Land abandonment and the loss of traditional farming practices are thought to control land cover dynamics, and hence the ecosystem service supply in traditionally managed mountain landscapes. We ...evaluate the impact of land cover changes in Cantabrian Mountains (NW Spain), over 1990–2012, on the potential supply capacity of ecosystem services (regulating, provisioning, and cultural) at both regional and local scales. We also analyze trends in the use of ecosystem services at the local scale. Land cover changes were estimated from CORINE Land Cover database. Patterns of potential ecosystem service supply were assessed by applying an ecosystem service supply capacity matrix and trends in their actual use by using field data. Main trajectories of land cover change encompassed woody vegetation spread in semi-natural open systems and agricultural expansion in the most suitable areas. The capacity of landscape to provide ecosystem services improved during 1990–2012 at both scales. We detected trade-offs between the potential supply of ecosystem services associated to natural systems and those linked to traditional land uses, at both regional and local scales. Changes in the potential supply of ecosystem services matched trends in ecosystem service use. This study could help develop future scenarios to address upcoming challenges in ecosystem service supply.
ABSTRACT
Key global indicators of biodiversity decline, such as the IUCN Red List Index and the Living Planet Index, have relatively long assessment intervals. This means they, due to their inherent ...structure, function as late‐warning indicators that are retrospective, rather than prospective. These indicators are unquestionably important in providing information for biodiversity conservation, but the detection of early‐warning signs of critical biodiversity change is also needed so that proactive management responses can be enacted promptly where required. Generally, biodiversity conservation has dealt poorly with the scattered distribution of necessary detailed information, and needs to find a solution to assemble, harmonize and standardize the data. The prospect of monitoring essential biodiversity variables (EBVs) has been suggested in response to this challenge. The concept has generated much attention, but the EBVs themselves are still in development due to the complexity of the task, the limited resources available, and a lack of long‐term commitment to maintain EBV data sets. As a first step, the scientific community and the policy sphere should agree on a set of priority candidate EBVs to be developed within the coming years to advance both large‐scale ecological research as well as global and regional biodiversity conservation. Critical ecological transitions are of high importance from both a scientific as well as from a conservation policy point of view, as they can lead to long‐lasting biodiversity change with a high potential for deleterious effects on whole ecosystems and therefore also on human well‐being. We evaluated candidate EBVs using six criteria: relevance, sensitivity to change, generalizability, scalability, feasibility, and data availability and provide a literature‐based review for eight EBVs with high sensitivity to change. The proposed suite of EBVs comprises abundance, allelic diversity, body mass index, ecosystem heterogeneity, phenology, range dynamics, size at first reproduction, and survival rates. The eight candidate EBVs provide for the early detection of critical and potentially long‐lasting biodiversity change and should be operationalized as a priority. Only with such an approach can science predict the future status of global biodiversity with high certainty and set up the appropriate conservation measures early and efficiently. Importantly, the selected EBVs would address a large range of conservation issues and contribute to a total of 15 of the 20 Aichi targets and are, hence, of high biological relevance.
Recently, the science and policy agenda on biodiversity moved to include ecosystem services assessments and it is recognised that for determining the effectiveness and progress of policy frameworks ...monitoring is crucial.
Within European monitoring schemes, data is collected following different sampling protocols for a range of biodiversity or context related aspects; from EU-wide general land cover mapping to red list species within Annex I habitats. In this paper, we analysed field instructions of seven monitoring schemes on the extent to which they can provide data on the provision of ecosystem services and what additional information may be needed for future monitoring of ecosystem services.
We compared seven monitoring schemes (i.e. CORINE Land Cover, Land Use Cover Area Survey (LUCAS), European Biodiversity Observation Network (EBONE), biodiversity monitoring on organic and low-input farming systems (BioBio), National Inventory of the Landscape of Sweden (NILS) and Pan-European Common Birds Monitoring (PECBM) and UK Butterfly monitoring (UK-BM)) by scoring the quality of recorded parameters and the adequacy of sampling protocols for ecosystem service monitoring.
All the examined schemes were able to provide some parameters on ecosystem services, but the quality of the parameters on average did not exceed the level of qualitative data. Additionally, the divergence between the sampling designs of the schemes and the spatial characteristics of ecosystem services reduced the potential monitoring value of all schemes. Monitoring schemes including a range of sampling methods, scales and included the recording of data on habitats, such as EBONE, BioBio and NILS, provided the best data on the provision of ecosystem services.
We conclude that improvement of the monitoring of ecosystem services is hindered by several knowledge gaps: (1) a robust definition and conceptual framework of ecosystem services; (2) the linkage between biodiversity and ecosystem services; and (3) the interpretation of monitoring data.
