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This section shows the option to compute accounts that quantifies the services provided by ecosystems

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4.3.1 Provisioning services

Represent the material and energy contributions generated by or in an ecosystem to economic and human activities, for example, fish or plants with pharmaceutical properties extracted for final consumption by households or intermediate consumption.

 At this stage of the project, only the compilation of the soil retention account, a provisioning service, has been developed within the project. 

4.3.2 Regulating services

Result from the ecosystems regulating climate, hydrologic and biochemical cycles, earth surface processes and various biological processes. These services often have an important spatial aspect.

4.3.3 Cultural services

Generated from the physical settings, locations or situations that give rise to intellectual and symbolic benefits experienced by people from ecosystems through recreation, knowledge development, relaxation and spiritual reflection.


4.3.1.1 Soil Retention Ecosystem Service

At this stage of the project, only the Soil erosion control model has been developed in this project.

The rational for picking this service was to demonstrate the interoperability between ARIES and OpenEO systems, and these results integrates the information from the two systems to deliver a better output than the two system could provide separately.

To showcase this implementation, the Soil erosion model can be computed in two different ways:


    • using the dynamic C-Factor from Open EO → select the OpenEO Cover Management and only after select the Sediment Regulation model:
      select the OpenEO Cover Management

      Once obtained the Cover Management, call the Sediment Regulation model

      Once obtained the Cover Management, call the Sediment Regulation model

      The breakdown of the results focuses on the contribution of the service by type of forest


    • using the static information about the C-Factor → just select the Sediment Regulation model

      In this case, the static C-Factor is used in the workflow

      And the Soil Retention results are comparable but have a coarser resolution

      The breakdown of the results focuses on the contribution of the service by type of forest
    • A third option, is to compute the results using the SEEA EA methodology, accessible in the ARIES for SEEA accounting tables section

      The outputs of the ES are the same

       but the breakdown of the results focuses on the contribution of each Ecosystem Type



Observations are live digital twins

Any observation done in ARIES happens on the fly and is not a predefined combination (or workflow) of models and data. The system builds the most appropriate strategy to answer such questions using the information available in the system, at the moment in which a query is made. For this reason, as new information is integrated into ARIES, its results improve. 

ARIES  looks for the "best" available combination of data and models to estimate Soil retention. By selecting the input (C-Factor from OpenEO) and later the model to be computed, we steer the system to build an observation of Soil Retention using the Cover Management dataset previously selected. 



Why do you have to select the OpenEO dataset?

"How come the OpenEO datasets are not picked automatically by ARIES, besides being more appropriate for this specific query?"
A legitimate question given the highest temporal and spatial resolution of the data, would mean this dataset should have priority. On the other hand, since the data are not publicly available, they are not chosen to build the model. This is necessary to ensure that only Early Adopters have access to the data, but this may be the case for NSOs and other agencies sharing other sensitive data and information in ARIES. So the dataset is not only available to the whole community but as an Early Adopter, you have the right to observe the model built using the dynamic cover management factor from OpenEO by observing it before querying the Soil Retention model.



"Can I substitute or add new information to compute results based on different inputs?

Yes, the system is built to allow maximum flexibility and local knowledge can be integrated into the system, to adjust or to simply compare results using a different methodology. This means that other datasets can be integrated, parameters can be fine-tuned, and partial or entirely new models can be added as part of the workflow.



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