Introduction

The condition of ecosystems and their services are influenced in particular by climate change and atmospheric nitrogen deposition. Due to this, the European Union has set the goal of assessing and mapping the condition of ecosystems and ecosystem services at the Union and Member State level in order to implement conservation or protection measures where necessary. So far, there is no rule-based quantitative methodology for this. Therefore, this contribution presents a methodology with which ecosystem services can be ordinally classified and mapped in a rule-based, transparent and automated way on the basis of empirical data and data modelled for projections for four spatial scales by examples of Germany.