The main goal of this session is to raise awareness among the broader statistical community of opportunities and challenges in environmental statistics related to ecosystem services, described as “nature’s contributions to people”, with a particular focus on urban areas, which is where most people live today. Our ability to measure ecosystem services has greatly improved with advances in remote sensing and modelling, but also benefits from integrating data from a variety of sources, including the environment, society, and the economy. Urban areas provide unique measurement challenges, due to their heterogeneity, rapid changes, and the many human factors to consider (including data confidentiality). But they also offer opportunities, in terms of availability of data (dense population centres are often high priority areas for data collection on a range of topics), and the impact on so many residents. We hope this session will be of interest to environmental statisticians, as well as practitioners in other fields interested in integrating environmental statistics in their work. We also see this as an opportunity to share experiences with organizing and integrating large data sets from a variety of sources to compile statistics on a national scale.

Most people in the world today live in cities, with the proportion expected to continue to increase.  Urban environments have profound impacts on residents’ health and well-being, in terms of air quality, water quality, temperature regulation, and other “ecosystem services” (nature’s contributions to people).  This session will explore methods, approaches, and applications of measuring ecosystem services that contribute to human well-being in urban environments.

Organiser: Dr Jonathan Whiteley 

Chair: Dr Jessica Andrews 

Speaker: Dr Jonathan Whiteley  

Speaker: Lauren Allen

Speaker: Marie-Janick

Speaker: Dr Amanda Schwantes