Global change impacts on ecosystem services: a spatially explicit assessment for Europe

Past and future impacts of land-use changes on ecosystem services in Austria

Environmental and socio-economic developments induce land-use changes with potentially negative impacts on human well-being. To counteract undesired developments, a profound understanding of the complex relationships between drivers, land use, and ecosystem services is needed. Yet, national studies examining extended time periods are still rare. Based on the Special Report on land use, land management and climate change by the Austrian Panel on Climate Change (APCC), we use the Driver-Pressure-State-Impact-Response (DPSIR) framework to (1) identify the main drivers of land-use change, (2) describe past and future land-use changes in Austria between 1950 and 2100, (3) report related impacts on ecosystem services, and (4) discuss management responses. Our findings indicate that socio-economic drivers (e.g., economic growth, political systems, and technological developments) have influenced past land-use changes the most. The intensification of agricultural land use and urban sprawl have primarily led to declining ecosystem services in the lowlands. In mountain regions, the abandonment of mountain grassland has prompted a shift from provisioning to regulating services. However, simulations indicate that accelerating climate change will surpass socio-economic drivers in significance towards the end of this century, particularly in intensively used agricultural areas. Although climate change-induced impacts on ecosystem services remain uncertain, it can be expected that the range of land-use management options will be restricted in the future. Consequently, policymaking should prioritize the development of integrated land-use planning to safeguard ecosystem services, accounting for future environmental and socio-economic uncertainties.

Conceptual methodological framework for the resilience of biogeochemical services to heavy metals stress

The idea of linking stressors, services providing units (SPUs), and ecosystem services (ES) is ubiquitous in the literature, although is currently not applied in areas contaminated with heavy metals (HMs), This integrative literature review introduces the general form of a deterministic conceptual model of the cross-scale effect of HMs on biogeochemical services by SPUs with a feedback loop, a cross-scale heuristic concept of resilience, and develops a method for applying the conceptual model. The objectives are 1) to identify the clusters of existing research about HMs effects on ES, biodiversity, and resilience to HMs stress, 2) to map the scientific fields needed for the conceptual model's implementation, identify institutional constraints for inter-disciplinary cooperation, and propose solutions to surpass them, 3) to describe how the complexity of the cause-effect chain is reflected in the research hypotheses and objectives and extract methodological consequences, and 4) to describe how the conceptual model can be implemented. A nested analysis by CiteSpace of a set of 16,176 articles extracted from the Web of Science shows that at the highest level of data aggregation there is a clear separation between the topics of functional traits, stoichiometry, and regulating services from the typical issues of the literature about HMs, biodiversity, and ES. Most of the resilience to HMs stress agenda focuses on microbial communities. General topics such as the biodiversity-ecosystem function relationship in contaminated areas are no longer dominant in the current research, as well as large-scale problems like watershed management. The number of Web of Science domains that include the analyzed articles is large (26 up to 87 domains with at least ten articles, depending on the sub-set), but thirteen domains account for 70-80% of the literature. The complexity of approaches regarding the cause-effect chain, the stressors, the biological and ecological hierarchical level and the management objectives was characterized by a detailed analysis of 60 selected reviews and 121 primary articles. Most primary articles approach short causal chains, and the number of hypotheses or objectives by article tends to be low, pointing out the need for portfolios of complementary research projects in coherent inter-disciplinary programs and innovation ecosystems to couple the ES and resilience problems in areas contaminated with HMs. One provides triggers for developing innovation ecosystems, examples of complementary research hypotheses, and an example of technology transfer. Finally one proposes operationalizing the conceptual methodological model in contaminated socio-ecological systems by a calibration, a sensitivity analysis, and a validation phase.

Trends in Ecosystem Services across Europe Due to Land-Use/Cover Changes

The growing pressure on society due to global change requires better integration of ecosystem services (ES) into decision-making. Despite a growing number of ES assessments, Europe-wide information on recent changes of multiple ES is still rare. This study aimed at analysing changes in ES values between 2000 and 2018 across Europe based on land use/land cover (LULC) distribution. We mapped 19 ES for 52 ecoregions and identified six major groups of ecoregions with similar LULC distribution and trends. Our results indicated that provisioning ES mainly increased in the forest-dominated region (G2), decreasing in the near-natural grassland region (G1), the region with agricultural mixed systems (G3), and the intensively-used steppic region (G6). Regulating ES slightly decreased in G1 and G6, but increased in G2 and the wetland-dominated region (G5). Cultural ES had generally low negative trends for most ecoregions. In addition, our results revealed ecoregions with differing trends in ES that could be related to specific socioeconomic developments. Our findings provide spatial and quantitative information that can be used for policy development at European national and regional levels—as well as for monitoring of ES.

Ten years of ecosystem services matrix: Review of a (r)evolution

With the Ecosystem Service (ES) concept's popularisation, the need for robust and practical methodologies for ES assessments has increased. The ES matrix approach, linking ecosystem types or other geospatial units with ES in easy-to-apply lookup tables, was first developed ten years ago and, since then, has been broadly used. Whereas detailed methodological guidelines can be found in literature, the ES matrix approach seems to be often used in a quick (and maybe even "quick and dirty”) way. Based on a review of scientific publications, in which the ES matrix approach was used, we present the diversity of application contexts, highlight trends of uses and propose future recommendations for improved applications of the ES matrix.

