant step forward from relying on the traditional indicators of national economic accounts to guide national planning. It is also essential if society's objectives for biodiversity and sustainable development are to be met.

There is a broad acceptance to depicting the relationship between ecosystems and human well-being using the concept of ecosystem services, emanating in large from the findings and research published in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment in 2005 . While the generic concept of ecosystem services provides an excellent platform for discussion, the ongoing lack of clarity surrounding the definition, classification and measurement of ecosystem services, is emerging as a barrier to more extensive collaboration across disciplines. This paper applies the principles of national accounting to bring additional rigor and consistency to the discussion on ecosystem services. In this paper we revisit four fundamental aspects of the System of National Accounts (SNA) that underpin the measurement of the economy, namely, the definition of economic units; the definition of production; the recording of transactions and the recording assets. By considering each of these aspects in the context of the United Nations' System of Environmental-Economic Accounting, the paper presents a framework to describe the relationship between ecosystems and human activity that can then be used to consistently define, classify, measure and account for ecosystem services.

Introduction: A growing belief that accounting can and should play a role in halting and reversing degradation of ecosystems is leading to conceptual and methodological developments that recognize the cost of degradation, attribute the cost to the entities responsible and assure that entities can't ignore the economic burden associated with it. Outcome: Demonstration accounts prepared around a scenario where agricultural use of land includes an obligation to maintain ecosystem condition. The accounts are compliant and coherent with both the international accounting standards for individual entities and the United Nations' System of Environmental-Economic Accounting. Discussion: Accounting for liabilities for ecosystem degradation demonstrates that, where the liability reflects the lost economic value of the ecosystem, the accounts communicate a reduction in the total net worth of the economy and a redistribution of net worth away from the party responsible for the degradation. The inclusion of both liabilities for degradation and the cost of degradation does not lead to double-counting the economic impact of degradation. Conclusion: Accounting principles and frameworks encourage greater accountability for entities responsible for ecosystem condition by providing greater visibility of the economic cost to individual entities, governments and nations.

Recent developments in economics make it possible to design and create markets in sectors of the economy where they have previously been missing or inefficient. Although of interest from an economic efficiency perspective, market-based approaches to environmental management also reveal information and valuations that could have a role in environmental accounting. Using data from a pilot, involving the creation of a market (auction) for conservation contracts, we demonstrate a methodology to calculate the contribution of purchased ecosystem services to GDP, and create selected physical environmental asset accounts consistent with the System of Integrated Environmental and Economic Accounts. The paper also examines the role this information might play in developing monetary valuations for environmental assets.

Conservation auctions are increasingly being used to procure public environmental goods on private land. In the absence of demand-side price information, the majority of conservation auctions in Australia have been designed without a reserve price. In these instances bids have been accepted in order of cost-effectiveness until the budget constraint binds. It is widely recognised that in situations where auctions are run repeatedly a reserve price strategy could allow for a more efficient allocation of funds across multiple rounds, both spatially and temporally. This paper provides a brief overview of methods for determining a reserve price for application in conservation auctions. It is concluded that information deficiencies and the high transaction costs involved in the application of these methods to conservation auctions often render them unsuitable for application to real-world auctions. This paper presents an empirical approach to determining a reserve price using data obtained during an auction - the supply curve. The approach stems from the C4.5 algorithm, developed in the field of data mining to construct decision trees from training data using the concept of information entropy. The algorithm establishes a reserve price by determining the cut-off price that results in the ”best fit” of two normal distributions to the frequency distribution of bid-price per unit environmental benefit. Empirical data from conservation auctions in Victoria is used to demonstrate the algorithm and compare auction results obtained using the algorithm and traditional ”budget” methods. The paper presents a discussion on the situations where the algorithm could be appropriately used, and advantages and limitations of the approach are identified. The paper concludes that the use of the algorithm can result in efficiency gains over the traditional budget method in situations where alternative reserve price strategies are impractical.

