•Guidance is needed for selecting ecosystem service assessment methods.•Stakeholder participation was the key reason for selecting many methods.•The decision context and ecosystem services at stake ...were also important reasons.•Decision trees can help structure and rationalise the selection of ecosystem service assessment methods.•Linking decision trees with other forms of guidance addresses a broader range of user needs.
A range of methods are available for assessing ecosystem services. Methods differ in their aims; from mapping and modelling the supply and demand of ecosystem services to appraising their economic and non-economic importance through valuation techniques. Comprehensive guidance for the selection of appropriate ecosystem service assessment methods that address the requirements of different decision-making contexts is lacking. This paper tackles this gap using the experience from 27 case studies which applied different biophysical, socio-cultural and monetary valuation methods to operationalise the ecosystem service concept towards sustainable land, water and urban management. A survey of the reasons why the case study teams selected particular methods revealed that stakeholder-oriented reasons, such as stakeholder participation, inclusion of local knowledge and ease of communication, and decision-oriented reasons, such as the purpose of the case study and the ecosystem services at stake, were key considerations in selecting a method. Pragmatic reasons such as available data, resources and expertise were also important factors. This information was used to develop a set of linked decision trees, which aim to provide guidance to researchers and practitioners in choosing ecosystem service assessment methods that are suitable for their context.
Land use change is characterized by a high diversity of change trajectories depending on the local conditions, regional context and external influences. Policy intervention aims to counteract the ...negative consequences of these changes and provide incentives for positive developments. Region typologies are a common tool to cluster regions with similar characteristics and possibly similar policy needs. This paper provides a typology of land use change in Europe at a high spatial resolution based on a series of different scenarios of land use change for the period 2000-2030. A series of simulation models ranging from the global to the landscape level are used to translate scenario conditions in terms of demographic, economic and policy change into changes in European land use pattern. A typology developed based on these simulation results identifies the main trajectories of change across Europe: agricultural abandonment, agricultural expansion and urbanization. The results are combined with common typologies of landscape and rurality. The findings indicate that the typologies based on current landscape and ruralities are poor indicators of the land use dynamics simulated for the regions. It is advocated that typologies based on (simulated) future dynamics of land change are more appropriate to identify regions with potentially similar policy needs.
Interactions between people and ecological systems, through leisure or tourism activities, form a complex socio-ecological spatial network. The analysis of the benefits people derive from their ...interactions with nature-also referred to as cultural ecosystem services (CES)-enables a better understanding of these socio-ecological systems. In the age of information, the increasing availability of large social media databases enables a better understanding of complex socio-ecological interactions at an unprecedented spatio-temporal resolution. Within this context, we model and analyze these interactions based on information extracted from geotagged photographs embedded into a multiscale socio-ecological network. We apply this approach to 16 case study sites in Europe using a social media database (Flickr) containing more than 150,000 validated and classified photographs. After evaluating the representativeness of the network, we investigate the impact of visitors' origin on the distribution of socio-ecological interactions at different scales. First at a global scale, we develop a spatial measure of attractiveness and use this to identify four groups of sites. Then, at a local scale, we explore how the distance traveled by the users to reach a site affects the way they interact with this site in space and time. The approach developed here, integrating social media data into a network-based framework, offers a new way of visualizing and modeling interactions between humans and landscapes. Results provide valuable insights for understanding relationships between social demands for CES and the places of their realization, thus allowing for the development of more efficient conservation and planning strategies.
Climate change and land‐use change are two major drivers of biome shifts causing habitat and biodiversity loss. What is missing is a continental‐scale future projection of the estimated relative ...impacts of both drivers on biome shifts over the course of this century. Here, we provide such a projection for the biodiverse region of Latin America under four socio‐economic development scenarios. We find that across all scenarios 5–6% of the total area will undergo biome shifts that can be attributed to climate change until 2099. The relative impact of climate change on biome shifts may overtake land‐use change even under an optimistic climate scenario, if land‐use expansion is halted by the mid‐century. We suggest that constraining land‐use change and preserving the remaining natural vegetation early during this century creates opportunities to mitigate climate‐change impacts during the second half of this century. Our results may guide the evaluation of socio‐economic scenarios in terms of their potential for biome conservation under global change.
Agricultural expansion and intensification are main drivers of land-use change in Brazil. Soybean is the major crop under expansion in the area. Soybean production involves large amounts of water and ...fertiliser that act as sources of contamination with potentially negative impacts on adjacent water bodies. These impacts might be intensified by projected climate change in tropical areas.
