Capacity for ecosystem service supply: evaluation of a land-use based expert method in Flanders: tussentijdse evaluatie van een methode gebaseerd op landgebruik en expertkennis in Vlaanderen

This document reports on the intermediary results of an expert survey conducted among 105 experts to assess the ecosystem service (ES) supply capacity of land use categories. The survey is one of the explorative steps taken in the NARA (Nature Report) project of the institute for nature and forest research (INBO), which has to report on the state of nature in Flanders as one of its legal tasks. NARA embraces the ecosystem service concept as central concept, to assess the dependencies of wellbeing on ecosystems as well as the impacts of service use on ecosystems. The survey builds on earlier assessments from literature but goes further in number of respondents, confidence and reliability checks.
The results of the survey can be used in an explorative way, and increasing inter-rater reliability would render results reliable for cross-validation of quantitative and semi-quantitative indicator maps for ES supply capacity. Also, the survey inventories expertise over land use and ecosystem service categories in Flanders, determining knowledge gaps. More elaborate mapping efforts are under way, which disentangle physical conditions, potential supply, demand, actual supply, and several valuation methods.