Rivers and floodplains provide many regulating, provisioning and cultural ecosystem services (ES) such as flood risk regulation, crop production or recreation. Intensive use of resources such as hydropower production, construction of detention basins and intensive agriculture substantially change ecosystems and may affect their capacity to provide ES. Legal frameworks such as the European Water Framework Directive, Bird and Habitats Directive and Floods Directive already address various uses and interests. However, management is still sectoral and often potential synergies or trade‐offs between sectors are not considered. The ES concept could support a joint and holistic evaluation of impacts and proactively suggest advantageous options. The river ecosystem service index (RESI) method evaluates the capacity of floodplains to provide ES by using a standardized five‐point scale for 1 km‐floodplain segments based on available spatial data. This scaling allows consistent scoring of all ES and their integration into a single index. The aim of this article is to assess ES impacts of different flood prevention scenarios on a 75 km section of the Danube river corridor in Germany. The RESI method was applied to evaluate scenario effects on 13 ES with the standardized five‐point scale. Synergies and trade‐offs were identified as well as ES bundles and dependencies on land use and connectivity. The ratio of actual and former floodplain has the strongest influence on the total ES provision: the higher the percentage and area of an active floodplain, the higher the sum of ES. The RESI method proved useful to support decision‐making in regional planning.
Agricultural landscapes play an important role in providing different ecosystem services. However, the current trend of land use intensification in Central Europe involves the risk of trade-offs between them. Since cultural ecosystem services (CES) are less tangible, they are often underrepresented in landscape management decisions. To highlight this subject we evaluated CES in agro-ecosystems in the biosphere reserve Swabian Alb (Southwestern Germany). We conducted a survey among visitors to investigate their usage of the landscape, their perception as well as valuation of CES, and interrelations with biodiversity. The results show the presence of various types of usage related to cultural services, the most prominent being recreation and landscape aesthetics. People declared a high affinity to nature and biodiversity awareness. A participatory mapping task revealed their appreciation of biodiverse and ecologically relevant places such as protected species-rich grasslands, traditional orchards and hedgerows. Several socio-demographic differences emerged, e.g., between age classes and local/non-local visitors. We conclude that our exemplary methodical approach was successful in capturing the CES and their link to biodiversity in the investigated biosphere reserve, while identifying priority fields of action concerning the integration of CES into management and planning of cultural landscapes, ultimately serving as guides for local decision-makers.
As it can strongly influence the availability of light and thus primary production, coloured dissolved organic matter (CDOM) affects the function of lake ecosystems. Therefore reliable methods are required for the monitoring of CDOM concentration. A new method using downwelling irradiance was tested for applicability in four selected lakes of the Bavarian Osterseen Lake District, which consists of 19 naturally connected freshwater lakes of different trophic level. The method separates between the direct and diffuse part of the incident light in order to handle the strong variability of the underwater light field. It is implemented in the software WASI, which is capable to retrieve water constituents by inverse modeling. During field campaigns downwelling irradiance measurements using RAMSES sensors were made in different depths. Simultaneously, water samples were taken in three depths (0.5 m, 2 m and Secchi disk depth), from which the absorption coefficient of CDOM, a Y , was derived in the range from 190 to 900 nm using photometric absorption measurements. Concentration (defined as a Y at 440 nm) ranged from 0.33 to 1.55 m -1 with a mean of 0.71 m -1 ± 0.04 m -1 , the spectral slope at 440 nm from 0.0120 to 0.0184 nm -1 with a mean of 0.0145 ± 0.0008 nm -1 . These laboratory measurements from water samples were compared to CDOM concentration obtained by inverse modeling of downwelling irradiance measurements using WASI. For sensor depths lower than 1 to 1.5 m large uncertainties were observed. The measurements in 2 m depth and at Secchi disk depth yielded good correlation between water sample and WASI derived data (R 2 = 0.87) with a mean standard deviation of 0.06 m -1 for the determined CDOM concentrations. This new method is an alternative to laboratory analysis of water samples from in situ measurements of CDOM concentration.
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