Valuing our Working & Natural Lands
Although our working and natural lands have immeasurable intrinsic value, these open space lands also provide services that have real, quantifiable economic values — values that are often ignored by markets and can easily be taken for granted. Like built capital, our natural capital — forests, wetlands, rivers, farms, parks — provide goods and services, or ecosystem services, that contribute to our economy.
The Healthy Lands and Healthy Economies Initiative
The Healthy Lands and Healthy Economies Initiative is a regional collaboration led by Sonoma County Ag + Open Space, the Resource Conservation District of Santa Cruz County, and the Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority to quantify the benefits and economic values that are provided to the community by working lands and natural areas.
Funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the S.D. Bechtel Jr. Foundation, and the California State Coastal Conservancy, the Healthy Lands & Healthy Economies Initiative demonstrates how community investments in protecting agricultural land and other open spaces enhance the local economy and provide cost-effective ways to achieve community benefits like clean drinking water, flood control, and food security.
A countywide study, The Multiple Benefits of Sonoma County Working and Natural Lands, offers a broad estimate of the value of natural and working lands in Sonoma County, and the return on decades of local conservation investments by tribes, landowners, public agencies and non-profits. Complementing this screening-level evaluation of natural capital, a suite of local case studies detail these services for particular themes or places in Sonoma County.
In addition, Natural Capital in Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, and Sonoma Counties summarizes the ecosystem services across all three counties. For more details about the natural capital in Santa Clara County, please visit www.openspaceauthority.org/HLHE, and for more details about natural capital in Santa Cruz County, visit www.rcdsantacruz.org/healthy-lands-healthy-economies.
Healthy Lands & Healthy Economies Reports (downloadable PDFs)
- Executive Summary Brochure
- The Multiple Benefits of Sonoma County Working & Natural Lands
- Natural Capital in Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, and Sonoma Counties
Case Studies (downloadable PDFs)
- The Value of Protecting the Sonoma Coast
- The Value of Urban Open Space: Exercise & Health
- The Value of Conserving Taylor Mountain
- The Value of Nature-Based Education
- The Value of Land Conservation: Groundwater
- The Value of Protecting Riparian Corridors
- The Value of Protecting a Watershed: Cooley Ranch
- The Value of Conserving Grasslands & Rangelands
- The Value of Protecting Rangeland: Local Cheese
- The Value of Protecting the Sonoma Baylands
- The Value of Protecting Open Spaces: Resiliency
Technical Reports (downloadable PDFs)
- Nature’s Value in Sonoma County, 2015
- The Economic Value of Natural Capital on the Sonoma Coast, 2015
- Multiple Benefits & Values of Sonoma County Riparian Corridors, Coming Soon!
- Economic Value of Land Conservation: Upper Dry Creek & Cooley Ranch, 2017
- Urban Open Space: Essential to Physical & Mental Health, 2016
- Artisan Cheese and Land Conservation Case Study, Coming Soon!
- The Value of the Sonoma Baylands, 2017
- Economic Value of Taylor Mountain Regional Park & Open Space Preserve, 2016
- Nature-based education in Sonoma County, 2016
- The Value of Aquifers in Sonoma County, 2017