Ecosystem services—current challenges and opportunities for ecological research

Abstract

† These authors have contributed equally to this work.The concept of ecosystem services was originally developed to illustrate the benefits that natural ecosystems generate for society and to raise awareness for biodiversity and ecosystem conservation. In this article we identify major challenges and opportunities for ecologists involved in empirical or modeling ecosystem service research. The first challenge arises from the fact that the ecosystem service concept has not been generated in the context of managed systems. Ecologists need to identify the effect of anthropogenic interventions in order to propose practices to benefit service-providing organisms and associated services. The second challenge arises from the need to evaluate relationships between indicators of ecosystem services that are collected in ecological studies while accounting for uncertainties of ecological processes that underlie these services. We suggest basing the assessment of ecosystem services on the utilization of sets of indicators that cover aspects of service-providing units, ecosystem management and landscape modification. The third challenge arises from the limited understanding of the nature of relationships between services and a lack of a general statistical framework to address these links. To manage ecosystem service provisioning, ecologists need to establish whether services respond to a shared driver or if services are directly linked to each other. Finally, studies relating biodiversity to ecosystem services often focus on services at small spatial or short temporal scales, but research on the protection of services is often directed toward services providing benefits at large spatial scales. Ecological research needs to address a range of spatial and temporal scales to provide a multifaceted understanding of how nature promotes human well-being. Addressing these challenges in the future offers a unique opportunity for ecologists to act as promoters for the understanding about how to conserve benefits gained from nature.

Relationships Between Ecosystem Services: Comparing Methods for Assessing Tradeoffs and Synergies

“…Because of competition for land and natural resources, increasing the supply of one ecosystem service (ES) may result in reducing the supply of others (Minang et al, 2014;Seppelt et al, 2014;. Reconciling multiple conflicting objectives of ecosystem management and dealing with ES tradeoffs are major challenges of sustainable development and sustainability science (Birkhofer et al, 2015;Carpenter et al, 2009;Grêt-Regamey et al, 2016).…”

“…the focus of our study) has received much more attention than other dimensions of tradeoffs (Turkelboom et al, 2017). It has been conflated in an inconsistent and misleading way to the concepts of "ES relationships", "ES interactions" and "ES associations" in literature (Birkhofer et al, 2015;Mouchet et al, 2014;Seppelt et al, 2011). Mouchet et al (2014) observed that the word "tradeoff" should not be used to describe static negative associations between ES (like spatial congruence, spatial concordance, co-occurrence or overlap of ES), but reserved for associations repeated in time and space.…”

“…Mouchet et al (2014) observed that the word "tradeoff" should not be used to describe static negative associations between ES (like spatial congruence, spatial concordance, co-occurrence or overlap of ES), but reserved for associations repeated in time and space. Others called for a better distinction between two types of relationships between ES, as defined by Bennett et al (2009) (Birkhofer et al, 2015;Cord et al, 2017;Seppelt et al, 2011). Direct relationships between ES involve causal relationships between ES, while indirect relationships are based on correlations due to biophysical or socioeconomic drivers (Bennett et al, 2009;Birkhofer et al, 2015;Seppelt et al, 2011).…”

“…Others called for a better distinction between two types of relationships between ES, as defined by Bennett et al (2009) (Birkhofer et al, 2015;Cord et al, 2017;Seppelt et al, 2011). Direct relationships between ES involve causal relationships between ES, while indirect relationships are based on correlations due to biophysical or socioeconomic drivers (Bennett et al, 2009;Birkhofer et al, 2015;Seppelt et al, 2011). Only relationships falling in the first category are truly "ES interactions" ("ES associations" could be used for the second category) (Birkhofer et al, 2015).…”

Ecosystem service trade-offs and synergies misunderstood without landscape history

“…Understanding ES interactions at different temporal scales, both short-term and long-term, is another key challenge (Mouchet et al 2014, Birkhofer et al 2015. Ecosystem service interactions may involve time lags whereby historical decisions influence current provisioning of ES (Dallimer et al 2015).…”