Ecosystem service trade-offs across global contexts and scales

Abstract

ABSTRACT. Meeting human needs while sustaining the planet's life support systems is the fundamental challenge of our time. What role sustenance of biodiversity and contrasting ecosystem services should play in achieving a sustainable future varies along philosophical, cultural, institutional, societal, and governmental divisions. Contrasting biophysical constraints and perspectives on human well-being arise both within and across countries that span the tropics and temperate zone. Direct sustenance of livelihoods from ecosystem services in East Africa contrasts with the complex and diverse relationships with the land in Mexico and the highly monetary-based economy of the United States. Lack of understanding of the contrasting contexts in which decision-making about trade-offs occurs creates impediments to collective global efforts to sustain the Earth's life support systems. While theoretical notions of the goals of sustainability science seek a unified path forward, realities on the ground present challenges. This Special Feature seeks to provide both an analytical framework and a series of case studies to illuminate impediments posed to sustainability by contrasting biophysical constraints and human perspectives on what should be sustained. The contributors aim to clarify the trade-offs posed to human welfare in sustaining biodiversity and ecosystem services and the challenges in managing for a sustainable future in which human well-being is not compromised as compared to today. Our goal is to provide novel insights on how sustainability can be achieved internationally through exploration of constraints, trade-offs, and human values examined at multiple scales, and across geographic regions from a range of cultural perspectives.Key Words: biophysical constraints; cultural contexts; ecosystem services; empirical case studies; human preferences; sustainability framework; trade-offs INTRODUCTIONOur aim in this Special Feature is to synthesize the relevant ecological and welfare economics literature to present a simple analytical framework for understanding the constraints and challenges of a sustainability transition across spatial scales and biophysical, cultural, and institutional contexts, and to apply the framework to a series of empirical case studies that traverse this range of contexts. We define sustainability as meeting the needs of current populations without compromising those of future generations, following the 1987 World Commission on Environment and Development chaired by Gro Harlem Brundtland. Inherent to this definition is the imperative to maintain the Earth's life support systems. The framework, which focuses on trade-offs between provisioning ecosystem services, on the one hand, and regulating services or biodiversity, on the other, helps reveal how the contrasting perspectives and needs of different stakeholders drive very different preferred and realized outcomes. Empirical analysis using this framework allows stakeholders to identify the biophysical constraints of natural systems in generat...

Production possibility frontiers and socioecological tradeoffs for restoration of fire adapted forests

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Associations of Leaf Spectra with Genetic and Phylogenetic Variation in Oaks: Prospects for Remote Detection of Biodiversity

“…Gaps in documenting and monitoring biodiversity are largest in areas where biodiversity is greatest and where existing biodiversity may be most threatened [4], highlighting the need for globally consistent and continuous approaches for assessing changes in biodiversity [5]. Using remote sensing to monitor changes monitor changes in biodiversity, including in remote and logistically challenging ecosystems around the Earth, is emerging as a promising approach to contribute to an integrated global biodiversity monitoring system [5][6][7][8].…”

Land‐use intensity indirectly affects ecosystem services mainly through plant functional identity in a temperate forest

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