MESH is a product of the Natural Capital Project.
Mapping Ecosystem Services to Human well-being (MESH) is an integrative modelling platform that calculates and maps ecosystem service supply under different landscape management scenarios. It is currently in a beta development state, so please check our forums to report bugs and give feedback as we move towards the full MESH 1.0 release in 2016.
Mapping Ecosystem Services to Human well-being is an integrative modelling platform that calculates and maps ecosystem service supply under different landscape management scenarios. MESH has built-in scenario generation tools, multiple ecosystem service supply evaluation, visualization of output maps and automated reprogramming functionalities.
MESH runs on a backbone of InVEST toolkit models but can also run on other user-installed ecosystem service models. With simultaneous calculation of multiple ecosystem service values across multiple user-created scenarios, MESH allows for simple and quick comparison of trade-offs between ecosystem services both within and between landscape management scenarios. Click here to download a fact sheet.
How it works
MESH takes a five-step approach to guide users through the trade-off analysis process. Starting with an identified land management or infrastructure decision context, users 1) define key parameters of potential land change; 2) use a variety of built-in scenario-generation tools to develop alternative investment scenarios (these can also be imported as user-defined LULC files); 3) select ecosystem service models from the built-in suite of InVEST models or other user-installed models to estimate ecosystem service dynamics in each scenario; 4) simultaneously run selected ES models across all defined scenarios; and 5) visualize outputted maps of ecosystem supply in its built-in map-viewer and ready-made report-generator to help users see and understand outputs of the models.
MESH can run either on global datasets where local data is not available or user-provided datasets for finer scale studies and/or specific contexts. Pilot studies in the Volta Basin will be used to test and validate the accuracy and utility of MESH in decision-making and feedback into model improvements…
Download MESH here.
Read on at Natural Capital Project.
