---
title: nineteen things a place does
canonical_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/nineteen-things-a-place-does
markdown_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/nineteen-things-a-place-does.md
subtitle: the ecosystem services list that fifty frameworks agree on
category: ecosystem-services
---

# nineteen things a place does

*the ecosystem services list that fifty frameworks agree on*

Here is the **ecosystem services list** we use: nineteen things a living place does for the people and other species around it, each with what it is.

- **Raw Materials.** The timber, fiber and minerals a place yields.
- **Food.** The crops, catch, game and grazing.
- **Energy.** The biomass, the head of water, the wind over the ground.
- **Water Abundance.** Water stored and released when it is needed.
- **Healthy Soils.** Soil formed and kept fertile.
- **Medicinal & Genetic.** The compounds and the gene pool.
- **Climate Stability.** Carbon held and local heat moderated.
- **Clean Air.** Particles and gases filtered.
- **Clean Water.** Water filtered and waste broken down.
- **Risk Resilience.** Floods, storms, fire and heat blunted.
- **Pollination.** Crops and wild plants fertilized.
- **Erosion Control.** Soil kept on the slope and out of the channel.
- **Pest & Disease Control.** Predators and competitors keeping outbreaks down.
- **Habitat.** The nursery and the home range.
- **Recreation & Experiences.** The walk, the hunt, the swim.
- **Research & Learning.** What the place teaches.
- **Aesthetic & Sensory.** The view, the quiet, the smell of rain.
- **Art & Inspiration.** What the place makes people make.
- **Existence & Legacy.** Knowing it is there, and leaving it to someone.

A beaver reach in a Southeastern bottomland does several of these at once, and they come out of the same acres in the same season. The reach is a stock: a living system with an extent, a character and a condition. What it does each year is its flow. RealValue makes the flow legible in dollars beside what the stock costs to hold. [One stock, nineteen flows](/guide/one-stock-many-flows?from=guide) is about that joint production. This post is about the list itself: where it came from, why it has nineteen entries and not ten or ninety, and why each entry has one name. The reach exists whether or not anyone lists what it does. [Ensurance](/?from=guide) funds the reach. It is not the list.

:::johnson
**fifty frameworks, nineteen things they commonly name.** — The reviewed frameworks carry between ten and twenty-seven top-level services under dozens of names. The nineteen are the ones that recur across the nine cross-referenced systems.

[see the nineteen →](/natural-capital/flows?from=guide)
:::

## fifty read, nine cross-referenced

The framework behind RealValue read more than 50 ecosystem services classifications, valuation frameworks and natural capital standards. The list runs from Costanza's 1997 estimate of the value of the world's ecosystem services and de Groot's 2002 typology, through the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, TEEB, InVEST, the Natural Capital Protocol, the Dasgupta Review and the SEEA ecosystem accounting standard, to FEMA's 2022 values, ENCORE and the TNFD framework. It also read the things a valuation has to sit beside: the Appraisal Institute's text, the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice, the IRS cost segregation guide.

Nine were cross-referenced, chosen because they are the ones valuation, disclosure and real asset work actually cite: SEEA EA, CICES v5.1, ESVD, FEMA ESV 2022, IPBES's nature's contributions to people, ENCORE, TNFD, InVEST and the Swiss Re Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Index. For each service in each of the nine, the review recorded the name used, the category it was filed under, the definition, whether an economic value had been calculated, the valuation methods, and the metrics.

The frameworks carry between ten and twenty-seven top-level services. Lay the nine beside each other and nineteen services recur across them, under different names. Those are the list. Not every framework names all nineteen: InVEST, ENCORE and Swiss Re BES, for example, do not classify existence value on their own, and the cross-reference leaves those cells blank or points to IPBES. The nineteen are what the nine commonly name, which is the Field Manual's claim, and the blanks are part of the record.

## the same work, many names

The reason a flat list of nineteen was needed is easiest to see in the names. Three rows from the cross-reference:

| The flow | SEEA EA | CICES v5.1 | ESVD 2020 / TEEB | FEMA 2022 / MA | IPBES NCP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pollination | Pollination services | Lifecycle maintenance, habitat and gene pool protection (the group; CICES also has a pollination class inside it) | Pollination | Pollination | Pollination and dispersal of seeds and other propagules |
| Clean Water | Water purification services; solid waste remediation services | Water conditions; mediation of wastes or toxic substances of anthropogenic origin by living processes | Waste treatment | Water filtration | Regulation of freshwater and coastal water quality |
| Existence & Legacy | Ecosystem and species appreciation | Other biotic characteristics that have a non-use value | Existence and bequest values | Existence value | Maintenance of options |

Each framework is right in its own house. CICES groups pollination with nursery habitat and gene pools because, ecologically, they are one process family; CICES classifies, it does not value. ESVD's "waste treatment" is the TEEB name the valuation studies were filed under. IPBES's "maintenance of options" reaches past bequest to every future use. A landowner, a lender or a city staffer who has to read all five sees one kind of work under five names. The framework picks one name per flow and keeps a crosswalk so the lineage is never lost.

## one name, no groups

The source frameworks also sort their services. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment introduced provisioning, regulating, cultural and supporting; TEEB and ESVD use provisioning, regulating, habitat and cultural; CICES uses provisioning, regulation and maintenance, and cultural; FEMA's toolkit uses provisioning, regulating, supporting and information. The groups do not agree either, and worse, a reader who meets them has to learn the groups as well as the services before the list means anything. So the nineteen stay flat. Each flow has a page at [/natural-capital/flows](/natural-capital/flows?from=guide), and the 2025 post [the 19 ecosystem services your business depends on](/guide/19-ecosystem-services-natural-capital-flows?from=guide) gives each a line on who depends on it.

