Natural Capital is the resource from which Ecosystem Services, i.e. what an ecosystem 'does' or provides that ultimately gives some benefit to humans, are generated. We often think of these services in 4 categories:
Much of the work which is done by staff in the Safeguarding Natural Capital theme, feeds directly into the Scottish Government's Ecosystem Services Theme (EST) [1], which builds on the recent UK National Ecosystem Assessment [2] and plans to develop cutting edge methods and approaches to understand the structure, function and interactions of Scottish ecosystems and how these deliver human benefits on a national, regional and local scale.
The EST runs an Ecosystem Approach Working Group [3] which facilitates research partnerships, knowledge exchange and collaboration. Find more details on the EAWG page. [3]
A strand of work reviewing experiences of "the Ecosystem Approach" has its own webpage, which describes this work and related outputs: find more details on this page [4].
Outputs from our work on ecosystem services can be found on our Research Outputs page [5].
Links:
[1] http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Research/About/EBAR/StrategicResearch/future-research-strategy/Themes/Theme1
[2] http://uknea.unep-wcmc.org/
[3] http://www.hutton.ac.uk/research/themes/safeguarding-natural-capital/ecosystem-services/eawg
[4] http://www.hutton.ac.uk/research/projects/ecosystemapproachreview
[5] http://www.hutton.ac.uk/research/themes/safeguarding-natural-capital/research-outputs
[6] https://www.hutton.ac.uk/research/projects/ecosystem-approach-review