The value of the seagrass Posidonia oceanica: A natural capital assessment. Vassallo, P., Paoli, C., Rovere, A., Montefalcone, M., Morri, C., & Bianchi, C., N. Marine Pollution Bulletin, 75(1-2):157-167, Elsevier Ltd, 2013.
The value of the seagrass Posidonia oceanica: A natural capital assessment [pdf]Paper  The value of the seagrass Posidonia oceanica: A natural capital assessment [link]Website  doi  abstract   bibtex   
Making nature's value visible to humans is a key issue for the XXI century and it is crucial to identify and measure natural capital to incorporate benefits or costs of changes in ecosystem services into policy. Emergy analysis, a method able to analyze the overall functioning of a system, was applied to reckon the value of main ecosystem services provided by Posidonia oceanica, a fragile and precious Mediterranean seagrass ecosystem. Estimates, based on calculation of resources employed by nature, resulted in a value of 172€m-2a-1. Sediment retained by meadow is most relevant input, composing almost the whole P. oceanica value. Remarks about economic losses arising from meadow regression have been made through a time-comparison of meadow maps. Suggested procedure represents an operative tool to provide a synthetic monetary measure of ecosystem services to be employed when comparing natural capital to human and financial capitals in a substitutability perspective. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd.

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