A Water Footprint Assessment (WFA) serves as a tool to assess environmental impacts of water and fertiliser use. The aim of this study was to understand potential impacts on environmental sustainability of agricultural intensification close to a protected forest area of the Amazon under climate change. We carried out a WFA to calculate the water footprint (WF) related to soybean production, Glycine max, to understand the sustainability of the WF in the Tapajós river basin, a region in the Brazilian Amazon with large expansion and intensification of soybean. Based on global datasets, environmental hotspots — potentially unsustainable WF areas — were identified and spatially plotted in both baseline scenario (2010) and projection into 2050 through the use of a land-use change scenario that includes climate change effects.
Results show green and grey WF values in 2050 increased by 304% and 268%, respectively. More than one-third of the watersheds doubled their grey WF in 2050. Soybean production in 2010 lies within sustainability limits. However, current soybean expansion and intensification trends lead to large impacts in relation to water pollution and water use, affecting protected areas. Areas not impacted in terms of water pollution dropped by 20.6% in 2050 for the whole catchment, while unsustainability increased 8.1%. Management practices such as water consumption regulations to stimulate efficient water use, reduction of crop water use and evapotranspiration, and optimal fertiliser application control could be key factors in achieving sustainability within a river basin.
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•Agricultural expansion entails potential environmental impacts in nearby river basins.•Water Footprint Assessment analyses present & future watershed sustainability.•Green Water Scarcity: useful sustainability indicator accounting protection status.•Future soybean production impacts environment beyond sustainability limits.
In the context of increased pressures on land for food and non‐food production, it is relevant to understand better, which land resources have become unused and abandoned and where these lands are. ...Data on where these lands are and what their extend is are not collected in regular statistics. In this paper, we present an approach to detect signs of abandonment in cropping land using radar coherence data. The methodology was tested in the Spanish regions of Albacete and Soria where agricultural land abandonment is a common process. The results show that land abandonment detection using radar coherence data works well for the region of Albacete in arable lands. The radar‐based analysis is a relatively simple method to detect land abandonment in an early to longer term state and can therefore be applied once developed and tested further in other regions to larger areas of the EU where land abandonment is serious and needs monitoring and policy response. The applicability of the method to Soria and Emilia Romagna (Italy) regions shows that there are still challenges to overcome to make the method more widely applicable for detecting land abandonment in other environmental zones of Europe. Lack of reliable training and validation data, like Land Parcel Identification Systems data, in regions is one of the challenges in this respect.
An approach to detect signs of abandonment in cropping land using radar coherence data is presented and results discussed. Radar based analysis is a relatively cheap method to detect land abandonment in an early to longer term state and can therefore be applied once developed and tested further in other regions to larger areas of the EU where land abandonment is serious and needs monitoring and policy response.
Carbon neutrality in the transport sector is a key challenge for the growing bioeconomy as the share of biofuels has stagnated over the past decade. This can be attributed to basic economics and a ...lack of a robust market for these technologies. Consequently, more sustainable biomass supply concepts are required that reduce negative impacts on the environment and at the same time promote environmental services for sustainable agricultural cropping systems including erosion prevention, soil fertility improvement, greenhouse gas mitigation, and carbon sequestration. One promising concept is the cultivation of perennial biomass crops such as Miscanthus (Miscanthus Andersson) as biofuel feedstock. In this study, the multiple environmental services provided by Miscanthus are first explored and subsequently monetized. Then the integration of Miscanthus cultivation for biomass production into European agricultural systems is assessed. One hectare of Miscanthus provides society with environmental services to a value of 1,200 to 4,183 € a−1. These services are even more pronounced when cultivation takes place on marginal agricultural land. The integration of Miscanthus into existing agricultural practices aids both conservation and further optimization of socio‐economic welfare and landscape diversification. As these environmental services are more beneficial to the public than the Miscanthus farmers, subsidies are required to close the gap between biofuels and biodiversity that are calculated based on the provision of environmental services. Similar approaches to that developed in this study may be suitable for the implementation of other biomass cropping systems and therefore help foster the transition to a bioeconomy.
Plain Language Summary
The transition to a nonfossil transport sector is one of the most difficult and at the same time crucial challenges of the growing bioeconomy. In order to provide enough sustainably sourced biomass for biofuel production, a vast range of requirements need to be fulfilled—first and foremost the use of marginal agricultural land under low‐input conditions. Only in this way is it possible to avoid land use conflicts with food crop cultivation and biodiversity conservation. However, the utilization of marginal agricultural land often entails economic disadvantages for farmers. These financial losses should be compensated for by the public sector, as long as the cropping system provides environmental services such as groundwater protection, climate regulation, moderation of extreme weather events, and habitat functions. Monetizing the environmental services using concrete examples is still uncharted scientific territory; existing promotion concepts must be assessed as underdeveloped.
