Planning for the conservation and management of ecosystem services in Central Chile

Abstract

The ecosystem services concept emphasizes the benefits societies obtain from ecosystems.These benefits include the production of food and clean water, the regulation of floods, provision for recreation and scenic beauty, a connection to place, and inspiration. Ecosystem services have become popular within both scientific and policy circles as a means to document the value humans place on ecosystems, evaluating these benefits from nature and using the resulting knowledge to inform landuse management decisions. The integration of ecosystem services into decision-making, nevertheless, remains challenging. The research that comprises this thesis provides a comprehensive framework for strengthening the dialogue between ecosystem services assessment and decision-making. My case studies focus on critical challenges in the translation and transformation of ecosystem services as a concept, to a component that improves environmental decision-making.Numerous assessments have quantified, mapped, and valued ecosystem services. However, much of the literature fails to clarify how the information gathered in such assessments can be used to inform decisions that will affect ecosystem services. I propose a framework for making decisions for ecosystem services adapted from decision science and synthesize the degree to which the peerreviewed ecosystem services literature has captured these steps. I find that the ecosystem services literature has not covered all the steps of a formal decision-making process. For the ecosystem service paradigm to gain traction in science and policy arenas, future ecosystem service assessments should have clearly articulated objectives and meet user-related measures for ecosystem services, seek to evaluate the consequences of scenario alternatives, and facilitate closer engagement between scientists and stakeholders.There is a paucity of studies of ecosystem services assessments under global change, particularly in the developing countries of Latin America. I demonstrate a rapid assessment of the impacts of global change on key ecosystem services in the data-sparse region of Central Chile. This approach translates expert-derived qualitative scenario storylines into quantitative spatial predictions of the combined effects of climate change, urbanization and fire events on the future provision of carbon storage, wine production, and scenic beauty for the year 2050. I find that the cumulative impacts of climate change and urbanization are likely to place considerable pressure on ecosystem services in Central Chile by mid-century revealing the need for stronger planning regulations to manage land-use change.In environmental decision-making, there is increasing attention towards equity of access to ecosystem services, and in conservation implementation. In central Chile, distribution of ecosystem 2 services must be considered within the context of substantial economic and social inequity. I develop a user-related measure to assess the accessibility of the population to the protected area network. ...