Assessing bundles of ecosystem services from regional to landscape scale: insights from the French Alps

Agricultural diversification often promotes biodiversity and ecosystem services by increasing habitat diversity. However, responses to agricultural diversification are context dependent, differentially impacting functional groups of service-providing organisms and crop yields. Conservation and no tillage are promoted as agricultural diversification practices that increase soil heterogeneity and habitat diversity. Here we investigated whether soil tillage practices in canola crop fields altered arthropod biodiversity or yield, and how effects of field-scale diversification compared to landscape-scale habitat context. We focused on effects of high, medium, or no tillage on five functional groups with unique diets and reproductive strategies: (i) herbivores, (ii) kleptoparasites, (iii) parasitoids, (iv) pollinators, and (v) predators. Effects of agricultural diversification on arthropod abundance and diversity varied across functional groups. Pollinators responded to on-farm soil diversification, benefiting from medium tillage. Predators and herbivores responded most strongly to landscape-scale habitat composition and were more abundant in landscapes with more semi-natural habitat. However, variation in arthropod communities had little effect on canola crop yield, which was lowest in fields with no tillage. Policy implications: Our results indicate that natural history differences among arthropod functional groups mediate how habitat availability affects biodiversity. Crop yields, however, showed no response to biodiversity of ecosystem service providers. Our research highlights the need to determine the contexts in which soil diversification practices meet a multi-faceted goal of simultaneously supporting natural biodiversity, ecosystem services, and crop yield.

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Ecosystem Services at the Landscape Scale: the Need for Integrative Approaches

Landscape Online ◽

10.3097/lo.201023 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 23 ◽

pp. 1-11 ◽

Cited By ~ 54

Author(s):

Felix Müller ◽

Rudolf De Groot ◽

Louise Willemen

Keyword(s):

Ecosystem Services ◽

Ecosystem Service ◽

Landscape Scale ◽

Decision Makers ◽

Future Research ◽

Ecological Processes ◽

Research Directions ◽

Main Research ◽

Definition Of ◽

Whole Systems

During the symposium "Ecosystem Services at the Landscape Scale" from the EU-IALE conference 2009, several challenges for future research on approaches to use the concept of ecosystem services at the landscape scale were identified, focussing on the need for integration. Three main research directions were discussed, (i) the definition of the potentials and limitations of the ecosystem service approach for landscape analysis, (ii) the identification of suitable methods and tools to apply the ecosystem service approach at the landscape scale and (iii) the demand of incorporating ecosystem and landscape services in decision making and management. This paper briefly addresses and discusses some of these topics and puts them into a broader perspective. From this viewpoint it becomes obvious that many high-quality sectoral studies are carried out, e.g. concentrating on specific services or specific linkages within the "ecosystem service cascade" which describes the relation between biophysical characteristics of the landscape, their functions, services, benefits and values for society. In order to provide useful information for decision makers, ecosystem services studies should be supplemented by investigations of the whole systems of interactions between ecological processes and societal valuations.

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Performance of Multicriteria Evaluation and Heuristic Methods in the Delineation of Green Infrastructure in Areas with Fragmented Landscapes

IOP Conference Series Materials Science and Engineering ◽

10.1088/1757-899x/1203/2/022059 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 1203 (2) ◽

pp. 022059

Author(s):

Rocío Losada ◽

Marcos Boullón ◽

Andrés M. García ◽

David Miranda

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Simulated Annealing ◽

Ecosystem Services ◽

Green Infrastructure ◽

Landscape Scale ◽

Fragmented Landscape ◽

Heuristic Methods ◽

Fragmented Landscapes ◽

Multicriteria Evaluation ◽

Wide Range

Abstract The EU Commission has established Green infrastructure as one of the tools to preserve biodiversity and grant the provision of ecosystem services that reduce impacts on natural values like those produced by climate change. Therefore, a European green infrastructure strategy has been created that commit member states to incorporate green infrastructure to their territorial planning. Yet, methodologies to delimit green infrastructure so as to facilitate its inclusion in territorial plans are still scarce. The available methods are mainly based in multicriteria evaluation and focus on zoning general green infrastructure areas taking into account the provision potential of just a few ecosystem services. Considering the provision of a wide range of ecosystem services to delimit green infrastructure elements is key to grant their multifunctionality and increase their efficiency mitigating climate change impacts in natural values and human population. However, the lack of data or the high cost to accurately map ecosystem services provision potential, leads most of the time to infer it from land cover data. This creates problems when using these maps to delimit green infrastructure in areas with fragmented landscapes; since identified green infrastructure areas may be irregular and scattered. There are heuristic methods like simulated annealing that have been used to identify ecosystem services hot spots which consider the regularity and size of the identified patches. These methods can be used to delimit green infrastructure in fragmented landscapes finding a balance between the regularity of the areas and their potential to provide multiple ecosystem services. In the current work, a comparison has been made between the performance of simulated annealing and current multicriteria evaluation methods to delimit green infrastructure multifunctional buffer zones in an area of north-western Spain with a very fragmented landscape. Results have shown that simulated annealing delimits more regular multifunctional buffer areas but with a less average potential for providing multiple ecosystem services. The conclusions of the paper indicate that simulated annealing is good produces more regular multifunctional areas but with a lower ESs provision potential. It was observed that in the case of ESs that were mapped considering factors at landscape scale, their provision potential did not vary too much between the multifunctional buffer areas delimited with each of the methods. This indicates that delineation methods may produce more regular GI elements if ESs provision potential is mapped considering the influence of biophysical factors at a wider landscape scale.

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Social-Ecological Connectivity to Understand Ecosystem Service Provision across Networks in Urban Landscapes

Land ◽

10.3390/land9120530 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 9 (12) ◽

pp. 530

Author(s):

Monika Egerer ◽

Elsa Anderson

Keyword(s):

Land Use ◽

Ecosystem Services ◽

Landscape Connectivity ◽

Urban Ecosystem ◽

Landscape Scale ◽

Urban Landscapes ◽

Ecological Processes ◽

Ecological Connectivity ◽

Social Ecological ◽

Scale Network

Landscape connectivity is a critical component of dynamic processes that link the structure and function of networks at the landscape scale. In the Anthropocene, connectivity across a landscape-scale network is influenced not only by biophysical land use features, but also by characteristics and patterns of the social landscape. This is particularly apparent in urban landscapes, which are highly dynamic in land use and often in social composition. Thus, landscape connectivity, especially in cities, must be thought of in a social-ecological framework. This is relevant when considering ecosystem services—the benefits that people derive from ecological processes and properties. As relevant actors move through a connected landscape-scale network, particular services may “flow” better across space and time. For this special issue on dynamic landscape connectivity, we discuss the concept of social-ecological networks using urban landscapes as a focal system to highlight the importance of social-ecological connectivity to understand dynamic urban landscapes, particularly in regards to the provision of urban ecosystem services.

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