What gaps in knowledge need to be addressed to better understand and assess drivers, impacts and responses of biodiversity, ecosystem functions and services at the regional level? Much biodiversity remains to be scientifically under sampled for all types of ecosystems in the Americas, particularly in South America and in the deep oceans. The potential areas with gaps in knowledge in this Regional Assessment include: The contributions of NCP to quality of life, considering the mismatch of social and quality of life (well-being) data produced at the political scale and ecological data produced at a biome scale; The assessment of non-material NCP that contribute to quality of life; The linkages from indirect to direct drivers and from the drivers to specific changes in biodiversity and NCP; The factors that affect the ability to generalize and scale up or down the results of individual studies; The evaluation of the impacts of short-term and long-term policy and programmes; Investments in generating new knowledge on these matters, which are discussed across chapters, may better elucidate how human quality of life is highly dependent on a healthy natural environment as well as how threats to natural environments affect quality of life in the short, median and long-term.