Forest ecosystem services contributions to society

Framework / Assessment
Summary

This indicator will produce tabular information on trends in monetary measures of contributions to society and the state’s quality-of-life from three different ecosystem services: recreation, passive use values, and carbon sequestration values. Maintaining and enhancing forest’s non-commodity contributions to state and local economies, communities, and to the state's quality-of-life are very important. These values, such as clean water, habitat for fisheries, and scenery are often taken for granted because they are not generally traded in markets. As such, they have no ‘price’ and are therefore seemingly provided for “free”.