Mapping Ecosystem Service: Challenges and Solutions (original) (raw)

Mapping ecosystem services across scales and continents – A review

Ecosystem Services, 2015

Tremendous progress in ecosystem service mapping across the world has moved the concept of ecosystem services forward towards an increasingly useful tool for policy and decision making. There is a pressing need to analyse the various spatial approaches used for the mapping studies. We reviewed ecosystem services mapping literature in respect to spatial scale, world distribution, and types of ecosystem services considered. We found that most world regions were represented among ecosystem service mapping studies and that they included a diverse set of ecosystem services, relatively well distributed across different ecosystem service categories. A majority of the studies were presented at intermediary scales (municipal and provincial level), and 66% of the studies used a fine resolution of 1 ha or less. The intermediary scale of presentation is important for land use policy and management. The fact that studies are conducted at a fine resolution is important for informing land management practices that mostly takes place at the scale of fields to villages. Ecosystem service mapping could be substantially advanced by more systematic development of cross-case comparisons and methods.

Mapping ecosystem services – a new approach in regional scale

Identifying the potential of ecosystems to provide ecosystem services (ES) is largely dependent on the detail and completeness of the base ecosystem map. The existing guidelines for the construction of this type of map include only a few basic types of ecosystems that work only at a national or international scale and are insufficient to identify the full potential of ecosystem services at local or regional scales. The aim of the study was to develop a comprehensive map of ecosystem types for mapping ecosystem services at a local and regional scale in three selected communes located within young glacial landscape (NE Poland). As a result, a detailed map of ecosystems has been constructed containing 42 ecosystem types including age and habitat categories. This original map is the first detailed cartographic work that can be successfully used to determine the potential for ecosystem services to be provided by areas analysed in large scales. The proposed approach has a universal character and can be also applied to any area analysed at similar spatial scales.

Mapping of ecosystem services: Missing links between purposes and procedures

The literature on ecosystem services mapping presents a diversity of procedures whose consistency might question the reliability of maps for decision-making. This study aims at analyzing the correspondence between the purpose of maps (e.g. land use planning) and the procedures used for mapping (e.g. benefit transfer, ecological transfer). Fifty scientific studies published between 2005 and 2012 were selected and analyzed according to 19 variables, applying independence tests over contingency tables, ANOVA and regression analysis. The results show that most studies declared a decision-making purpose (82%), which in 50% of the cases, was land use planning. Only few relationships were found between variables selected to describe the purpose of the maps and those selected to describe the mapping procedures. Thus for example, maps aimed at supporting land use planning did not include any level of stakeholder participation or scenario analysis, as it would have been expected given this purpose. Likewise, maps were based on either economic value or biophysical transfers, regardless of the spatial and temporal scales of mapping. This generally weak relation between map's purposes with the used procedures could explain the still restricted incidence of ES on decision-making by limiting the transmission, comparison and synthesis of results.

The use of geographic information systems to map and assess ecosystem services

In recent years, geographic information systems (GIS) have become a powerful tool for mapping and assessing the provision of ecosystem services within a landscape. GIS can help land managers and conservationists visualize spatial and temporal patterns and changes in ecosystem services and estimate the potential impact from projected changes in land use or management or climatic conditions on the provision of these services. The endgoal of ecosystem service assessment is usually to estimate marginal values of ecosystem services to inform decisions where trade-offs in ecosystem service provision will affect human well-being. Because our ability to estimate the provision of ecosystem services underlies our ability to estimate their societal values, the theoretical bases of GIS approaches and models for assessing ecosystem services need to be well understood before they are employed for decision-making purposes. This paper reviews GIS approaches and software developed for the assessment of ecosystem services and highlights their strengths and weaknesses in the context of different end uses.

Ecosystem Service Mapping: A Management-Oriented Approach to Support Environmental Planning Process

InTech eBooks, 2018

Effective integration of ecosystem services (ESs) into spatial planning and decision-making processes has been advocated as an opportunity to improve current practices and to promote sustainable development. However, the actual uptake of ecosystem services is still challenging, in part due to the complexity of ES studies, data scarcity, and ES compartmentalization, and so on. This chapter presents a case of mapping and characterizing coastal ecosystem services in a way that deals with these issues in order to facilitate its integration in the decision-making and planning process. It gives an insight into which ESs are currently provided in Ria de Aveiro coastal region (Portugal), how are they distributed in space, and identifies multifunctional areas. We argue that the use of existing and available data, as well as tools and approaches that are similar to those used in spatial planning, notwithstanding its limitations, has the potential for bridging science and decision-making spheres. ES-related information could be thus gradually incorporated in the design of local strategies towards sustainable and transparent planning and management processes.