A web-based planning support tool for sediment management in a meso-scale river basin in Western Central Brazil

Mapping the Loss of Ecosystem Services in a Region Under Intensive Land Use Along the Southern Coast of South Africa

“…The inclusion of environmental data provides meaningful refinements to ensure spatially explicit assessments of the effects of LULC on ecosystem services [15]; however, existing approaches that exclude complex modeling still rely on lengthy calculations [15,16]. Findings of this study strengthen the credibility of the approach developed by Lima et al [12], which includes a landscape property scoring matrix by simply scoring relevant landscape properties with each ecosystem service.…”

“…The findings show that the irrigated and dryland agricultural activities and forest plantations in the Cape Winelands, Grabouw cluster, and Botrivier to Struis Bay cluster are mainly located in elevated areas that contribute to an increase in erosion. Lorz et al [16] reported an increase in sediment input in agricultural areas for the Cerrado biome in Brazil that was also increased by elevated slopes. The irrigated crop cultivation of vegetables in the Cape Flats is located on erodible sandy soils, which increase the risk of soil erosion.…”

“…Many mapping approaches use complex models and extensive geodatabases [8][9][10][11], which make their application challenging and time-consuming. However, mapping approaches that rely on available data, literature, and the knowledge of experts are useful to ensure timely decision making [3,[12][13][14][15][16][17]. Simple and robust mapping approaches that relate LULC classes to ecosystem services using a scoring matrix [3,14,17] are useful, particularly in data-scarce regions wherein expert knowledge may be used [3].…”

“…For the matrix approach, the values to link LULC with ecosystem services are given by the authors on the basis of an evaluation of available case studies and literature on ecosystem service criteria, as well as inputs from consulting experts in the field [3,14,17]. To ensure a spatially explicit assessment of the effects of LULC on ecosystem services, the capacity of the natural ecosystem to provide certain ecosystem services are considered [12,15,16] and the landscape potentials developed for each studied ecosystem service are parameterized [15,16]. The landscape potentials are based on existing methods that require lengthy calculations; however, Lima et al [12] simply scored landscape properties relevant to each ecosystem service as an additional scoring matrix based on knowledge gained from the available literature and inputs from experts.…”

Spatial information and participation in socio-ecological systems: experiences, tools and lessons learned for land-use planning

“…This has important socio-political consequences on the use of new techniques (i.e., Participatory GIS) as tools for planning. Participatory, "bottom-up" geo-information technologies have been concurrently developing (Koschke et al 2014), and are expected to strengthen participatory spatial planning; important among these has been the transformation of conventional mapping and GIS tools into Participatory GIS (PGIS -Jankowski & Nyerges 2001, Fürst et al 2010b, 2012, Gebel et al 2012, Lorz et al 2013, Koschke et al 2014.…”