My friends at Carpe Diem West, who’ve been doing some interesting work on the science/politics/policy interface of watershed restoration, are holding one of those ghastly named but increasingly useful “webinar” things next week:

Join the Academy’s first extended webinar taking a closer look at how to value watersheds and the services they provide to downstream users.

Investment in watersheds expands the portfolio of risk management options available to water utilities as they plan for the effects of climate change on their water systems. Implementing a watershed valuation study informs the structure of, and determine possible sources of funding for, ongoing watershed investment programs. Watershed valuation helps answer some of the questions of what services watersheds provide, and how to account for them – for example, what are the costs of providing those services through some other mechanism or what costs can be avoided by investing in watersheds?