A total of 109 studies applying the ES matrix approach and one methodological study without concrete applications were considered for the review. Amongst the main patterns observed, the ES matrix approach allows the assessment of a higher number of ES than other ES assessment methods. ES can be jointly assessed with indicators for ecosystem condition and biodiversity in the ES matrix. Although the ES matrix allows us consider many data sources to achieve the assessment scores for the individual ES, in the reviewed studies, these were mainly used together with expert-based scoring (73%) and/or ES scores that were based on an already-published ES matrix or deduced by information found in related scientific publications (51%). We must acknowledge that 27% of the studies did not clearly explain their methodology. This points out a lack of method elucidation on how the data had been used and where the scores came from. Although some studies addressed the need to consider variabilities and uncertainties in ES assessments, only a minority of studies (15%) did so. Our review shows that, in 29% of the studies, an already-existing matrix was used as an initial matrix for the assessment (mainly the same matrix from one of the Burkhard et al. papers). In 16% of the reviewed studies, no other data were used for the matrix scores or no adaptation of the existing matrix used was made. However, the actual idea of the ES scores, included in the Burkhard et al.'s matrices published 10 years ago, was to provide some examples and give inspiration for one's own studies. Therefore, we recommend to use only scores assessed for a specific study or, if one wishes to use pre-existing scores from another study, to revise them in depth, taking into account the local context of the new assessment. We also recommend to systematically report and consider variabilities and uncertainties in each ES assessment. We emphasise the need for all scientific studies to describe clearly and extensively the whole methodology used to score or evaluate ES in order to be able to rate the quality of the scores obtained. In conclusion, the application of the ES matrix has to become more transparent and integrate more variability analyses. The increasing number of studies that use the ES matrix approach confirms its success, appropriability, flexibility and utility for decision-making, as well as its ability to increase awareness of ES.

Exploring the effects of climate change mitigation scenarios on timber, water, biodiversity and carbon values: A case study in Pozantı planning unit, Turkey

This study evaluated the performance of three climate change mitigation management scenarios; business as usual (BAU), low intensity management (LIM) and high intensity management (HIM) to provide ecosystem services. ETCAP simulation model was used to forecast forest development for Pozantı area with 17,603 ha forests in Turkey. Wood production, biodiversity conservation, carbon sequestration and water provision were the primary ecosystem services. The species composition, natural composition, key habitats and understory vegetation are maintained and small forest openings were left intact for wildlife. Some forest areas were allowed to develop older to provide better opportunities of biodiversity conservation. The increase of carbon stock was related to age class shifts to older stages due mainly to increasing afforestation areas and productivity. The marginal differences in total carbon balance were related to a smaller increase in volume increment in BAU scenario and a higher allocation of harvest to energy production for the LIM and HIM scenarios. The planning scenarios allowed better production of water runoffs with slight differences among the output of management scenarios. The prevailing variable was the areas of afforestation. The impacts of a forest management scenario on ecosystem services highly depend on the development rate and intensity of management interventions.

An assessment framework for climate-proof nature-based solutions

Raising interest in 'nature-based solutions' (NBS) has inspired attempts to organise their principles and qualities within comprehensive and internally consistent evaluation frameworks, so as to demonstrate the superior performance of 'working with nature'. However, the proposed frameworks stop short of taking into account the changing conditions in which NBS are set to operate. Climate change, in particular, can alter ecosystems and their services, and may undermine the performance of green solutions that rely on them. We present here a 'dynamic' assessment framework that explicitly accounts for the impact of climate change on the effectiveness of the proposed NBS. The framework is based on an innovative approach that integrates system analysis and backcasting. Although it has not yet been applied to the NBS context, backcasting is well-suited to seize the transformational character of NBS, as it encourages 'breakthrough' leaps rather than incremental improvements. Our framework factors in the multifunctional character of NBS and is designed to capture associated direct benefits/costs and co-benefits/costs. It is meant to be applied ex ante to ideally support the choice between innovative NBS and traditional options, in an effort to respond to the societal challenges identified by the EU Research & Innovation agenda on the environment.

Evaluation and simulation of the impact of land use change on ecosystem services based on a carbon flow model: A case study of the Manas River Basin of Xinjiang, China

Land use change affects ecosystem services by changing the structure and function of ecosystems. Carbon flows throughout natural and socioeconomic systems can effectively reveal this process. The Manas River Basin has experienced rapid oasis expansion for decades, and land use change in the basin is very typical. Oasis expansion has caused a large amount of cropland to invade natural vegetation, thus affecting ecosystem services. This study used a biomass-based ecosystem service estimation model to assess changes in ecosystem services in the Manas River Basin. The carbon flow model was constructed using energy systems language, and the future development of ecosystem services was simulated based on different land use scenarios. The results show the following: (1) From 1980 to 2015, the river basin provisioning service was continuously optimized, while the regulating, supporting and cultural services were reduced. (2) If the expansion of cropland continues, then carbon will be transferred from the natural ecosystem to the cropland. Regulation, support and cultural services in the basin continue to decrease. Due to the shortage of water resources in the basin, the growth of provisioning services is limited. (3) If the project of returning cropland to grassland is implemented, then the carbon in the natural ecosystem will gradually recover. The regulating, supporting and cultural services of the river basin are rising, but provisioning services are gradually decreasing. In general, the model based on energy systems language can reflect the ecological process within the system and effectively reveal the carbon flow process between ecosystems. The use of carbon to quantify ecosystem services can harmonize dimensions, facilitate comparisons, and mitigate errors in outcomes due to different evaluation criteria or subjective factors. Therefore, this study combines energy systems language with carbon flow, which helps to more rationally explore the impact of land use change on ecosystem services, thereby providing valuable information for river basin management.