Ecosystem Services最新文献

The European Space Agency (ESA) project “Pioneering Earth Observation Applications for the Environment – Ecosystem Accounting” (PEOPLE-EA) aimed to study and demonstrate the relevance of Earth Observation (EO) for ecosystem accounting in terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems. Ecosystem accounts are inherently spatial accounts, with the implication that they strongly depend on the availability of spatially explicit datasets. In the project’s framework, an in-depth literature review of 113 scientific papers has shown EO data streams can be integrated to accelerate ecosystem account reporting. However, these workflows need to be further extended to support extent accounting that involves a more disaggregated ecosystem classification compared to land cover types. EO provides wall-to-wall monitoring and hence can contribute to provide reliable and consistent metrics on ecosystem condition, next to ecosystem extent. EO contribution is mainly to delineate and characterize ecosystem extent, structure, function and composition indices, and probably their distance from a reference condition, if not set too far back in time. The use of EO data for ecosystem services is more challenging, despite the well-established conceptual framework. EO data can support and accelerate ecosystem accounting under the standardised SEEA EA framework providing the most cost-effective way to collect large amounts of data in a standardised form with consistency in space and time.

Effective water policy requires good information. The System of Environment-Economic Accounting Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA-EA) organises information on ecosystems and the interactions with the economy. We investigate how accounting for water-related ecosystem services (ES) using SEEA-EA could provide information for water policy and management, using the integrated water resource management (IWRM) framework and a case study from the Australian Capital Territory (ACT). A policy review and consulting process linking ACT water policies to SEEA-EA identified three key issues, water security, water quality, and soil erosion, which are evident in many parts of the world. Available data and models were used to account for three ES related to these issues: water supply, soil and sediment retention (soil erosion control), and water purification (nutrient retention). Modelled estimates varied but were broadly consistent and used to construct ES accounts. The accounts provide comprehensive information linking the ecosystems supplying ES to the use of ES in economic production and consumption. This supports five ACT water policy actions and three of the four IWRM Principles. The accounts suggest investment in catchment restoration and management in the Queanbeyan River Catchment to increase ES and improve water supply and quality. The accounts show how much of water is available (IWRM Principle 1), and recognise water as an economic good (IWRM Principle 4) by identifying the uses of water by industry and households. The accounting also enables a participatory approach to water development and management (IWRM Principle 2) by providing stakeholders with information for informed decision-making. Because the policy issues in the case study are common, and IWRM is widely adopted, there is potential to use SEEA-EA for water policy and management globally.

This paper serves as an initial exploration of the stages involved in the formation of auroral ecosystem services (ES) and interactions between the geosphere, biosphere and anthroposphere. This is performed through the development of an auroral ES cascade model with the integration of four main co-production stages: (i) value attribution, (ii) mobilization of ES potential, (iii) value appropriation, and (iv) commercialization. The cascade model is expanded upon in detail by using examples from published academic and grey literature, highlighting the demand for capital inputs and strengthening the conceptual understanding of human-nature relationships in the context of auroral ES. The co-production stages illustrate the importance of action on the demand-side in order for the supply of benefits from auroral ES to be delivered. The potential for feedback from the anthroposphere into geophysical properties, processes and functions through anthropogenic space weather and artificial particle precipitation from the Van Allen Radiation Belts via ionospheric heating and low frequency radio wave generation is emphasized. Additionally, feedback via policy and decision making from the anthroposphere into the biosphere and geosphere is highlighted, especially in the context of managing light pollution and artificial space weather. The discussion considers the potential implications of the expanded model, in addition to the valuation of auroral ES across three value domains (monetary, socio-cultural and biophysical) and the potential use of such information in decision-making, followed by reflecting on the potential limitations of the expanded model.

Marine ecosystems provide essential services to coastal residents, particularly for indigenous fishing communities that have strong ties to the environment and obtain multiple benefits from their use and management of ocean spaces. However, understanding of how these are impacted by fisheries, external pressures, and ocean management, remains limited due to a focus on economic valuation and aggregated metrics. This study explores the importance of select marine ecosystem services to the wellbeing of an indigenous community in West Hawaiˈi and the observed impacts on these ecosystem services by commercial and subsistence fishing. We used a mixed-methods approach that combined a workshop with an online survey of community perceptions regarding community important marine resources and cultural values. We find that both fish and non-fish species are important to all four well-being categories, including food security, culture, mental wellbeing, and income, though the least importance was given to the economic value. This study also found that commercial fishing is perceived to have a higher negative impact on marine resources and cultural values than subsistence fishing, but a generally lower impact on non-fish than fish species. The lack of community input into legislation development and a lack of enforcement capacity were perceived to aggravate these further, whereas the integration of place-based knowledge, values and rules of the environment was seen as beneficial to both marine and cultural ecosystem services. Overall, this study shows that non-economic and disaggregated valuation approaches are critical for revealing the variable ecosystem services that marine environments provide to local communities and the importance of more inclusive resource management approaches to manage impacts on these services.

