Scientists have traditionally studied recreation in nature by conducting surveys at entrances to major attractions such as national parks. This method is expensive and provides limited spatial and ...temporal coverage. A new source of information is available from online social media websites such as flickr. Here, we test whether this source of "big data" can be used to approximate visitation rates. We use the locations of photographs in flickr to estimate visitation rates at 836 recreational sites around the world, and use information from the profiles of the photographers to derive travelers' origins. We compare these estimates to empirical data at each site and conclude that the crowd-sourced information can indeed serve as a reliable proxy for empirical visitation rates. This new approach offers opportunities to understand which elements of nature attract people to locations around the globe, and whether changes in ecosystems will alter visitation rates.
Global modeling of nature's contributions to people Chaplin-Kramer, Rebecca; Sharp, Richard P; Weil, Charlotte ...
Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science),
10/2019, Letnik:
366, Številka:
6462
Journal Article
Recenzirano
The magnitude and pace of global change demand rapid assessment of nature and its contributions to people. We present a fine-scale global modeling of current status and future scenarios for several ...contributions: water quality regulation, coastal risk reduction, and crop pollination. We find that where people's needs for nature are now greatest, nature's ability to meet those needs is declining. Up to 5 billion people face higher water pollution and insufficient pollination for nutrition under future scenarios of land use and climate change, particularly in Africa and South Asia. Hundreds of millions of people face heightened coastal risk across Africa, Eurasia, and the Americas. Continued loss of nature poses severe threats, yet these can be reduced 3- to 10-fold under a sustainable development scenario.
Recent calls for ocean planning envision informed management of social and ecological systems to sustain delivery of ecosystem services to people. However, until now, no coastal and marine planning ...process has applied an ecosystem-services framework to understand how human activities affect the flow of benefits, to create scenarios, and to design a management plan. We developed models that quantify services provided by corals, mangroves, and seagrasses. We used these models within an extensive engagement process to design a national spatial plan for Belizeâs coastal zone. Through iteration of modeling and stakeholder engagement, we developed a preferred plan, currently under formal consideration by the Belizean government. Our results suggest that the preferred plan will lead to greater returns from coastal protection and tourism than outcomes from scenarios oriented toward achieving either conservation or development goals. The plan will also reduce impacts to coastal habitat and increase revenues from lobster fishing relative to current management. By accounting for spatial variation in the impacts of coastal and ocean activities on benefits that ecosystems provide to people, our models allowed stakeholders and policymakers to refine zones of human use. The final version of the preferred plan improved expected coastal protection by >25% and more than doubled the revenue from fishing, compared with earlier versions based on stakeholder preferences alone. Including outcomes in terms of ecosystem-service supply and value allowed for explicit consideration of multiple benefits from oceans and coasts that typically are evaluated separately in management decisions.
Significance Oceans and coasts provide people with diverse benefits, from fisheries that sustain lives and livelihoods to recreational opportunities that generate tourism. However, translating appreciation of these benefits into changes in management and policy is not trivial. We report on a ground-breaking effort to use ecosystem-service values and models within a coastal planning process. By accounting for spatial variation in the influence of human activities on services, our results allowed stakeholders and policymakers to refine zones of human use, reduce risk to ecosystems, and enhance delivery of multiple ocean and coastal benefits. Application of our approaches and tools will enable planners worldwide to bring ecosystem-service science to bear on real-world decisions, thus directing actions that protect ecosystems and their benefits for people.
The central challenge of the 21st century is to develop economic, social, and governance systems capable of ending poverty and achieving sustainable levels of population and consumption while ...securing the life-support systems underpinning current and future human well-being. Essential to meeting this challenge is the incorporation of natural capital and the ecosystem services it provides into decision-making. We explore progress and crucial gaps at this frontier, reflecting upon the 10 y since the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. We focus on three key dimensions of progress and ongoing challenges: raising awareness of the interdependence of ecosystems and human well-being, advancing the fundamental interdisciplinary science of ecosystem services, and implementing this science in decisions to restore natural capital and use it sustainably. Awareness of human dependence on nature is at an all-time high, the science of ecosystem services is rapidly advancing, and talk of natural capital is now common from governments to corporate boardrooms. However, successful implementation is still in early stages. We explore why ecosystem service information has yet to fundamentally change decision-making and suggest a path forward that emphasizes: (i) developing solid evidence linking decisions to impacts on natural capital and ecosystem services, and then to human well-being; (ii) working closely with leaders in government, business, and civil society to develop the knowledge, tools, and practices necessary to integrate natural capital and ecosystem services into everyday decision-making; and (iii) reforming institutions to change policy and practices to better align private short-term goals with societal long-term goals.
Ecosystems provide many of the material building blocks for human well-being. Although quantification and appreciation of such contributions have rapidly grown, our dependence upon cultural ...connections to nature deserves more attention. We synthesize multidisciplinary peer-reviewed research on contributions of nature or ecosystems to human well-being mediated through nontangible connections (such as culture). We characterize these connections on the basis of the channels through which such connections arise (i.e., knowing, perceiving, interacting with, and living within) and the components of human well-being they affect (e.g., physical, mental and spiritual health, inspiration, identity). We found enormous variation in the methods used, quantity of research, and generalizability of the literature. The effects of nature on mental and physical health have been rigorously demonstrated, whereas other effects (e.g., on learning) are theorized but seldom demonstrated. The balance of evidence indicates conclusively that knowing and experiencing nature makes us generally happier, healthier people. More fully characterizing our intangible connections with nature will help shape decisions that benefit people and the ecosystems on which we depend.