This paper describes an application of EnSym (Environmental Systems Modelling Platform) to assess the impacts of climate change on groundwater levels. EnSym is a modular and user-friendly software platform that facilitates the use of environmental modelling tools. It enables easy and rapid evaluation of environmental outcomes due to changes in land management and climatic conditions. It contains a number of tool boxes that deal with different aspects of the environment including land based biophysical processes, groundwater dynamics, spatial and contextual connectivity and finally a set of tools for systematic spatial and temporal reporting. The biophysical modelling (BioSym) toolbox of EnSym is used to estimate the amount of recharge to the groundwater system for specified land use scenarios under specified climatic conditions. The groundwater recharge calculated by BioSym forms the transient inflow to the ground water system. In this paper, the modular three dimensional finite difference groundwater flow model (MODFLOW) is used to simulate the response of the groundwater system to the transient recharge.In this paper we report results of simulating climate change scenarios from climate modelling under various emission scenarios and their impact on groundwater levels and storage overtime in the Port Phillip CMA of Victoria. The results can be used as a catchment planning tool, a research tool or to aid cost-effective decision-making when planning for future water resource use. The climate data for the Port Phillip region in the coming century have been obtained from the CSIRO downscaled climate modelling carried out for the Climate Futures for Tasmania project. The downscaling processes enables the predictions of future climate with the necessary spatial resolution for understanding changes in rainfall and temperature over Victoria. We consider two emissions scenarios - the A2 (high emissions) and B1(low emissions) scenarios - from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Changes Special Report on Emissions Scenarios. The MODFLOW groundwater model used was sourced from the Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environments ecoMarkets project and operates on a two hundred meter grid cell spacing across 27084km(2) with six model layers.

This article focuses on the program of Ecological Afforestation on barren lands, degraded arable lands, harvested sites and sloped farmland in Sichuan, China. Farmers were given the opportunity to propose afforestation activities for which they would be paid an specified amount. These bids and predictions of the expected environmental benefits to be generated were used to assess the net benefit of each proposal. Most features of the bidding scheme were successfully implemented and improvements in the economic efficiency of the afforestation scheme were observed. The market-based approach is demonstrated to be a practical way forward for Ecological Afforestation in China. The bidding scheme showed savings of approximately 110,000 Yuan when compared to past grant based programs. However, the bidding scheme is shown to increase the transaction costs of achieving the policy goal, by about 30 per cent compared to the previous ‘command and control’ regime. When transaction costs are accounted for there are still cost savings when compared to the command and control approach. Finding effective methods to reduce transaction costs will be key to any future implementation of the Ecological Afforestation bidding scheme.

Validated biophysical simulation models can be applied to undertake an a priori assessment of environmental outcomes by taking in to account the interaction of various human activities, biological and physical processes. These include land management and practice, water balance, erosion, nutrients, carbon and vegetation dynamics. Model output can be an integral part of an evidence-based approach to the procurement of environmental outcomes.Biophysical models typically operate on discrete computation cells of a catchment in the order of 20-50 metres and on daily time steps. They can be used to evaluate the production and environmental aspects of farming systems and catchments. These models also provide estimates of deep drainage, sub-surface lateral flows and surface runoff. Water partitioning is important as vertically dominated recharge and horizontally dominated flow produce very different environment outcomes. However, the effect of these flows on nutrient, contaminants and sediment transport can only be assessed if the output from one computational cell forms the input to the neighbouring computational cells of the farm/catchment.There are many single-flow and multiple-flow algorithms reported in the literature to determine surface water flow directions. These include the Deterministic 8 (D8), multiple flow direction,two-directional edge-centred routing,two directional block-centred and D infinity flow path algorithms. The D8 single-flow algorithm essentially directs flow from each cell to one of its 8 neighbouring cells that has the steepest downslope drop. The other algorithms were developed to remove the inability of D8 in routing flow over flats and sinks as well as to provide ways of partitioning flow from a cell to more than one neighbouring cell. The surface flow canal so be determined by one of many methods from computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The flow over terrain and over time come directly from the solutions of the Navier-Stokes equations. Unfortunately, large computational resourare required to obtain the necessary spatial and temporal resolutions demanded by these CFD techniques.The aim of this paper is to report on our effort in developing an algorithm to direct the flow of a single water particle using ideas from particle methods in CFD. In this method, the governing equation is derived from the principle of conservation of momentum. The particle will move according to gravity, attraction and repulsion from the terrain surface. The repulsion is to stop the particle from penetrating the terrain. The motivation here is that our approach will also take into account the particle momentum in its flow and provide temporal information about the flow. If many particles are used simultaneously, their interactions will produce multiple-direction flow.