Ecosystem Services最新文献

Ecosystem services (ES) researchers have recognized the important role of urban planning decisions in influencing the quantity and distribution of ES in cities. However, knowledge about ES among planners is still modest, and more research is needed about planners’ experiences with ES. For this qualitative study, interviews and focus groups were conducted with actors with roles in urban planning in three Canadian cities. The aim was to understand participants’ knowledge of ES and how they use it. These early adopters were creative, practical, and politically astute in using ES ideas, rhetoric, and tools to build the case for natural urban ecosystems. ES was used in multiple and intersecting ways for awareness-raising, to justify the protection and restoration of natural ecosystems, to provide direction to plans, and to support and supplement existing planning approaches. The strategic use of ES was notable. As a boundary object, ES helped to bridge perspectives and to integrate policies. The ability of ES to facilitate policy coordination is promising. Further research on the effectiveness of ES to improve urban policy is needed.

As assessing urban ecosystem services and disservices is of rapidly growing interest in a context of increasingly urbanized environments, greater scholarly attention needs to be placed on how different informants perceive these services and disservices. Previous research in urban geography and planning has already pointed at the challenges of building inclusive natural outdoor environments such as green and blue spaces in gentrifying neighborhoods, particularly those undergoing green gentrification. In response, we analyze the ecosystem services and disservices identified by community and state respondents in seven cities with gentrifying neighborhoods, pronounced social inequalities, and where natural outdoor environments were created or improved: Amsterdam, Bristol, Cleveland, Lyon, Montreal, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. We found that in cities experiencing green gentrification, interviewees – particularly community informants – reported a wide array of ecosystem services and disservices, and identified some disservices previously under-studied (i.e. physical tiredness, low attractiveness and forced displacement). Our study illustrates how differences in decision making positions can impact perceptions of ecosystem services and disservices. Our study has implications for urban environmental planning decisions that will help maximize the ecosystem services provided by urban natural outdoor environments. Only if all perceived ecosystem services and disservices are considered, will it be possible to design green just cities.

Urban ecosystem accounting can provide the structure for systematically integrating the value of urban green spaces into management and decision making to support urban resilience and sustainability. However, there are very few instructive examples of urban ecosystem accounting, particularly those created collaboratively with a municipality. Therefore, the aim of this study was to develop co-created urban ecosystem accounts using Tampere, Finland, as a case study. By discussing concrete political and planning-related needs, priorities, and data availability, this study identified urban flooding and the role of green spaces in alleviating this challenge as critical issues. An ecosystem extent account was compiled for accounting years 2012 and 2018 to quantify changes in the extent of ecosystem types. Additionally, an ecosystem service account (physical and monetary), for runoff retention, was compiled for the same years. The runoff retention service was quantified using the InVEST Urban Flood Risk Mitigation model, considering two precipitation events representative of rainstorms that trigger urban flooding. The runoff retention service was translated into service providing areas, which were used in conjunction with service demanding areas to estimate the physical terms of actual flows of retention service for accounting. The monetary value of the service was estimated using the avoided damage cost method. Between 2012 and 2018, the value of runoff mitigation service provided by green spaces increased by 7 % under the 24 mm scenario and by more than 40 % under the 50 mm scenario. The accounts showed concretely how important urban green spaces are in the City of Tampere, and provide an argument to preserve and even increase them in the urban structure. Our experiential ecosystem accounts for urban runoff retention service by green spaces also offer insights to other municipalities, encouraging them to take steps forward in ecosystem accounting.

Coastal wetlands (i.e., mangroves, saltmarshes, and seagrasses) have been recognised as an efficient natural climate solution to help mitigate and adapt to climate change. These ecosystems are also known to provide additional ecosystem services to coastal communities (e.g., fisheries and biodiversity enhancement, nutrient removal). Despite their importance to coasts and coastal communities, we lack spatially explicit information on the values of these ecosystems and the estimated return on investment from coastal management activities to rehabilitate them. Here, we aligned an environmental economic accounting framework combined with a scenario analysis to develop a set of accounts for mangroves, saltmarshes, and seagrasses across the state of Victoria (Australia) as a case study, including the following ecosystem services: commercial and recreational fisheries, carbon and nitrogen sequestration, and coastal hazard mitigation. Importantly, we assessed the current extent, condition, and ecosystem services (physical and monetary) from these coastal ecosystems and examined how they could be improved through management actions. Overall, we found that the combined benefit (i.e., nitrogen and carbon sequestration, fisheries, and coastal hazard mitigation) provided by existing mangroves, saltmarshes, and seagrasses in Victoria is approximately AUD120.9 billion per year. Considering the management scenarios included in this study, our analysis showed that levee removal plus managed retreat had the highest cost at AUD7.6 billion; however, it also provided the highest net benefit of AUD134.8 trillion after 50 years, with a 5 % discount rate. In contrast, fencing was the cheapest management action to restore mangroves and saltmarshes, delivering more than AUD140 billion after 50 years. While our results demonstrate a large return on investment if coastal wetlands are restored at large scale, the implementation of small-scale projects is still a major challenge. However, this study demonstrates that an environmental economic accounting framework combined with a scenario analysis is a powerful approach to guide the decision-making process, providing critical information on the estimated return-on-investment from restoration of mangroves and saltmarshes, with encouraging implications of the impacts of actions at local scales.

