Bridging theory and practice in ecosystem services mapping: a systematic review

The mapping and assessment of Ecosystem Services (ES) aims at better connecting environmental conservation, economic development, and human well-being. However, 60 years after the development of the ES concept, a persistent gap remains between the production of scientific knowledge on ES and its use in support of policy and management. Here, we report on a systematic review of the scientific literature that helps better understand key challenges and offers potential solutions to bridge this gap. The review considered four criteria: (1) how stakeholders participate to studies; (2) how usable ES maps are for decision-making; (3) what policy recommendations were made; and (4) what research recommendations were made. The analysis of 135 papers published between 2008 and 2020 revealed diverse technical and conceptual challenges that could prevent the effective use of ES concepts and methods outside the academic realm. The main challenges identified in the literature were the uncertainty levels of ES mapping outputs, issues of spatial scales, the understanding of ES interactions, and the need for temporal analysis. Many policies rely on mapped outcomes, creating a window of opportunity for the uptake of ES mapping into policy-making. However, it remains key to involve stakeholders early in the co-design of ES studies and to better understand their preferences and motivation to adopt ES mapping in their practices. The study shows that higher levels of learnability of ES mapping practices, further popularization to foster public awareness, and increased capacity building would facilitate the ES concept uptake into decision and policy-making.

Mapping Land Suitability to Guide Landscape Restoration in the Amazon

Beyond reducing deforestation, the control of forest degradation, the promotion of forest restoration, and the improvement of agricultural practices in the Brazilian Amazon are becoming increasingly important for sustainable development. To enable farmers and authorities to organize their landscapes and optimize both agricultural practices and the provision of ecosystem services, mapping land suitability is essential, but it is lacking in the region. In this paper, we present a method for mapping land suitability at a fine scale (30-m pixels), adapted to the needs of farmers and municipalities, to not only optimize agricultural production but also the ecosystem services provided by forests. We used topographic data from the Brazilian municipality of Paragominas to produce four maps, one each of soil texture, slope, floodplains, and hydrography, that we then combined into a single land suitability map. This map has been incorporated into a spatial database, which also contains information on land use, remoteness, and land tenure. We performed spatial analyses to measure the process of land use change, and to define indicators that enable local stakeholders to organize landscape restoration. We highlight an organic link between agricultural intensification and forest restoration, and provide a spatial tool for landscape design, assessment, and monitoring.

National Scale Land Cover Classification for Ecosystem Services Mapping and Assessment, Using Multitemporal Copernicus EO Data and Google Earth Engine

Land-Use/Land-Cover (LULC) products are a common source of information and a key input for spatially explicit models of ecosystem service (ES) supply and demand. Global, continental, and regional, readily available, and free land-cover products generated through Earth Observation (EO) data, can be potentially used as relevant to ES mapping and assessment processes from regional to national scales. However, several limitations exist in these products, highlighting the need for timely land-cover extraction on demand, that could replace or complement existing products. This study focuses on the development of a classification workflow for fine-scale, object-based land cover mapping, employed on terrestrial ES mapping, within the Greek terrestrial territory. The processing was implemented in the Google Earth Engine cloud computing environment using 10 m spatial resolution Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 data. Furthermore, the relevance of different training data extraction strategies and temporal EO information for increasing the classification accuracy was also evaluated. The different classification schemes demonstrated differences in overall accuracy ranging from 0.88% to 4.94% with the most accurate classification scheme being the manual sampling/monthly feature classification achieving a 79.55% overall accuracy. The classification results suggest that existing LULC data must be cautiously considered for automated extraction of training samples, in the case of new supervised land cover classifications aiming also to discern complex vegetation classes. The code used in this study is available on GitHub and runs on the Google Earth Engine web platform.

Mapping Ecosystem Services for Marine Planning: A UK Case Study

This study presents an ecosystem-services-mapping tool that calculates the monetary value of several ecosystem services (ES) provided from an area comprising both MPAs (Marine Protected Areas) and non-managed areas. Findings in the UK South West Marine Management Organisation (MMO) Plan Area show that different MPAs yield high value estimates and that activities are grouped in certain areas, with the Severn Estuary and surrounding Site(s) of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) attracting the most recreational anglers, despite having lower water quality. This can be explained by increased nutrient levels, which enhance biological activity and yet do not cause oxygen depletion. The yearly value of the ecosystem service of carbon sequestration and storage in the area is estimated between £16 and £62 thousand. Proximity to large urban areas and shallow waters appear to be the most appealing factors for anglers, while proximity with France can be associated with the high fishing effort in the southwest of the study area. We show that the use of a tool integrating a willingness-to-pay function with high spatial resolution layers and associated monetary values can be used for short-term marine spatial planning and management.

An online method database for mapping and assessing ecosystem services

Since the foundation of the ecosystem services concept in the ninetieth of the last century (Costanza et al. 1998, Costanza et al. 1997, de Groot 1992), many methods to map and assess ecosystem services have been developed and applied to policy and business questions worldwide. While many flexible methods exist at different spatial scales and ecosystem types, Jax et al. (2018) express the difficulty in choosing and applying the correct method to the right topic of interest. To enable a selection of appropriate methods, Harrison et al. (2018) developed a decision tree approach. However, Dunford et al. (2018) argue that often not a single method but a combination of methods are required for appropriate decision-making in real world situations. Thus, applying the concept of ecosystem services in practice is challenging, especially at institutional level (Saarikoski et al. 2018). This hampers comparability, applicability and transferability of ecosystem services assessments and related mapping applications across scales and European regions. It also impedes a solid overview of existing methods suitable for use at different scales in different biomes and types of ecosystems. These challenges require a consistent knowledge capitalisation infrastructure, where information is synthesised in a publicly accessible portal to enable a consistent description of different ecosystem conditions and the services they provide. Going beyond the previously mentioned challenges requires a flexible methodology for assessing and mapping ecosystem services. The Horizon 2020 project ESMERALDA (Enhancing ecoSysteM sERvices mApping for poLicy and Decision mAking) developed this methodology and implemented it into the "MAES explorer"*5 and the "MAES Methods Explorer*1 (MME)". The MME complements previous developments from the EU projects OpenNESS*2 and OPERAs*3. In contrast to the OPPLA*4 case-study-finder with case study areas and accompanied study area booklets and descriptions, MME focuses on methods for mapping and assessing ecosystem services and links those to selected literature and case studies. Additionally, MME provides a comprehensive and publicly searchable collection of peer-reviewed journal references and grey literature about mapping and assessing ecosystem services in Europe. This compilation is cross-related with the case study booklets produced by the ESMERALDA project and particularly methods, which are specifically used to assess and map particular ecosystem services within the case study area. Thus, searching for and filtering of particular case study areas, (related) literature references and/or methods is possible. Santos-Martin et al. (2018) provide the detailed description about the scientific procedure behind the MME tool described here.