Payments for forest-based ecosystem services in the United States, 2005-2019

This data publication includes a comprehensive accounting and estimation of total payments for forest-based ecosystem services to private forest landowners in the 50 United States. These data include payments in terms of real (inflation-adjusted, constant) 2015 dollars and participating acres (where data are available) by state, year, and payment program or market. Payment programs and markets are grouped into mechanism types including public payments, compliance transactions, and voluntary transactions. Ecosystem services are grouped into categories including carbon sequestration and storage, watershed protection and water quality, wildlife habitat, and bundled services. Also included is a user guide that provides a thorough description of data sources and processing and estimation procedures.
The objective of compiling, processing, estimating, and summarizing these data is to achieve the most robust and complete accounting of payments for forest-based ecosystem services possible, to provide a comprehensive understanding of the nature, magnitude, and trends of these programs and markets. These data were initially compiled primarily for the purpose of reporting Indicator 6.27: "Revenue from forest-based environmental services" within the U.S. National Report on Sustainable Forests (McGinley et al. 2023), which is part of the U.S. commitment to reporting on forest conditions under the Montreal Process. Data were compiled from numerous primary data sources which include administrative data from public programs, registries of offsets/credits for voluntary and compliance markets, and surveys of market participants.
These data were published on 10/12/2021. Minor metadata updates were made on 06/23/2023 and 06/05/2024.