Marine Ecosystem Services

The Marine Ecosystem Services Partnership (MESP) is both a spatial portal and a community of practice where policy makers can find data on marine ecosystem services and the researchers who conduct these studies. 

Proposed in early 2010 in response to the growing library of economic valuation data, the MESP launched its website http://marineecosystemservices.org in May 2011. The website offers a dynamic mapping tool spatially representing the MESP database of economic valuations, which in its first iteration held over 900 entries of economic valuation data representing over 2000 values. The database continues to offer up-to-date and easily accessible data while the mapping tool allows users to burrow down through different types of data by inputting spatial and thematic queries. 

The MESP database is not intended to replace other valuation databases. Rather, the Partnership strives to be a community of practice through which data users and managers can work collectively to better integrate ecosystem services data with marine policy needs.