In addition to ecosystem service monitoring, biodiversity monitoring unremittingly remains very important, at least to identify trade-offs between the management for services and the resulting biodiversity status.
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•Increasing number of ecosystem services indicators generated, but impact questioned.•Credibility, salience and legitimacy (CSL) are crucial for informing decision making.•In ...addition, feasibility (F) criteria ensure continued assessment and use of indicators.•Sixteen selection criteria synthesized from practical experience and the literature.•A checklist to develop effective ecosystem service indicators.
Decision makers are increasingly interested in information from ecosystem services (ES) assessments. Scientists have for long recognised the importance of selecting appropriate indicators. Yet, while the amount and variety of indicators developed by scientists seems to increase continuously, the extent to which the indicators truly inform decision makers is often unknown and questioned. In this viewpoint paper, we reflect and provide guidance on how to develop appropriate ES indicators for informing decision making, building on scientific literature and practical experience collected from researchers involved in seven case studies. We synthesized 16 criteria for ES indicator selection and organized them according to the widely used categories of credibility, salience, legitimacy (CSL). We propose to consider additional criteria related to feasibility (F), as CSL criteria alone often seem to produce indicators which are unachievable in practice. Considering CSLF together requires a combination of scientific knowledge, communication skills, policy and governance insights and on-field experience. In conclusion, we present a checklist to evaluate CSLF of your ES indicators. This checklist helps to detect and mitigate critical shortcomings in an early phase of the development process, and aids the development of effective indicators to inform actual policy decisions.
•We selected studies on land and farming system dynamics in the Mediterranean.•We summarized the main dynamics and their drivers.•The analyzed studies mainly focused on two dynamics: abandonment and ...urbanization.•The findings can be used to inform land use policies.
Given the heterogeneity and richness of Mediterranean farming systems, it is difficult to assess the nature and causes of observed dynamics based on single case studies. This research identifies case studies conducted on the north and south of the Mediterranean basin to provide a comprehensive overview of the current land and farming system dynamics and their main drivers. We analyze 80 papers published in international journals from 1985 to 2015. The studies vary in spatial scale, from 4 km2 in the case of peri-urban regions and small agricultural areas to more than 500,000 km2 in the case of national-based analyses. Most of the papers focus on mountainous rural areas, whereas only a few case studies are located in mixed regions or peri-urban inland regions. We analyze the farm trajectories behind the general dynamics to understand the ongoing processes at the agricultural level and their related drivers. Social and demographic drivers are indicated as particularly relevant for abandonment, which is frequently associated with intensification processes. Intensification dynamics are driven mainly by economic factors, which particularly affect annual crop production. Few papers analyze the dynamics of extensification and more research in this field is needed to understand this process and its eventual transition to the abandonment of agricultural areas. This analysis provides an opportunity for the exchange of ideas and information from a diverse range of disciplines and interest groups, which should be combined to formulate effective land use policies.
•Knowledge about ecosystem service production and distribution can foster sustainability.•Ecosystem service governance best practices can improve ecosystem management.•Ecosystem services research ...needs to become more transdisciplinary.•ecoSERVICES will advance co-designed, transdisciplinary ecosystem service research.
Ecosystem services have become a mainstream concept for the expression of values assigned by people to various functions of ecosystems. Even though the introduction of the concept has initiated a vast amount of research, progress in using this knowledge for sustainable resource use remains insufficient. We see a need to broaden the scope of research to answer three key questions that we believe will improve incorporation of ecosystem service research into decision-making for the sustainable use of natural resources to improve human well-being: (i) how are ecosystem services co-produced by social–ecological systems, (ii) who benefits from the provision of ecosystem services, and (iii) what are the best practices for the governance of ecosystem services? Here, we present these key questions, the rationale behind them, and their related scientific challenges in a globally coordinated research programme aimed towards improving sustainable ecosystem management. These questions will frame the activities of ecoSERVICES, formerly a DIVERSITAS project and now a project of Future Earth, in its role as a platform to foster global coordination of multidisciplinary sustainability science through the lens of ecosystem services.
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•Long-term networks of place-based research can inform global sustainability.•Place-based research fosters co-construction of local sustainability solutions.•Transference and ...scaling-up of place-based insights faces several challenges.•New institutional frameworks, settings and communities foster place-based research.
