TESSA: A toolkit for rapid assessment of ecosystem services at sites of biodiversity conservation importance

Sites that are important for biodiversity conservation can also provide significant benefits (i.e. ecosystem
services) to people. Decision-makers need to know how change to a site, whether development or
restoration, would affect the delivery of services and the distribution of any benefits among stakeholders.
However, there are relatively few empirical studies that present this information. One reason is the lack of
appropriate methods and tools for ecosystem service assessment that do not require substantial resources
or specialist technical knowledge, or rely heavily upon existing data. Here we address this gap by
describing the Toolkit for Ecosystem Service Site-based Assessment (TESSA). It guides local non-specialists
through a selection of relatively accessible methods for identifying which ecosystem services may be
important at a site, and for evaluating the magnitude of benefits that people obtain from them currently,
compared with those expected under alternative land-uses. The toolkit recommends use of existing data
where appropriate and places emphasis on enabling users to collect new field data at relatively low cost
and effort. By using TESSA, the users could also gain valuable information about the alternative land-uses;
and data collected in the field could be incorporated into regular monitoring programmes.