Natural Capital Accounts: Ecosystem Service Maps for the Netherlands (2021)

Geospatial maps from Statistics Netherlands (CBS) quantifying the relationship between nature, the economy, and human activities. The dataset includes physical and monetary values for 11 ecosystem services, such as food production, carbon sequestration, and nature recreation, primarily for the reference year 2021. It was developed by CBS and Wageningen University for the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality.

Use Cases

• Valuing pollination services for agricultural planning based on the pollination map.
• Modeling carbon sequestration potential for climate policy based on the carbon sequestration map.
• Assessing urban heat island mitigation based on the local climate regulation map.
• Planning for nature tourism infrastructure based on the nature tourism map.
• Analyzing trade-offs between food production and rainwater regulation based on the respective service maps.

Strengths

• Includes both physical and monetary valuations for most ecosystem services.
• Covers 11 distinct ecosystem services across producing, regulating, and cultural categories.
• Data is produced by a national statistics office (CBS) in collaboration with a research university.
• Released under a permissive CC-BY-4.0 license.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and dataset size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• One map (Rainwater regulation) uses a different reference year (2020) than the others (2021).

Provenance

Source

Statistics Netherlands (CBS) and Wageningen University, commissioned by the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality (LNV).

Collection Method

Development of models, data, and maps to provide a spatial picture of natural capital.

Time Range

Primarily 2021 (one map is 2020).

Freshness

Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Geography

Netherlands.