Coastal ecosystems provide multiple ecosystem services that are valued in diverse ways. The Nisqually River Delta (the Delta), an estuary in Puget Sound, Washington, U.S.A., is co-managed by the Nisqually Indian Tribe and the Billy Frank Jr. Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge. In an ecosystem services assessment, we used different service-appropriate methods including citizen science, statistical and geospatial models, and scenario analysis to evaluate three ecosystem services – recreational birdwatching, soil carbon accumulation and fishery production – indicated as priorities for the Refuge, Nisqually Indian Tribe, and surrounding communities. We developed a generalized additive mixed model set based on eBird mobile application birdwatching observations to understand the biological and landscape features that influence birdwatching and to project birdwatching visitation based on scenarios of Delta habitat change. We evaluated ecosystem service synergies and tradeoffs associated with habitat change for three coastal habitat types using scenario outputs from the birdwatching model and published results on Delta soil carbon accumulation and fishery production. The highest-ranked birdwatching models explained 88 % of the deviance and showed that visitation was greatest in winter months when distance to major cities was approximately 20 km. Recreational birdwatching increased with increasing area of forested wetland, emergent wetland, aquatic vegetation bed, open access, and total estuary. With increasing forested and emergent wetland area, recreational birdwatching, out-migrating juvenile Chinook salmon weight and soil carbon accumulation all increased. With increasing aquatic vegetation bed (resulting from sea level rise), recreational birdwatching increased, but salmon weight and soil carbon accumulation decreased. We identified practical ways in which ecosystem services may be incorporated into adaptive management frameworks that support climate adaptation decision making. This study illustrated how use of ecosystem services can help managers make decisions that have greater benefit for wildlife and people, communicate the societal value of decisions and increase local support and participation.

While greater business financing is important to halt the loss of biodiversity and environmental degradation, only a limited number of payments for ecosystem services (PES) schemes receive voluntary financing from companies. Recently, pilot private ecosystem marketplaces have emerged to function as an intermediary between suppliers and private buyers for ecosystem services projects with varying levels of validation, verification, additionality and permanence. However, business interests have not yet been the topic of much empirical research. To answer our research question on the preferences of business sector towards the ecosystem services credits that support the provision of environmental public goods, we collected survey data from 618 German companies through an online survey in 2019. We analysed characteristics of companies, perceived opportunities and threats, types of ecosystem services credits and the willingness to spend as factors to understand companies’ preferences. We showed that the ecosystem services credits concept appeals to a small proportion of companies. We found that companies have so far felt little pressure from assumed expectation. For example, there is no significant effect on companies’ interest in nature conservation steering from the link between company and nature. A nationwide internet platform, along with scientifically-based predictions of project impacts, was particularly appreciated by companies as it facilitated easier engagement by revealing regional project opportunities. Climate protection, water quality, and biodiversity emerged as the most appealing ecosystem services categories for companies. Additionally, companies expressed a preference for bundling relevant ecosystem services options. Our study highlights the significance of considering companies’ local preferences. Furthermore, we observed that the majority of companies demonstrated a willingness to make low threshold and flexible contributions. By presenting descriptive evidences based on primary data from a large number of companies, this research addresses a previously existing gap of business interests in financing ecosystem services provision via new innovative markets.

The vital role of urban trees in mitigating surface runoff issues through the Runoff Reduction Ecosystem Service (RRES) is increasingly threatened by extensive modifications to the urban landscape. To ensure the sustainability of RRES, it is crucial to understand how landscape configuration affects it. This study aims to empirically analyze this relationship and determine which aspects of the urban landscape configuration impact RRES the most. The study applied the i-Tree Eco to quantify RRES. Landscape configuration was calculated using eleven metrics by FRAGSTATS. The impact of various aspects of landscape configuration on RRES was assessed by developing models based on stepwise regression analysis, which were then categorized based on their strength of influence. The results showed that urban trees in Tabriz, a study area in Iran, annually reduced runoff by 196.85 × 103 m³. The regression models underscored the significance of the normalized landscape shape index, the aggregation index, the effective mesh size, and the clumpiness index as the main drivers of RRES (0.962 ≤ r² ≤ 0.978). Landscape division, patch density, patch cohesion, interspersion, and juxtaposition indexes had moderate impacts (0.733 ≤ r² ≤ 0.879). In contrast, factors such as the percentage of similar adjacencies, the splitting index, and the number of patches had relatively lower impacts (0.569 ≤ r² ≤ 0.667). These findings have practical implications for urban planners, emphasizing the importance of arranging patches in aggregated and contiguous patterns to improve RRES provision. Ultimately, this study provides valuable information for effective urban landscape management, ensuring a sustained supply of RRES.

