Mapping of nutrient regulating ecosystem service supply and demand on different scales in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany

Abstract

This study deals with one of the regulating ecosystem services, nutrient regulation. In order to guarantee sustainable land management, it is of great relevance to gain spatial information on this ecosystem service. Unsustainable land management with regard to nutrient regulation may, for example, result in eutrophication which has been identified as a major threat for the environmental state of our water bodies. In the first step of research, the potential supplies and demands of/for nutrient regulation were assessed and mapped at two different spatial scales: The German federal state of Schleswig-Holstein (regional scale) and the Bornhöved Lakes District (local scale). The assessment was undertaken for nitrogen, as an exemplary nutrient. Subsequently, potential supply and demand, combined with the nitrate leaching potential and the groundwater nitrate concentration, were incorporated into a correlation analysis. The data was statistically analysed with varying pre-processing and spatial resolutions. The statistical analysis reveals that large scale data with low resolution leads to more uncertain results. Decreasing the spatial scale and increasing the resolution of the data through a spatially more explicit assessment, leads to more explicit results. It is striking that the study reveals a spatial mismatch between the potential supply and demand for the ecosystem service nutrient regulation, which denotes unsustainable land management in the study areas.

Combining Methods to Estimate Ecosystem Integrity and Ecosystem Service Potentials and Flows for Crop Production in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany

“…Comparing these findings to the estimated nitrogen surplus (in kg N/(ha*a)) on agricultural grounds (Bicking et al 2018), the following can be stated: Generally, the areas with high maize production are featured with high nitrogen surpluses. In combination with the assessed EI variable reduction of nutrient loss ( Figure 4B) a serious picture arises, as these areas exhibit a very low potential for the reduction of nutrient loss.…”

“…The remote sensing data sets were sampled in grasslands. A Pearson's correlation was performed for: 1) Crop production ES potential (BBN approach), 2) EI variable reduction of nutrient loss (as nitrate leaching potential), 3) EI variable storage capacity (as residual biomass), 4) estimated nitrogen surplus (Bicking et al 2018), 5) grass production (as grass yield), 6) EI variable exergy capture (as NDVI), 7) EI variable biotic water flows (as temperature difference) and 8) Abiotic heterogeneity (as edge density), 9) Gross primary production, 10) Net primary production and 11) EI variable entropy export (as respiration).…”

“…Spatial analysis and representation (mapping) are useful to visualize natural assets and trade-offs between different interests and to promote efficient management strategies (Hou et al 2013;). Furthermore, spatial analyses can be performed in order to create additional knowledge on human-environmental interactions Schröter et al 2014;Burkhard & Maes 2017b).…”

Quantification and mapping of the nutrient regulation ecosystem service demand on a local scale

“…Within the ES concept, the ES potential has been defined to refer to the hypothetical maximum yield of selected ES (Burkhard et al 2014), whereas the ES flow describes ES that are actually used in a specific area and time, driven by a demand for ES (Villamagna et al 2013;Syrbe et al 2017). The potential and demand for the ES nutrient regulation have been assessed in previous studies (Barrios 2007;de Bello et al 2010;Bicking et al 2018Bicking et al , 2019. Thereby, the ES concept has been proven to be a suitable approach for assessing the nutrient situation within the agricultural context (Power 2010;Willemen et al 2017).…”

“…In this study, the nutrient regulation ES demand was quantified and mapped on the scale of individual fields in the case study area Eversen. Based upon literature research (Leip et al 2011;Eurostat 2013;Özbek and Leip 2015;DüV 2017;Bicking et al 2018), two different methodologies were developed for calculating nutrient budgets as indicator for the nutrient regulation demand; a budget from the agricultural and a budget from the ecological perspective (for more information see Section 2.3).…”