Ecosystem accounting applied to the restoration of a brackish coastal lagoon highlights the importance of individual ecosystem-level studies

Ecosystem accounting is increasingly used at national and regional levels to guide environmental management. Nonetheless, there is a lack of accurate data on individual ecosystems, which hampers the reliability of upscaling analyses critical to understanding human impacts on ecosystems. Delta areas are particularly challenging due to the complex and unique ecological characteristics created by human activities interacting with aquatic and terrestrial domains.

This study aims to address this gap by compiling a comprehensive set of ecosystem accounts that cover extent, condition and services at the individual ecosystem level. In particular, the applicability of the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting – Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA-EA) framework will be evaluated in the context of a restoration project at the Sacca di Goro lagoon, a coastal brackish lagoon located in the Po delta (Northern Italy).

The analysis shows that the SEEA-EA can effectively capture the impact of various factors, including environmental measures, socio-economic trends, climate change, and biological invasions, on an individual ecosystem. The environmental interventions resulted in a significant restoration of reed habitats and an improvement in the abiotic characteristics. However, other drivers acting at different scales had negative impacts on biotic indicators. The decline of the fishery in the Adriatic region, along with climate change and the recent invasion of blue crabs, has significantly impacted the fish community and clam farming, resulting in the loss of valuable provisioning services such as fishery and aquaculture.

The case of the Sacca di Goro lagoon demonstrates that local measures can enhance ecological conditions and some regulating services but other larger-scale factors may have relevant and unexpected impacts. To scale up the analysis at a national or regional level, further research on individual ecosystem types is necessary, especially in the case of deltas and estuaries.