33Dispersal is one of the key mechanisms affecting the distribution of individuals, populations 34 and communities in nature. Despite advances in the study of single species, it has been 35 notoriously difficult to account for dispersal in multispecies metacommunities, where it 36 potentially has strong effects on community structure beyond those of local environmental 37 conditions. Dispersal should thus be directly integrated in both basic and applied research by 38 using proxies. Here, we review the use of proxies in the current metacommunity research, 39 suggest new proxies and discuss how proxies could be used in community modelling, 40 particularly in freshwater systems. We suggest that while traditional proxies may still be 41 useful, proxies formerly utilized in transport geography may provide useful novel insights 42 into the structuring of biological communities in freshwater systems. We also suggest that 43 understanding the utility of such proxies for dispersal in metacommunities is highly important

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Context. 'Conserving Nature's stage' has been advanced as an important conservation principle because of known links between biodiversity and abiotic environmental diversity, especially in sensitive high-latitude environments and at the landscape scale. However these links have not been examined across gradients of human impact on the landscape. Objectives. To (1) analyze the relationships between land-use intensity and both landscapescale biodiversity and geodiversity, and (2) assess the contributions of geodiversity, climate and spatial variables to explaining vascular plant species richness in landscapes of low, moderate and high human impact. Methods. We used generalized additive models (GAMs) to analyze relationships between land-use intensity and both geodiversity (geological, geomorphological and hydrological richness) and plant species richness in 6191 1-km 2 grid squares across Finland. We used linear regression-based variation partitioning (VP) to assess contributions of climate, geodiversity and spatial variable groups to accounting for spatial variation in species richness. Results. In GAMs, geodiversity correlated negatively, and plant species richness positively, with land-use intensity. Both relationships were non-linear. In VP, geodiversity best accounted for species richness in areas of moderate to high human impact. These overall contributions were mainly due to variation explained jointly with climate, which dominated the models. Independent geodiversity contributions were highest in pristine environments, but low throughout. Conclusions. Human action increases biodiversity but may reduce geodiversity, at landscape scale in high-latitude environments. Better understanding of the connections between biodiversity and abiotic environment along changing land-use gradients is essential in developing sustainable measures to conserve biodiversity under global change.

• Geodiversity was mainly positively related to ecosystem services (ESs) • Geodiversity complemented biodiversity in explaining ESs • Geodiversity should be more deeply integrated into ES research

Human welfare is dependent on the availability of ecosystem services (ESs). There is an urgent need to explore the balance between ES production and consumption areas to ensure the sustainable use of the natural capital. Here, we present a spatial accessibility analysis to explicitly evaluate the balance between ES supply and demand across Europe. We used a central food product (crop) as an example of provisioning ES, where transportation is required to satisfy the demand. Our results show large differences in a country's ability to produce food in relation to its demand, leading to significant risks of over-and underproduction on a regional scale. An ecosystem's capacity to provide services exceeded especially in the middle of Europe. The majority of the countries would benefit significantly by balancing the supply and demand at international level, even at close distances. Our results demonstrate how the situation in Europe can change if the international distribution of the food ES is prevented. By using a state-of-the-art accessibility method instead of commonly used overlay analysis, it is possible to identify where to invest in transportation and enhance natural capacity to respond to the possible changes in food production or the growing demand of food energy.