Analysing the Synergies and Trade-Offs between Ecosystem Services to Reorient Land Use Planning in Metropolitan Bilbao (Northern Spain)

Abstract

In the last decades, some European cities have undergone important changes in search of a more sustainable development. This is the case for the city of Bilbao (Bizkaia, Basque Country), where a Greenbelt has been maintained surrounding the urban areas allowing the periurban areas to deliver ecosystem services (ES) to society. However, the role of the different ecosystems in the provision of ES is not the same, which can lead to conflicts among them. The aim of this study is to analyze the synergies and trade-offs among the eight most important ES in the Bilbao Metropolitan Greenbelt (BMG) to orient their management strategies towards more multifunctional landscapes. We mapped the ES and overlapped them looking for the most relevant areas for the provision of multiple ES and areas that are mostly lacking ES provision. We identify also existing ES trade-offs and synergies between ES using correlations so that managers can prioritize preservation efforts of land use types in the rest of the area. The results show that provisioning ES had trade-offs with regulating and cultural ES and the latter showed synergies between them. The former are mainly delivered by semi-natural ecosystems, while regulating and cultural ES are delivered mainly by natural ecosystems. Moreover, the most relevant areas for the provision of multiple ES were proposed as potential components of a Green Infrastructure (GI). Their identification and ES bundles could help decision-makers to orient their management strategies towards sustainability in metropolitan areas.

Trade-Offs and Synergies Between Food and Fodder Production and Other Ecosystem Services in an Actively Restored Forest, Natural Forest and an Agroforestry System in Ghana

“…The EM approach hence integrates measures of the relative supply of multiple ecosystem functions and services to evaluate multiple restoration targets based on a high number of individual indicators (Strobl et al, 2019). The multifunctional nature of ecosystems and the proposed multifunctionality approach cause the need to consider synergies and trade-offs between ES and functions (Raudsepp-Hearne et al, 2010;Gamfeldt et al, 2013;Peña et al, 2018). Berry et al (2020), for example, discussed synergistic relationships between carbon storage and biodiversity, whereby the provision on one allowed for greater levels of the other.…”

Co-Creation of Knowledge for Ecosystem Services Approach to Spatial Planning in the Basque Country

“…To this end, first of all, within the CoP, the priority regulating ES were identified (habitat maintenance, air purification, carbon storage, water flow regulation, and pollination) [28]. Subsequently, their spatial distributions were mapped (very high, high, medium, low and very low) in accordance with the methodology outlined in [29,30], and the maps of these ES were overlaid. Those areas that had high or very high values for all ES were identified as principal components, and those with high or very high values for four of them were identified as secondary components [31].…”

Understanding the importance of landscape configuration on ecosystem service bundles at a high resolution in urban landscapes in the UK

“…ES provision was positively related to the amount of vegetation and negatively related to its degree of fragmentation. Peña et al (2018) found that provisioning services had trade-offs with regulating services and cultural services in Bilbao (in an area that covers 413 km 2 ). Synergies were found between cultural services and between regulating services.…”