Diversity of ecosystem services and landscape multi-functionality: from scientific concepts to integrative assessment

Abstract

Ecosystem and landscape are basic functional units of the Earth surface systems. The scientific concepts have come into being from the perspectives of the supports provided by ecosystems and landscapes for human survival and development as well as sustainable use and environmental conservation. Recently, researches on ecosystem service and multifunctional landscapes have grown into hotspots in the fields of eco鄄environmental sciences. However, quantitative analyses regarding ecosystem services and landscape multi鄄functionality are still weak and premature as revealed by the international research progress on these themes. Ecosystem and landscape are organized hierarchically, where the former acts as building blocks for the latter. Therefore, ecosystem service and landscape function may have the same origin. The present paper advocates that the close integration of ecosystem service and landscape multi鄄functionality researches has both real world basis and advantage of advancing the quality of quantitative analysis on ecosystem service and landscape multi鄄 functionality. An integrative framework for this task has been formulated accordingly. Scales and scaling, methodological integration, the interactions among ecosystem services and landscape functions as well as management intervention are the core themes under this framework. From the contemporary literature, we can see that this framework is operational and can be treated as a viable choice to advance the researches of both ecosystem services and landscape multi鄄functionality.