Monetary value of pollinators abundance

Science, Research & Data
1

Hello!

I’m using the Crop Pollinators model and I wonder if have you ever used the outputs of this model to assess the monetary value of pollinators abundance. I know that this is an index, but let’s assume that in my study area I know the price for planting flowers. Could I use this index to evaluate (broadly) the savings that bees and other pollinators will carry out (in other words, they will naturally “plant” more flowers than in a no-pollinators scenario, do you think that there’s a way to economically assess this service?)

Thank you,
Marco

2

Hey @marco.guzzetti, the Pollination User’s Guide mentions that:

The use of central place foraging in the model’s pollinator abundance index has yet to be tested empirically, so we caution against using the model to make economic projections without empirical verification. The same applies to the integration of managed bees in the yield function.

That being said, if you had empirical evidence to compare against and an appropriate economic model for your region, I suspect you could carry out an economic analysis for your area. I’ll reach out to our science teams and see if anyone has performed any such studies and might provide further guidance.

James

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3

Hey @marco.guzzetti,

Our science team had some really great suggestions of resources for doing this sort of analysis, including some studies that I’m sure you’ll find interesting:

First, you might consider taking a look at our publications database (link: Database of publications using InVEST and other Natural Capital Project software | Stanford Digital Repository) in case there are any uses of the InVEST Pollination model that have a similar valuation component to what you are looking for.

Second, the NatCap research teams have frequently used a marginal values approach (quoting our science team here):

Some examples of how we’ve approached it are here. Run the model, change the habitat a bit and re-run the model to determine the change in value. The 2013 paper illustrates how we parameterized for coffee production in costa rica and 2020 shows how we used that concept for multiple crops in CA central valley.

The papers mentioned here are:

Hope this helps!
James

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