Interest in the role that ecosystems play in reducing the impacts of coastal hazards has grown dramatically. Yet the magnitude and nature of their effects are highly context dependent, making it ...difficult to know under what conditions coastal habitats, such as saltmarshes, reefs, and forests, are likely to be effective for saving lives and protecting property. We operationalize the concept of natural and nature‐based solutions for coastal protection by adopting an ecosystem services framework that propagates the outcome of a management action through ecosystems to societal benefits. We review the literature on the basis of the steps in this framework, considering not only the supply of coastal protection provided by ecosystems but also the demand for protective services from beneficiaries. We recommend further attention to (1) biophysical processes beyond wave attenuation, (2) the combined effects of multiple habitat types (e.g., reefs, vegetation), (3) marginal values and expected damage functions, and, in particular, (4) community dependence on ecosystems for coastal protection and co‐benefits. We apply our approach to two case studies to illustrate how estimates of multiple benefits and losses can inform restoration and development decisions. Finally, we discuss frontiers for linking social, ecological, and physical science to advance natural and nature‐based solutions to coastal protection.
A focus on ecosystem services (ES) is seen as a means for improving decisionmaking. In the research to date, the valuation of the material contributions of ecosystems to human well-being has been ...emphasized, with less attention to important cultural ES and nonmaterial values. This gap persists because there is no commonly accepted framework for eliciting less tangible values, characterizing their changes, and including them alongside other services in decisionmaking. Here, we develop such a framework for ES research and practice, addressing three challenges: (1) Nonmaterial values are ill suited to characterization using monetary methods; (2) it is difficult to unequivocally link particular changes in socioecological systems to particular changes in cultural benefits; and (3) cultural benefits are associated with many services, not just cultural ES. There is no magic bullet, but our framework may facilitate fuller and more socially acceptable integrations of ES information into planning and management.
Coastal communities rely on levees and seawalls as critical protection against sea-level rise; in the United States alone, $300 billion in shoreline armoring costs are forecast by 2100. However, ...despite the local flood risk reduction benefits, these structures can exacerbate flooding and associated damages along other parts of the shoreline-particularly in coastal bays and estuaries, where nearly 500 million people globally are at risk from sea-level rise. The magnitude and spatial distribution of the economic impact of this dynamic, however, are poorly understood. Here we combine hydrodynamic and economic models to assess the extent of both local and regional flooding and damages expected from a range of shoreline protection and sea-level rise scenarios in San Francisco Bay, California. We find that protection of individual shoreline segments (5 to 75 km) can increase flooding in other areas by as much as 36 million m
and damages by $723 million for a single flood event and in some cases can even cause regional flood damages that exceed the local damages prevented from protection. We also demonstrate that strategic flooding of certain shoreline segments, such as those with gradually sloping baylands and space for water storage, can help alleviate flooding and damages along other stretches of the coastline. By matching the scale of the economic assessment to the scale of the threat, we reveal the previously uncounted costs associated with uncoordinated adaptation actions and demonstrate that a regional planning perspective is essential for reducing shared risk and wisely spending adaptation resources in coastal bays.
Coastal habitats provide important benefits to people, including habitat for species targeted by fisheries and opportunities for tourism and recreation. Yet, such human activities also can imperil ...these habitats and undermine the ecosystem services they provide to people. Cumulative risk assessment provides an analytical framework for synthesizing the influence of multiple stressors across habitats and decision-support for balancing human uses and ecosystem health. To explore cumulative risk to habitats in the U.S. Northeast and Mid-Atlantic Ocean Planning regions, we apply the open-source InVEST Habitat Risk Assessment model to 13 habitats and 31 stressors in an exposure-consequence framework. In doing so, we advance the science priorities of EBM and both regional planning bodies by synthesizing the wealth of available data to improve our understanding of human uses and how they affect marine resources. We find that risk to ecosystems is greatest first, along the coast, where a large number of stressors occur in close proximity and secondly, along the continental shelf, where fewer, higher consequence activities occur. Habitats at greatest risk include soft and hard-bottom nearshore areas, tidal flats, soft-bottom shelf habitat, and rocky intertidal zones-with the degree of risk varying spatially. Across all habitats, our results indicate that rising sea surface temperatures, commercial fishing, and shipping consistently and disproportionally contribute to risk. Further, our findings suggest that management in the nearshore will require simultaneously addressing the temporal and spatial overlap as well as intensity of multiple human activities and that management in the offshore requires more targeted efforts to reduce exposure from specific threats. We offer a transparent, generalizable approach to evaluating cumulative risk to multiple habitats and illustrate the spatially heterogeneous nature of impacts along the eastern Atlantic coast and the importance of spatial scale in estimating such impacts. These results offer a valuable decision-support tool by helping to constrain the decision space, focus attention on habitats and locations at the greatest risk, and highlight effect management strategies.
Nature underpins human well-being in critical ways, especially in health. Nature provides pollination of nutritious crops, purification of drinking water, protection from floods, and climate ...security, among other well-studied health benefits. A crucial, yet challenging, research frontier is clarifying how nature promotes physical activity for its many mental and physical health benefits, particularly in densely populated cities with scarce and dwindling access to nature. Here we frame this frontier by conceptually developing a spatial decision-support tool that shows where, how, and for whom urban nature promotes physical activity, to inform urban greening efforts and broader health assessments. We synthesize what is known, present a model framework, and detail the model steps and data needs that can yield generalizable spatial models and an effective tool for assessing the urban nature-physical activity relationship. Current knowledge supports an initial model that can distinguish broad trends and enrich urban planning, spatial policy, and public health decisions. New, iterative research and application will reveal the importance of different types of urban nature, the different subpopulations who will benefit from it, and nature's potential contribution to creating more equitable, green, livable cities with active inhabitants.
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