Joint analysis of stressors and ecosystem services to enhance restoration effectiveness

Abstract

With increasing pressure placed on natural systems by growing human populations, both scientists and resource managers need a better understanding of the relationships between cumulative stress from human activities and valued ecosystem services. Societies often seek to mitigate threats to these services through largescale, costly restoration projects, such as the over one billion dollar Great Lakes Restoration Initiative currently underway. To help inform these efforts, we merged high-resolution spatial analyses of environmental stressors with mapping of ecosystem services for all five Great Lakes. Cumulative ecosystem stress is highest in nearshore habitats, but also extends offshore in Lakes Erie, Ontario, and Michigan. Variation in cumulative stress is driven largely by spatial concordance among multiple stressors, indicating the importance of considering all stressors when planning restoration activities. In addition, highly stressed areas reflect numerous different combinations of stressors rather than a single suite of problems, suggesting that a detailed understanding of the stressors needing alleviation could improve restoration planning. We also find that many important areas for fisheries and recreation are subject to high stress, indicating that ecosystem degradation could be threatening key services. Current restoration efforts have targeted high-stress sites almost exclusively, but generally without knowledge of the full range of stressors affecting these locations or differences among sites in service provisioning. Our results demonstrate that joint spatial analysis of stressors and ecosystem services can provide a critical foundation for maximizing social and ecological benefits from restoration investments.Laurentian Great Lakes | cumulative impact | marine spatial planning | fresh water

Vegetation changes in recent large-scale ecological restoration projects and subsequent impact on water resources in China's Loess Plateau

“…These regions are more ecologically vulnerable, and sensitive to climate change and human activities, the health of which is a critical challenge (Reynolds et al, 2007;Liang et al, 2015;Yang et al, 2014Yang et al, , 2016. In order to address the serious environmental and ecological issues, a series of large-scale ecological restoration projects were carried out throughout the world (Allana et al, 2013), and China has also taken efforts in such actions since the 1950s (Huang et al, 2009). Recently, two large-scale ecological restoration projects, i.e., the Natural Forest Conservation (NFC) project and the Grain for Green (GFG) project, have been launched to improve vegetation coverage in the Loess Plateau of North China (Feng et al, 2013;Liu et al, 2008).…”

Sources and sinks of microplastics in Canadian Lake Ontario nearshore, tributary and beach sediments

“…Allan et al (2013) modeled current environmental stressors affecting the Great Lakes and found that cumulative stress levels were greatest in nearshore regions and generally decreased with distance from the shore. Only one investigation concerning microplastics pollution in Lake Ontario sediments has been published to date , despite it being the terminal lake within the Great Lakes system.…”

Linking the Abundance of Estuarine Fish and Crustaceans in Nearshore Waters to Shoreline Hardening and Land Cover

“…Thus, it is critical that we understand how accelerating land-based stressors will affect living resources in coastal ecosystems. Estuaries and other coastal areas are rapidly changing in response to intensifying stressors linked to human activities at both local and global scales (Lotze et al 2006;Halpern et al 2008;Barbier et al 2011;Allan et al 2013). Human population centers are already located predominantly in coastal areas, and population density near coasts continues to rapidly increase (Crossett et al 2004).…”