Through experiences from a landscape-scale wetland restoration project in the UK, a number of issues are raised that need to be considered, including the choice of metrics for monitoring ecosystem services and the difficulties of assessing interactions between ecosystem processes, biodiversity and ecosystem services.
In monitoring services, there is a need to adopt more pluralistic valuation frameworks that consider even the most difficult to measure services and future projections of service provision, taking into account the relationships between the state of natural capital and long-term service maintenance. Complex relationships between ecosystem processes, biodiversity and ecosystem services can be further complicated by factors such as marginality, lag effects and sustainability.
Finally, monitoring a landscape-scale restoration project requires a large spatial extent due to the broad functional boundaries of relevant ecosystem processes, as well as long-term monitoring because biodiversity, ecosystem processes and ecosystem services vary interdependently across very different time frames in response to various factors. Where and how to deposit monitoring data can also be problematic and increase in scope as the number of metrics and people involved increases. Issues to be resolved include data quality control, access, intellectual property and governance.
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