Ecosystem Services Assessment Using InVEST as a Tool to Support Decision Making Process: Critical Issues and Opportunities

The awareness of Ecosystem services concept has gained prominence in the decision making process. The inclusion of this issue strictly depends on the way in which may be incorporated in the development strategies of a region by the policy makers. The paper want to test one of the most used model to quantify the Ecosystem services, with a spatial distribution output, in order to recognize the critical issues and the opportunities to use it as a tool to support decision making process. The InVEST model was experimented for the Habitat Quality and Carbon Sequestration functions. The survey area is the Municipality of Lodi in the south part of Lombardy Region (north of Italy) due to the high accessibility to the database information and also to attempt the adaptability of the software to product reliable output at micro-scale.