Ecosystem Services最新文献

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.

Human society in the Anthropocene is globally connected and relies on flows of goods and services for its prosperity and wellbeing. However, quantitative understanding of the flows of ecosystem services (ES) embedded in trade (virtual ES flow) across multiple human-natural systems remains limited. Here, we develop a framework to quantify virtual ES flows by integrating multi-region input–output modeling and ES mapping, and apply it to examine water provisioning and climate regulation services, using China and its major urban agglomeration as a case study. Our results showed that virtual flows of ES were substantially greater than the direct utilization of water and carbon resources, confirming the dependency on virtual flows of ES in highly urbanized regions. Interestingly, the virtual flows were mainly connected to distant rather than adjacent regions, highlighting the importance of considering cross-scale dynamics and managing long-distance flows in policy-making. Our framework holds the potential for broader applications, including the exploration of various types of ES and sustainability-related issues.

Realized ecosystem services (ES) are the actual use of ES by societies, which is more directly linked to human well-being than potential ES. However, a general analysis framework is lacking to understand how much ES was realized. In this study, we first proposed a Supply-Demand-Flow-Use (SDFU) framework that integrates the supply, demand, flow, and use of ES and differentiates these concepts into different aspects (e.g., potential vs. actual ES demand, export and import flows of supply, etc.). Then, we applied the framework to two examples of ES that can be found in typical urban green parks (i.e., pollination and recreation). We showed how the framework could assess the actual use of ES and identify the supply-limited, demand-limited, and supply–demand-balanced types of realized ES. We also explained the scaling features, discussed the temporal dynamics and spatial characteristics of realized ES, and asked several critical questions for future studies. Although facing challenges, we believe that the applications of the SDFU framework can provide a systematic way to accurately assess the actual use of ES and better inform policy-making for the sustainable use of nature’s benefits. Therefore, we hope our study will stimulate more research on realized ES and contribute to a deeper understanding of their roles in enhancing human well-being.

Despite growing evidence that climate-related environmental changes impact cultural ecosystem services (CES), a profound and nuanced understanding of such changes remains limited. This study aims to identify and characterize how climate-related changes affect human-nature interactions and related non-material benefits. Through a systematic literature review, we synthesize an interdisciplinary body of research by (1) characterizing the types of human-nature interactions affected, (2) recording the assessment approaches used, (3) relating environmental changes to changes in human-nature interactions and (4) categorizing climate-related impacts on non-material benefits. The 192 articles addressed mostly recreation (65%), cultural identity (30%), and aesthetic value (18%), assessing environmental changes influencing the opportunities for human-nature interactions (38%), socio-cultural aspects such as demand, benefits, values, practices, and goods (31%), and both environmental and socio-cultural aspects (31%). Most studies mentioned multiple environmental changes (57%), such as changes in species, populations and communities, weather patterns and climatic conditions, and changes in habitat and environmental quality. These changes had predominantly negative effects on non-material benefits (74% of 302 interactions across the studies), as well as neutral/undefined impacts (5.6%), positive (4.6%), or not significant impacts (4.3%). Mixed impacts were reported in 12% of the interactions, mostly mentioning negative impacts (97%). The impacts include changes in natural capacities, access and security, cultural practices and interactions, as well as spatial and temporal patterns, often resulting in a decline or even complete loss of benefits. To overcome conceptual and methodological limitations as well as to improve the consideration of climate-related impacts on non-material benefits in decision-making, greater efforts are required in adopting interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches to co-produce knowledge that reflects specific perceptions and understandings of change.

Auction theory has made major contributions to overcoming allocation problems involving asymmetric information and common-pool resources, leading to multiple Nobel Prizes and serving as a foundation for multi-billion-dollar markets. Despite evidence that related mechanisms could enhance the performance of payments for ecosystem services (PES), adoption has been sporadic and inconsistent. One possibility is that the relevant peer reviewed literature has low visibility or consensus design elements are not sufficiently accessible to interested experts. To overcome this barrier, we adopt a straightforward approach: we asked the PES auction subfield to describe itself. In collaboration with an expert panel (n = 32) whose affiliations span more than two dozen universities and research bodies across three continents—including top-ranked economists, ecosystem services theorists, and practitioners with experience designing and implementing PES programs with and without auctions—we synthesize a birds-eye view of ecosystem services auctions for an interdisciplinary audience. Through an iterative, mixed-method Delphi consultation, we identify broad consensus about fundamental elements of theory and practice, including what functions auctions tend to perform well, common challenges, and key factors influencing their performance. By selecting topics that panelists appeared to disagree about for further discussion, we also highlight open questions and potential research frontiers. We conclude with a reflection on using the Delphi method to foster exchange between time-constrained experts.