Exploring ecosystem services assessment through Ecological Footprint accounting

The role of Ecological Footprint accounting as a biophysical approach for measuring the value of ecosystem services through a surface-equivalent unit is here investigated. This accounting tool allows keeping track of both the human demand on, and the Nature's supply of, a precise sub-set of ecosystem services thus being able to make an ecological balance at the country level. A comparison between Ecological Footprint and economic valuation analyses is finally performed, for the forest ecosystem type, to highlight complementarities and correlations of these different approaches.