Global sustainability initiatives are gaining momentum and impact, and place-based research can provide complementary insights to strengthen them. Here, we explore the current and potential role of place-based research into informing global sustainability initiatives by assessing the strengths, challenges, and opportunities. We show that place-based research allows for a better understanding of global social–ecological dynamics, and that transformations towards sustainability are often triggered at the local scale through the co-construction of local solutions. We discuss that the very nature of place-based research can hinder its transferability because its global integration faces temporal, spatial and governance scale mismatches, and we identify some of the key challenges of scaling-up its findings. We highlight new opportunities to mainstream place-based research that are emerging from first, long-term networks of place-based research, second, new institutional research settings that contribute with conceptual comprehensive frameworks and capacity building tools, third, a global community of practice, and fourth, the concept of region as a bridge between local and global sustainability initiatives. We believe that the time is ripe to promote the role of place-based social–ecological research as a key contributor to achieve global sustainability goals.
Forest products provide an important source of income and wellbeing for rural smallholder communities across the tropics. Although tropical forest products frequently become over-exploited, only few ...studies explicitly address the dynamics of degradation in response to socio-economic drivers. Our study addresses this gap by analyzing the factors driving changes in tropical forest products in the perception of rural smallholder communities. Using the poverty and environment network global dataset, we studied recently perceived trends of forest product availability considering firewood, charcoal, timber, food, medicine, forage and other forest products. We looked at a pan-tropical sample of 233 villages with forest access. Our results show that 90% of the villages experienced declining availability of forest resources over the last five years according to the informants. Timber and fuelwood together with forest foods were featured as the most strongly affected, though with marked differences across continents. In contrast, availability of at least one main forest product was perceived to increase in only 39% of the villages. Furthermore, the growing local use of forest resources is seen as the main culprit for the decline. In villages with both growing forest resource use and immigration-vividly illustrating demographic pressures-the strongest forest resources degradation was observed. Conversely, villages with little or no population growth and a decreased use of forest resources were most likely to see significant forest-resource increases. Further, villages are less likely to perceive resource declines when local communities own a significant share of forest area. Our results thus suggest that perceived resource declines have only exceptionally triggered adaptations in local resource-use and management patterns that would effectively deal with scarcity. Hence, at the margin this supports neo-Malthusian over neo-Boserupian explanations of local resource-use dynamics.
Climate change projections over the Mediterranean basin point toward an increase in frequency and intensity of extreme events that will directly impact ecosystems resilience. In this study, we ...evaluated future trends of soil loss in forestland in Catalonia (NE Spain) due to fires and vegetation dynamics, considering the potential future impacts of co‐occurring extreme fire and rainfall events, and assessing how fire suppression can contribute to soil erosion mitigation. The process‐based MEDFIRE model was used to simulate changes in forestland due to climate and fires between 2011 and 2050 under six different future scenarios that resulted from the combination of two climatic scenarios and three fire management policies. Annual projections on landscape changes were used to estimate soil loss using the Universal Soil Loss Equation. Projected annual soil losses for forested land in Catalonia ranged between 15 and 16 tons/ha, with scenarios simulating current levels of fire suppression projecting around −5% soil loss than those assuming more relaxed suppression strategies. On average, fires explained 12–16% of annual soil loss in the region, but in fire‐severe years, they explained up to 90% of the total annual soil loss. Projected mean total soil loss in years where extreme rainfall and fire meet was 150% higher than in years where both events were not contemporary. The estimated annual probability that the two extreme impacts will co‐occur in the future ranged between 0.09 and 0.11 between scenarios. Our results highlight the importance of landscape and fire management in minimizing soil loss and its potential impacts for ecosystems.
The absence of a good interface between scientific and other knowledge holders and decision-makers in the area of biodiversity and ecosystem services has been recognised for a long time. Despite ...recent advancements, e.g. with the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), challenges remain, particularly concerning the timely provision of consolidated views from different knowledge domains. To address this challenge, a strong and flexible networking approach is needed across knowledge domains and institutions. Here, we report on a broad consultation process across Europe to develop a Network of Knowledge on biodiversity and ecosystem services (NoK), an approach aiming at (1) organising institutions and knowledge holders in an adaptable and responsive framework and (2) informing decision-makers with timely and accurate biodiversity knowledge. The consultation provided a critical analysis of the needs that should be addressed by a NoK and how it could complement existing European initiatives and institutions at the interface between policy and science. Among other functions, the NoK provides consolidated scientific views on contested topics, identification of research gaps to support relevant policies, and horizon scanning activities to anticipate emerging issues. The NoK includes a capacity building component on interfacing activities and contains mechanisms to ensure its credibility, relevance and legitimacy. Such a network would need to ensure credibility, relevance and legitimacy of its work by maximizing transparency and flexibility of processes, quality of outputs, the link to data and knowledge provision, the motivation of experts for getting involved and sound communication and capacity building.
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