Anthony Gibbons , Francesco Martini, Cian White, Emma King, Jane C. Stout, Ian Donohue, Andrew Parnell

Ecosystem accounting is a structured way to integrate nature into sustainable
decision-making. The System of Environmental Economic Accounting-Ecosystem
Accounting (SEEA-EA) was adopted by the United Nations as a set of international
standards for the collection of habitat data and compiling ecosystem accounts. The
ecosystem extent account is one of the four pillars of the SEEA-EA framework, where
the spatial composition of an ecosystem accounting area is grouped by habitat types,
and the land cover change over time is quantified. Here, we present ExActR (Extent
Accounts in R), an open-source application for generating extent accounts using
shapefiles, a geospatial vector data format. The app is built in R and the associated
Shiny framework, which automatically updates as the user interacts with it. The
application supports multiple timepoints, where extent accounts (tables) are generated
for consecutive pairs of timepoints, accommodating users’ needs for dynamic
ecosystem assessments across several periods. Data visualisations are generated in the
form of both interactive (leaflet) and static maps of each timepoint, and barplots to
illustrate land type composition and change. A version of the app has been deployed
(available at https://gibbona1.shinyapps.io/extent_app/), offering a space for
interactive exploration of ecosystems. Shiny’s reactivity, combined with JavaScript
plugins for copying tables into multiple formats, including LaTeX and plots, make the
application results suitable to insert directly into reports. The app is suitable for using
with any spatial grouping variable. We test its functionality on small and large study
sites on CORINE land cover data, as well as land cover maps generated using
very-high resolution satellite imagery of a wind farm site in Ireland, during and post
construction, demonstrating its ability to adapt to various land cover classification
systems. The tool can be used to understand, visualise and track changes in ecosystem
assets, aiding interpretation by both scientists and stakeholders.