Wildlife not only play a pivotal role in providing irreplaceable ecosystem services but also hold immense socio-cultural value for communities by shaping cultural identities and fostering human connections with the natural world. However, quantifying the socio-cultural value of wildlife is challenging and typically relies on targeted participant-based interviews or questionnaires. This study explores an alternative approach by analyzing animal-named businesses as indicators of wildlife socio-cultural value. As a case study, all 4,767 animal-named businesses in New Zealand (excluding animal-focused businesses like veterinarians) were compiled. Analyses of these businesses confirmed that socio-cultural values are conveyed through businesses names including personal connections to animals and cultural reverence. Furthermore, significant geographic animal-region associations were identified, revealing spatial patterns in socio-cultural values. Overall, the analysis of animal-named businesses provides a scalable, widely-accessible, cost-effective method to explore socio-cultural value and uncovers connections that can be used to support management efforts and target further research.

Air pollution adversely affects human health, while trees, conifers in particular, growing in areas affected by air pollution, immediately register pollution by developing rings with decreased width. Some diseases in human population, e.g. lung cancer, develop and are diagnosed with a certain delay in relation to the exposure to air pollution, thus, with a certain delay to ring reductions in trees. Therefore, reductions can be recognized as an early indicator that alerts about forthcoming outbreak of adverse health effects in human population. Based on this phenomenon we propose a new approach and a new methodology for assessing threats to human health and lives resulting from air pollution. In this paper we explain the application of new approach by presenting and describing it step by step. We state that data obtained through the new ecosystem service can be applied for early warning against adverse effects of air pollution on human health. This includes improved prediction of hospitalization patterns and financial costs for the healthcare system. The proposed methodology can be useful for decision makers e.g. local governments, state agencies, private enterprises and other stakeholders interested in controlling local emitters of air pollution and the harmfulness of pollution to human health and lives.

Forests provide a range of vital services to society and are critical habitats for biodiversity, holding inherent multifunctionality. While traditionally viewed as a byproduct of production-focused forestry, today's forest ecosystem services and biodiversity (FESB) play an essential role in several sectoral policies’ needs. Achieving policy objectives requires careful management considering the interplay of services, influenced by regional aspects and climate. Here, we examined the multifunctionality gap caused by these factors through simulation of forest management and multi-objective optimization methods across different regions - Finland, Norway, Sweden and Germany (Bavaria). To accomplish this, we tested diverse management regimes (productivity-oriented silviculture, several continuous cover forestry regimes and set asides), two climate scenarios (current and RCP 4.5) and three policy strategies (National Forest, Biodiversity and Bioeconomy Strategies). For each combination we calculated a multifunctionality metric at the landscape scale based on 5 FESB classes (biodiversity conservation, bioenergy, climate regulation, wood, water and recreation). In Germany and Norway, maximum multifunctionality was achieved by increasing the proportion of set-asides and proportionally decreasing the rest of management regimes. In Finland, maximum MF would instead require that policies address greater diversity in management, while in Sweden, the pattern was slightly different but similar to Finland. Regarding the climate scenarios, we observed that only for Sweden the difference in the provision of FESB was significant. Finally, the highest overall potential multifunctionality was observed for Sweden (National Forest scenario, with a value of 0.94 for the normalized multifunctionality metric), followed by Germany (National Forest scenario, 0.83), Finland (Bioeconomy scenario, 0.81) and Norway (National Forest scenario, 0.71). The results highlight the challenges of maximizing multifunctionality and underscore the significant influence of country-specific policies and climate change on forest management. To achieve the highest multifunctionality, strategies must be tailored to specific national landscapes, acknowledging both synergistic and conflicting FESB.

Cultural ecosystem services constitute a field of research characterised by a growing number of publications from various academic disciplines. We carried out a systematic review of the literature that explicitly assessed with the valuation of cultural ecosystem services (CES). We used the review to identify, evaluate and interpret globally available research on the valuation of CES through the Web of Science and Scopus databases from 2005 to 2022. Thus, 349 articles were included in the analysis. The first article on valuation CES was published in 2010. We observed a temporal trend towards an increase in the number of articles between 2010 and 2022. The terrestrial environment and recreational value being the most emphasised among all the analysed articles. The countries in North America and Europe presented the highest numbers of studies on the theme. We observed associations between valuation methods and typologies of CES. The most studies focused on recreational and ecotourism typology with most of them associated with non-monetary methods for valuing cultural services. However, we did not observe an association between the valuation methods and the types of ecosystems investigated in the studies. We also found a temporal trend in the keywords, with clear differentiation in the theme of the studies from 2015 onwards. The most recent themes in the research area are associated with landscape, protected areas, perception, urban green space and social media studies. In conclusion, future research should focus on considering all CES categories for unequivocal descriptions of each category, proposing the development of typologies that may be applicable in various ecosystems.

Cultural ecosystem services (CES) provide a range of aesthetic and recreational benefits. However, they have not been extensively assessed due to methodological challenges, despite their use and non-use values for local and wider communities. Therefore, this study aimed to assess the economic importance and spatial distribution of recreational diving, a major non-extractive use of marine biodiversity, in the Aegean Sea. A comprehensive evaluation of diving value was conducted based on ecological features and divers' preferences and habits. The value of recreational diving as an ecosystem service in the Aegean Sea was estimated at €154.3 million annually, with €4.3 million (95 % CI, €1.4–8.4 million) as the willingness to pay (WTP) for biodiversity conservation, €135 million (95 % CI, €99-174 million) for divers' expenditures, and €15 million (95 % CI, €11-20 million) for diving centers' revenues. These values were determined through questionnaires distributed to divers and clubs to estimate the diving industry’s value. The value distribution across the Aegean was determined by divers' criteria for selecting dive sites, such as habitats, species-attractions, and distance to dive centers. The highest local value was €1.1 million km⁻² yr⁻¹ annually, and the lowest was €127 km⁻² yr⁻¹. Recreational diving is a crucial blue growth activity for the Aegean coastal communities and should be integrated into conservation strategies and marine spatial planning.