Beside the nineteen, the original framework names two real asset benefits: Land Utilization and Resource Utilization. These are the income a property already earns: Land Utilization is the land itself in use, buildings, grazing, the real property rights; Resource Utilization is what is taken from it, raw materials, food, energy, and the emerging rights to carbon and the like. In the account they are the income side, and the Field Manual's own example of the reconciliation is a water or biodiversity certificate sold: the public-goods value is debited and the income credited so nothing is counted twice. That is why some pages say 21 core benefits and the manual says 19 flows. Both are true of their own version.

## why nineteen and not ninety

CICES's classes run far finer than its groups, and an ecologist is right to want them. But a parcel valuation attaches a dollar per acre per year to each row, and the value records are not filed that finely. ESVD's own services list has about two dozen entries; FEMA prices fourteen. Nineteen is roughly where the reviewed frameworks still name the same work and where the records can still fill the row. Finer detail belongs in the indicators attached to the polygon, not in the list.

Why not ten? Because the frameworks that stop at ten fold things together that fail separately. CICES files water abundance, risk resilience and erosion control all under "regulation of baseline flows and extreme events". A dry well, a flooded town and a slope that lost its soil in ordinary rain are three different losses, done by different places, paid for by different people.

## what the list does not say

The list does not say a place does all nineteen. A paved lot does a few. A peat bog does most. The polygon says which, and the value table says what each has been valued at in that kind of place; [where the dollar per acre comes from](/guide/where-the-dollar-per-acre-comes-from?from=guide) is next. The list also does not rank them. In the account the flows are summed, and in a living system they are produced together, so a buyer who wants one of them is buying a place that makes the rest. And the list is not finished; the review notes an open row for emerging biodiversity credit methodologies, and the crosswalk carries a version date.

## frequently asked questions

### what is the ecosystem services list?

The list of kinds of work an ecosystem does for people and other species. The framework behind RealValue uses nineteen: raw materials, food, energy, water abundance, healthy soils, medicinal and genetic, climate stability, clean air, clean water, risk resilience, pollination, erosion control, pest and disease control, habitat, recreation and experiences, research and learning, aesthetic and sensory, art and inspiration, and existence and legacy.

### how many ecosystem services are there?

It depends on the framework. The nine cross-referenced systems carry between ten and twenty-seven top-level services, and CICES's classes run far finer. Nineteen is the set the reviewed frameworks commonly name and that value records can fill.

### why is the list flat?

Because the groups the source frameworks use differ between them and have to be learned before the list means anything. This list names the flow and values it, and keeps a crosswalk back to each framework's own name and category.

## next

Where each row's number comes from: [where the dollar per acre comes from](/guide/where-the-dollar-per-acre-comes-from?from=guide).

If your operations depend on some of these nineteen and you want to know from where, [corporations](/solutions/corporations?from=guide&topic=stocks-and-flows) shows how a dependency is mapped to a stock. If you can already name the place, [tell us which](/contact?from=guide&topic=stocks-and-flows).

## sources

[BASIN Field Manual, Ecosystem Services Classification](https://docs.basin.global/appendix/ecosystem-services-classification) — more than 50 frameworks evaluated, nine cross-referenced, the 10 to 27 range, and what was recorded for each.

[BASIN Field Manual, Pollination](https://docs.basin.global/appendix/ecosystem-services-classification/ecosystem-services-classification/pollination), [Water Quality (filtration)](https://docs.basin.global/appendix/ecosystem-services-classification/ecosystem-services-classification/water-quality-filtration), [Existence](https://docs.basin.global/appendix/ecosystem-services-classification/ecosystem-services-classification/existence), [Erosion Control](https://docs.basin.global/appendix/ecosystem-services-classification/ecosystem-services-classification/erosion-control) — the per-framework entries behind the table.

[BASIN Field Manual, Core Benefits Definitions](https://docs.basin.global/core-benefits/core-benefits-framework/flows-core-benefits/core-benefits-definitions) — the 21 definitions, including land and resource utilization.

[BASIN Field Manual, FLOWS Values](https://docs.basin.global/realvalue/the-realvalue-of-natural-capital/realvalues/flows-values) — anthropocentric and public-goods values, and the reconciliation against double counting.

[BASIN RealValue Worksheet, Ecosystem Services Cross Reference and ES Class Sources](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-Ho1C5J2TCFnSJnkSbNXvBldMIUZGZyll3e6kSwazT4/edit) — the name-used table and the source list; version dated 8 February 2024; CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

[Haines-Young, R. and Potschin, M. 2018. Common International Classification of Ecosystem Services (CICES) V5.1.](https://cices.eu/) — the sections, groups and classes.

[Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. 2005. Ecosystems and Human Well-being: Synthesis. Island Press.](https://www.millenniumassessment.org/) — the four categories.

## the series

1. [the stocks and flows of natural capital](/guide/the-stocks-and-flows-of-natural-capital?from=guide) (read first)
2. [every acre is one of fifteen things](/guide/every-acre-is-one-of-fifteen-things?from=guide)
3. [nineteen things a place does](/guide/nineteen-things-a-place-does?from=guide)
4. [where the dollar per acre comes from](/guide/where-the-dollar-per-acre-comes-from?from=guide)
5. [the same acre is not the same acre](/guide/the-same-acre-is-not-the-same-acre?from=guide)
6. [flows over stocks](/guide/flows-over-stocks?from=guide)