Adapting the EFA Calculator software to utilise the outputs from the QuESSA project.

In 2015 AERU developed a software application for the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) known as the EFA Calculator. This application calculates the potential impact on ecosystem services and biodiversity of different Ecological Focus Areas (EFAs) on farms. At the same time (2013-2017) a pan-European research project (funded by the European Commission (FP7) and lead by the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT) in the UK) has been undertaken known as the QUESSA project (Quantification of Ecosystem Services for Sustainable Agriculture – see http://www.quessa.eu/). One of the objectives of this project is to develop a tool to deliver the outputs from the QUESSA project on farms, with the aim of enhancing the exploitation of semi-natural habitats for their ecosystem services provision. There is a strong overlap between the outputs of the QUESSA project and the EFA Calculator, thus it makes sense to utilise the EFA Calculator as a delivery vehicle for the QUESSA project outputs (rather than develop a new tool from scratch). This project will explore and develop options for doing this.