Modeling multiple ecosystem services, biodiversity conservation, commodity production, and tradeoffs at landscape scales

Abstract

Ecosystems generate a range of goods and services important for human well-being, collectively called ecosystem services. Over the past decade, progress has been made in understanding how ecosystems provide services and how service provision translates into economic value (Daily 1997; MA 2005; NRC 2005). Yet, it has proven difficult to move from general pronouncements about the tremendous benefits nature provides to people to credible, quantitative estimates of ecosystem service values. Spatially explicit values of services across landscapes that might inform land-use and management decisions are still lacking (Balmford et al. 2002; MA 2005).Without quantitative assessments, and some incentives for landowners to provide them, these services tend to be ignored by those making land-use and land-management decisions. Currently, there are two paradigms for generating ecosystem service assessments that are meant to influence policy decisions. Under the first paradigm, researchers use broad-scale assessments of multiple services to extrapolate a few estimates of values, based on habitat types, to entire regions or the entire planet (eg Costanza et al. 1997;Troy and Wilson 2006;Turner et al. 2007). Although simple, this "benefits transfer" approach incorrectly assumes that every hectare of a given habitat type is of equal value -regardless of its quality, rarity, spatial configuration, size, proximity to population centers, or the prevailing social practices and values. Furthermore, this approach does not allow for analyses of service provision and changes in value under new conditions. For example, if a wetland is converted to agricultural land, how will this affect the provision of clean drinking water, downstream flooding, climate regulation, and soil fertility? Without information on the impacts of land-use management practices on ecosystem services production, it is impossible to design policies or payment programs that will provide the desired ecosystem services.In contrast, under the second paradigm for generating policy-relevant ecosystem service assessments, researchers carefully model the production of a single service in a small area with an "ecological production function" -how provision of that service depends on local ecological variables (eg Kaiser and Roumasset 2002;Ricketts et al. 2004). Some of these production function approaches also use market prices and non-market valuation methods to estimate the economic value of the service and how that value changes under different ecological conditions. Although these methods are superior to the habitat assessment benefits transfer approach, these studies lack both the scope (number of services) and scale (geographic and temporal) to be relevant for most policy questions.What is needed are approaches that combine the rigor of the small-scale studies with the breadth of broad-scale assessments (see Boody et Nature provides a wide range of benefits to people. There is increasing consensus about the importance of incorporating these "ecosystem services" into r...

Fighting carbon loss of degraded peatlands by jump-starting ecosystem functioning with ecological restoration

“…On the other hand, the economic feasibility of restoration can be increased with possible economic gains produced by the outcomes of restoration. Increased ecosystem service like climate regulation due to C sequestration (Nelson et al 2009, is one example of possible economic gains. Bearing in mind the possible caveats related to restoration of ecosystem services for environmental markets Filoso 2009, Bullock et al 2011), there is an apparent need to search for solutions to finance the huge globally accepted restoration targets.…”

“…Estimating the economic value of C sequestration at restored peatlands is a relatively new idea (Russi et al, 2013;Alexander & McInness, 2012;Nelson et al, 2009) and still far from straightforward (see e.g. Tanneberger & Wichtmann, 2012).…”

“…the value of current land use if not restored) and possible economic gains of restoration outcome. Increased ecosystem services, like societal benefits of C sequestration (Russi et al, 2013;Nelson et al, 2009), is one example of possible economic gain. Being able to answer these questions is increasingly important because recently a global target was set to fight climate change and biodiversity loss by restoration of 15 % of degraded ecosystems by 2020 (Convention on Biological Diversity, 2010).…”

Biodiversity and Resilience of Ecosystem Functions

“…However, the stability of species 96 composition itself is not a necessary pre-requisite for the resilience of ecosystem functions. 97 Turnover in species communities might actually be the very thing that allows for resilient 98 functions. For example, in communities subjected to climatic warming, cold-adapted species 99 are expected to decline whilst warm-adapted species increase [30].…”

“…These proxy measures are currently used to inform on spatial and temporal trends in ecosystem function for the reporting and management of biodiversity change [4][5][6]. Such models use abiotic variables such as land cover, topography and climate data as explanatory variables in spatially-explicit statistical correlative models [96,97] or process models [98,99] in order to predict the provision of ecosystem functions and services. However, because models are parameterised and validated (where undertaken) on the current set of environmental conditions they are often only suitable for producing indicators of short-term ecosystem function flows rather than resilience under environmental perturbations (Figure 4).…”