Natural Capital
Understand the landscape behind the value
Nature provides benefits that support people, communities and economies.
Water, soils, vegetation, habitats and ecological systems contribute to everything from food production and water regulation to recreation, resilience and wellbeing.
Understanding those benefits begins with understanding the natural assets that provide them — where they are, how they relate to one another and how they are changing.
TerraViso brings spatial, habitat and ecological evidence together to provide a landscape foundation for natural capital assessment and decision-making.
Natural capital exists somewhere
Natural capital exists somewhere
Natural capital exists somewhere
- Natural capital may ultimately be described through accounts, indicators or economic values.
- But the assets behind those measures exist in real places.
- Woodland occupies a landscape.
- Water moves through catchments.
- Wetlands interact with rivers and surrounding land.
- Soils, vegetation and habitats respond to management and environmental change.
- Understanding natural capital therefore requires more than knowing that an asset exists.
- It requires understanding the landscape within which it functions.
Start with the natural assets
Natural capital exists somewhere
Natural capital exists somewhere
- A natural capital approach begins by understanding the stocks of natural resources and the benefits that flow from them. This stock-and-flow relationship is fundamental to established natural-capital approaches.
- TerraViso can bring high-resolution imagery, habitat information, terrain, vegetation and other environmental evidence together to help build a spatial picture of those natural assets.
- That creates a consistent evidence foundation from which wider natural-capital questions can be explored.
From assets to ecological relationships
From assets to ecological relationships
From assets to ecological relationships
- Natural assets do not operate independently.
- A woodland may influence water, soil, habitat and landscape connectivity.
- A wetland may depend on processes extending far beyond its mapped boundary.
- A hedgerow may occupy relatively little land while contributing to a much larger ecological network.
- TerraViso Ecological Intelligence can help investigate these relationships — moving from a catalogue of individual environmental features towards an understanding of how they function within the wider landscape.
Understand condition and context
From assets to ecological relationships
From assets to ecological relationships
- Two areas containing apparently similar natural assets may not provide the same ecological context or support the same outcomes.
- Their surrounding habitats, connectivity, fragmentation, environmental characteristics and management history may differ.
- TerraViso can provide additional spatial evidence for understanding those differences.
- This helps move the conversation beyond....
What natural assets are present?
towards....
What is their condition, context and relationship with the wider landscape
Connect natural assets to the benefits they support
Connect natural assets to the benefits they support
Connect natural assets to the benefits they support
- Natural capital becomes particularly useful for decision-making when the relationship between natural assets and the benefits they provide can be understood.
- Woodland, wetlands, grasslands, soils, rivers and other natural assets can contribute to multiple ecosystem services and benefits.
- TerraViso's role is not to assign an economic value to those benefits automatically.
- Its role is to strengthen the spatial and ecological evidence from which those relationships can be investigated.
- That evidence can contribute to wider natural-capital assessment alongside ecological expertise, economic analysis and other appropriate methodologies.
One landscape can provide many benefits
Connect natural assets to the benefits they support
Connect natural assets to the benefits they support
- The same part of a landscape can contribute to several outcomes at once.
- A riparian corridor may provide habitat while contributing to water management and landscape connectivity.
- Woodland may support biodiversity alongside carbon storage, recreation and resilience.
- Grassland may contribute to food production while retaining ecological and cultural value.
- Looking at those benefits separately can obscure the relationships between them.
- A landscape perspective helps reveal where they overlap — and where decisions about one outcome may affect another.
Explore what could change
Understand change through time
Understand change through time
- Natural-capital assessment is not only about describing what exists today.
- Management, restoration, development and land-use change can alter natural assets and the benefits associated with them.
- TerraViso can help explore potential interventions within their wider landscape context, providing evidence for questions such as....
What could be strengthened?
What could be lost?
Where might intervention support several outcomes?
Where might there be trade-offs?
- The answers require more than spatial analysis, but understanding the landscape provides an important place to start.
Understand change through time
Understand change through time
Understand change through time
- Natural capital is not static.
- Habitats develop. Land management changes. Natural processes reshape landscapes. Restoration may improve ecological condition while other pressures cause deterioration elsewhere.
- A controlled baseline creates the opportunity to return with new evidence and investigate how natural assets and their wider landscape context are changing.
- That can help support longer-term assessment rather than treating natural capital as a one-off inventory.
Evidence for natural-capital decisions
- Established natural-capital frameworks extend beyond ecological mapping into impacts, dependencies, valuation and organisational decision-making. The Natural Capital Protocol, for example, structures assessment around Frame, Scope, Measure & Value, and Apply.
- TerraViso does not replace those processes.
- It provides something more fundamental:
a consistent spatial and ecological understanding of the landscape being considered.
- That evidence can then contribute alongside economic, social and other information to wider natural-capital assessment and decision-making.
See more than the asset
Natural capital helps bring the value of nature into decisions.
TerraViso helps bring the landscape behind that value into view.
By understanding natural assets in context — their characteristics, relationships and change through time — we can build stronger evidence for deciding how landscapes are managed, restored and used.