About the Lab

The Ecosystem Values Lab is an applied research lab focused on advancing decision-relevant economic analysis at the intersection of ecosystems, risk, and public investment. The lab develops frameworks and evidence to clarify how ecosystem services and natural capital inform real planning, budgeting, and investment decisions.

The lab supports a rotating group of postdoctoral researchers, graduate students, and collaborators working across academic, public, and applied contexts. Research is organized around a shared model that emphasizes intellectual ownership, transparency, and engagement with real decision environments rather than a single institutional setting.

The Ecosystem Values Lab is led by Travis Warziniack, with a focus on mentoring early-career researchers and fostering work that bridges science, policy, and investment decisions.

How the lab works in practice

  • Research in the Ecosystem Values Lab is framed around real management, policy, and investment decisions rather than abstract questions alone. Projects are designed to inform specific choices—such as prioritization, resource allocation, and tradeoff analysis—with valuation methods selected and tailored to the decision context. This ensures results are relevant, interpretable, and defensible for applied use.

  • The lab approaches ecosystem service valuation with an explicit focus on real-world constraints, including uncertainty, limited data, and institutional boundaries. Emphasis is placed on transparency, appropriate treatment of uncertainty, and the use of best-available data rather than idealized assumptions. This pragmatic approach supports scientifically credible results that remain usable in applied decision settings.

  • Valuation is treated as a bridge between ecological outcomes and economic decision-making, not an end in itself. The lab focuses on translating ecosystem service values into information that can support conservation finance, investment prioritization, and economics-based environmental strategies. The goal is to help move conservation and restoration efforts from analysis toward implementation.

Our Research Model

The lab’s work is driven by real-world questions at the intersection of land management, public investment, and environmental risk. Projects are designed to be decision-relevant rather than purely theoretical, with an emphasis on transparency, reproducibility, and engagement with real planning, budgeting, and investment contexts.

Core areas of expertise include ecosystem services, natural capital accounting, conservation finance, and applied economic analysis. Across projects, the unifying goal is to clarify trade-offs and reduce uncertainty so economic evidence can be interpreted and used effectively in decisions that shape environmental outcomes.

“The environment is where we all meet, where we all have a mutual interest; it is the one thing all of us share. It is not only a mirror of ourselves, but a focusing lens on what we can become.”

— Lady Bird Johnson, Former First Lady of the United States