Ecosystem service concepts have emerged over the last 10 to 15 years in an effort to bridge the science / policymaking divide for environmental management. They continue to attract controversy in terms of whether we should ‘monetize’ nature; but as Costanza (2006, Nature 443, 749) points out, ‘valuing ecosystem services is not identical to commodifying them for trade in private markets’. Moreover, the framework is increasingly being adopted by major policy making institutions globally e.g. UNEP, FAO, OECD, UNDP; therefore, considering and shaping the contribution of soils within natural capital and ecosystem service frameworks is important; especially understanding where they fit in, and how we value them.

As Europe, under the new Common Agricultural Policy, shifts more toward land stewardship, so managing soils for multiple functions becomes more important than simply maximizing production. This shift recognizes that land provides multiple functions or ecosystem services that are vital for regulating the earth system and sustaining life support. These include; food, feed and fibre provision, climate regulation, water regulation, disease and pest regulation, as well as providing a genetic resource pool, from which for instance we obtain medical resources such as antibiotics.

In this presentation we present national scale soil change data from the Countryside Survey which span 30 years and are part of a holistic ecosystem assessment of the state and change of the British countryside. We consider how this data contributes to understanding natural capital and ecosystem services and where soils fit into these frameworks. We review progress in the development of soil ecosystem service conceptual frameworks, especially the stock-flow, fund-service approach, and go on to examine some of the advances in modelling being used to operationalize ecosystem service concepts using the Land Utilisation and Capability Indicator model (LUCI), which allows for the assessment and trade-off of ecosystem services for management decisions at farm to regional scales.