ESMERALDA project partners and stakeholders met for a 3-days Workshop to discuss latest developments in the project, to test ecosystem services mapping and assessment methods across European biomes and regions and to plan future actions. The event took place from 4 to 7 April 2017, kindly hosted by the Autonomous University of Madrid, Spain.

During the first day, ESMERALDA partners had the opportunity to present latest project results. Special focus was placed on presenting the progress in developing ESMERALDA’s Flexible Methodology for Mapping and Assessment of Ecosystem Services (MAES). Another hot topic was the development of a Europe-wide database to track the progress of MAES methods development and implementation across member states. The second Workshop day was used for a field visit of the Guadarrama National Park and its mountain range, containing some ecologically very valuable areas providing numerous ecosystem services.

Case studies on different spatial scales and varying biomes from Spain, Bulgaria and the Azores and the methods tested within them were presented and discussed with Workshop participants on the third day, where also a dedicated session on marine ecosystem services mapping was organised. During a special stakeholder panel discussion organised during the last day, practitioners and policy makers had the opportunity to give their direct feedback about the presented results of ESMERALDA.

Next steps for ESMERALDA will involve not only further developing the project’s Flexible Methodology for mapping and assessment of ecosystem services, underlying databases and test cases, but also working on integrating all results towards a widely applicable resource for mapping and assessment of ecosystem services and related policy and decision making in Europe.