Values of nature have different forms and are expressed through a variety of ways, depending on the culture and people in focus. Such values influence decisions and policies made about nature, especially regarding conservation and management. Current decision-making predominately focuses on instrumental and economic values of nature, often neglecting diverse and plural values, including intrinsic and relational ones. Additionally, the voice of marginalized communities such as Indigenous People and Local Communities (IPLC), and more so, Indigenous women, is often not recognized, leading to inequitable outcomes. Even though gender has been shown to influence value perceptions, no comprehensive review exists of how it affects values of nature within IPLC. This review aims to close this gap. Through a systematic literature review and thematic analysis, this paper highlights the values of nature and Nature’s Contributions to People held by IPLC and insights of applying a gender lens to existing research in this field. The results indicate a focus on study areas in Asia, South America and Africa, as well as toward forests as ecosystems. The predominant valuation methods include preference assessments and semi-structured interviews. This review shows that IPLC hold diverse values, including instrumental, intrinsic, and relational values. Gendered insights were found to be connected to gendered responsibilities within communities. For example, domestic food products, homegardens, and wild edible plants are often of higher importance to female IPLC, due to their prominent role in household and family care. Research gaps on gendered values have also been shown, especially for religious, spiritual, and cultural heritage values.

Ecosystem services justice is an emergent research field. Over the past decade, research on ecosystem services has increasingly developed a justice perspective and incorporated it into its conceptual and empirical frameworks. This perspective aims at providing a review of the emergent strands of research addressing ecosystem services justice, and at creating an outlook on future research needs and frontiers. The review departs from central critiques to the ecosystem service approach, which have been foundational for the research field of ecosystem services justice. To be precise, we address three different research strands on which justice issues arise. First, ecosystem services production, considering the (increasing) commodification of ecosystem services, the concentration of ecosystem services production assets and the role of trade-offs in production capacities. Second, the distribution of ecosystem services benefits under the aspects of unequal vulnerabilities, the consideration of accessibility and individual’s capabilities to obtain ecosystem services. Third, the recognition of ecosystem services pluralisms, including socially differentiated forms of wellbeing, plural values and knowledge concerning ecosystem services. While ES justice has strongly advanced from a scientific perspective, we are still lacking a stronger reflection of these advances in practice. Future research, we argue, needs to develop holistic procedural frameworks for integrating the complexity of ecosystem services justice, addressing the ecosystem services production under consideration of historic inequalities, the distribution of ecosystem services benefits with respect to people’s diverse needs, vulnerabilities, and capabilities, as well as diverse wellbeing-, value-, and knowledge-systems. The social-ecological understanding of ecosystem services co-production, which recognizes the dynamic and reciprocal relationship between humans and ecosystems, is identified as a crucial framing for this endeavor.

Ecuadorian ecosystems experience high pressure due to anthropogenic activities and climate change. Despite the need of regular monitoring of biodiversity and ecosystem services (BES), attempts to assess the current and future interdependencies of BES and landscape changes are still lacking. This study suggests a spatial assessment of the capacity of ecosystems/land use types to provide BES as status quo and its future development under scenarios of deforestation and climate change. To address data scarcity and improve legitimacy, spatial modeling was combined with participatory approaches. Specifically, changes in landscape pattern were simulated using a modeling platform that combines Geographic Information System (GIS) and Cellular Automaton (CA) modules. Experts in ecosystem conservation and management participated through surveys and workshops. Food, drinking water, service water, soil erosion control, water flow regulation, pollination/seed dispersal, regulation of macro climate, and landscape aesthetic/amenity were identified as the most relevant ES. Among the forest ecosystems, Páramo-related ecosystems were regarded to provide multiple ES with high capacities. Compared to the current status, the deforestation scenario showed to decrease most BES by 20–25 %, while increasing food provision by 5 %, as a trade-off. Regarding the climate change scenarios, the “Representative Concentration Pathways” (RCP) by 2070 were simulated with an increase in temperature of 2 °C (RCP 2.6) and of 4 °C (RCP 6.0). RCP 6.0 showed more noticeable impact than RCP 2.6, which caused a decrease in most BES whereas an increase in food provision due to the possible expansion of arable land into higher altitudes. The results of the spatial assessment also indicated high and low potential areas for BES provision. Such information can support decision-making for BES management e.g., priority areas for actions. Furthermore, the applied spatially explicit assessment could be a starting point for a regular assessment of BES, which has not yet been implemented in Ecuador.