Banner photo by Jon Martin. Blog by Writer & Content Specialist Sarah Moore.
Join us on Wednesday, May 27 from 2–3 p.m. for a webinar diving deeper into the Ecosystem Services Value Calculator and how it can benefit your work. Register here.
We’re excited to announce that the Oldman Watershed Council's (OWC) Ecosystem Services Value Calculator is live and ready to use! This innovative tool, built with the help of Green Analytics, makes it possible to estimate the annual dollar value of the services provided by a piece of land in Alberta. It means that anyone who uses the calculator can confidently say that the various ecosystems around us provide valuable services.
This is a free tool that anyone can use. It will be a game-changer for governments, land managers, non-profit organizations, and individual stewards who want to understand and communicate the benefits and economic value generated by ecosystem services on their land.
The calculator can help estimate the economic value of conserving sections of land; it can also calculate the long-term value of restoration projects that result in a healthy ecosystem. In other words, it shows that healthy ecosystems are real economic assets that need to be managed responsibly.
It’s clear from developing and using the calculator that a strong economy and a healthy environment can coexist—here’s how.
A case for conservation
To show what the calculator can do, we applied it to OWC’s restoration work that was completed between April 1, 2025 and March 31, 2026. In that time period, OWC restored 40 hectares of riparian area, 100 hectares of wetland, and over 450 hectares of grassland.
We plugged the numbers into the calculator and found that the services provided by these highly functioning ecosystems are worth $21.5 million! That’s $21.5 million that Albertans don’t have to spend on water filtration, flood protection, and other services. And thanks to the calculator, we have a clear way of showing the specific differences that healthy ecosystems make to our communities.
How the calculator works
The calculator breaks up the services provided by different land covers—forest, wetland, grassland, open water, shrubland, and riparian zone—so you can see the value of each type.
For example, three hectares of land that is equal parts forest, wetland, and grassland provides over $124,000 each year in ecosystem services. You can see in the graph that the one hectare of wetland does most of the heavy lifting.
Numbers are also broken down by the type of ecosystem service. In the chart below you can see that, in our example, the portion of wetland gets a lot of its value by providing the services of water purification ($25,997/year), water flow regulation ($22,477/year), and flood control ($38,036/year).
Not sure what all the ecosystem services mean? We’ve got definitions built into the calculator. You can also select which services are relevant to your piece of land. For example, recreation-related services might not apply to all areas, so you can simply remove it.
In this example, I’ve gone back and removed recreation-related services for the hectare of wetland and hectare of grassland. This will change the final dollar values.
This breakdown, by land type and service, makes it easy to understand and educate people on link between the environment and the economic benefits it provides.
For more details on how the calculator was built and how the dollar value of ecosystem services is determined using scientifically reliable methods and peer-reviewed academic literature, stay tuned for our next blog or join us at an upcoming webinar—read on for details.
Dive Deeper into the Calculator
The OWC is hosting a webinar to celebrate the launch of this exciting new tool and to dive deeper into how the calculator can be used to talk about the positive economic value of various projects. We’ll also talk about how to interpret results, with experts from Green Analytics available to answer your questions.
Join us online on Wednesday, May 27 at 2–3 p.m. Register here.
An Evolving Calculator
The Ecosystem Services Value Calculator is based on the best available research on the value of ecosystem services. As more research is done, the calculator may be updated to reflect new dollar values, or to incorporate ecosystem services that were left out of this version due to a lack of data. That means it will be a useful tool well into the future for land and water stewards in the Oldman watershed!
Thank you to Cows & Fish and the Government of Alberta for supporting this project.
Like all OWC’s blogs, this post was written by a real live human, without the use of generative AI.
