Ecosystem service supply and (in)equality archetypes

Abstract

Overall patterns of ecosystem services (ES) supplied by a landscape often hide distributional (in)equalities that condition how the benefits from nature are provided and used by people. This is evident in landscapes dominated by private ownership and composed of a mosaic of property sizes, across which ES supply can vary substantially. So far, the distributional inequalities in ES supply have been assessed only implicitly through the identification of ES bundles that yield hotspots and coldspots, whereas explicit analyses of how ES supply is shaped by distributional (in)equalities are lacking. Taking southern Chile as a case study, we applied a clustering approach at the municipality scale (n = 177), using data at the property level to identify archetypes in (i) the supply of eight ES and (ii) the (in)equalities of that supply using the Gini coefficient. We then analyzed the spatial co-occurrence between ES supply and (in)equality archetypes, to identify which patterns of (in)equality intersect with the supply of ES. We obtained six ES supply archetypes and ten (in)equality archetypes that showed characteristic spatial patterns. Supply archetypes were spatially dominated by a single archetype, which had below average values in the supply of all ES. Contrarily, (in)equality archetypes presented a more heterogeneous distribution across the study area. ES supply archetypes were defined by regulating and cultural ES, whereas (in)equality archetypes were shaped by provisioning and regulating ES. Spatial co-occurrence analysis showed that the dominant ES supply archetype encompassed all (in)equality archetypes – suggesting that property structure can modulate the (in)equality at which ES are supplied. We discuss the policy and management implications arising from the different co-occurring levels of ES supply and (in)equalities. Understanding the linkages between ES supply and distributional (in)equalities at large spatial scales and high resolution can help to prioritize spatial interventions seeking to improve equitable and sustainable ES supply.