Key Points
Environmental services of the perennial lignocellulosic crop Miscanthus were monetized for marginal agricultural land in Germany
Monetary value of Miscanthus cultivation accounts for 1,200–4,183 € a−1, three times higher than the value of the raw material for biofuel
Monetizing environmental services bridges the gap between biofuels and biodiversity by promoting the use of second generation biofuels
This study deals with approaches for a social-ecological friendly European bioeconomy based on biomass from industrial crops cultivated on marginal agricultural land. The selected crops to be ...investigated are: Biomass sorghum, camelina, cardoon, castor, crambe, Ethiopian mustard, giant reed, hemp, lupin, miscanthus, pennycress, poplar, reed canary grass, safflower, Siberian elm, switchgrass, tall wheatgrass, wild sugarcane, and willow. The research question focused on the overall crop growth suitability under low-input management. The study assessed: (i) How the growth suitability of industrial crops can be defined under the given natural constraints of European marginal agricultural lands; and (ii) which agricultural practices are required for marginal agricultural land low-input systems (MALLIS). For the growth-suitability analysis, available thresholds and growth requirements of the selected industrial crops were defined. The marginal agricultural land was categorized according to the agro-ecological zone (AEZ) concept in combination with the marginality constraints, so-called ‘marginal agro-ecological zones’ (M-AEZ). It was found that both large marginal agricultural areas and numerous agricultural practices are available for industrial crop cultivation on European marginal agricultural lands. These results help to further describe the suitability of industrial crops for the development of social-ecologically friendly MALLIS in Europe.
Current spatial planning methods are often technocratic, slow, fail to use the right kind of evidence or do not involve (all) the actors needed to create support and consensus. We present a method ...that facilitates the use of evidence (data) in participatory spatial planning processes, resulting in a joint understanding of the most important causalities, as a means to build capacity across actors. QUICKScan is a participatory modeling method that links stakeholder- and decision maker knowledge and preferences to available spatial and spatio-statistical data, and is designed for group use in a multi-stakeholder workshop setting. We describe four urban QUICKScan applications, that vary in objective, scale and institutional setting. The most critical in organizing a QUICKScan session is to: (i) include crucial participants in a single plenary workshop (decision maker, local data expert, and local thematic experts), (ii) create an open atmosphere in which each and everyone's opinion is treated equally, (iii) dialogue is more important than an abundance of detailed spatial data, and (iv) start with simple modeling rules and iterate often while expanding the set of rules and trying out alternatives.
•QUICKScan speeds up the exploratory phases of the policy cycle.•It creates a joint understanding through a participatory process.•Integrate quantitative and qualitative scientific-, local- and tacit ...knowledge.•70 workshops in 20 countries: diversity of problems and spatial and temporal scale.
Policy making is required in cases in which a public good needs to be either maintained or created, and private or civil initiatives cannot deal alone with this. Policy making thus starts with a phase of problem identification and determining whether there is a problem that needs to be dealt with. Rapidly evolving contexts exert influence on policy makers who have to take decisions much faster and more accurately than in the past, also facing greater complexity. There is a need for a method that lowers the lead time of the exploratory phase of the policy cycle. At the same time the method should create a joint understanding of the most important interactions. This paper proposes QUICKScan, a method, process and spatially explicit tool, to jointly scope policy problems in a participatory setting, investigate the most important interactions and feedbacks and assesses the state of knowledge and data of relevance to the problem. QUICKScan uses strongly moderated participatory workshops bringing together a wide range of stakeholders relevant to the policy issue. These moderated workshops jointly build an expert system in a spatially explicit tool using functionality of bayesian belief networks, python programming, simple map algebra and knowledge matrices, with a strong focus on visualization of results. QUICKScan has been applied in 70 different applications in a range of different policy contexts, stakeholders and physical locations. Through these applications participants were able to internalize the knowledge that was usually handed to them in briefs and reports, to develop a joint understanding of the main interactions and their link to impacts and to develop a problem statement and solution space in a reduced lead time. Ultimately, QUICKScan demonstrates another role of science, not solely as a knowledge production, but also facilitating the knowledge consumption.
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