Assessing impact of land use and climate change on regulating ecosystem services in the czech republic

Abstract

Ecosystem services, defined as benefits provided by ecosystem functioning to society, are essential to human well‐being. Due to global environmental change and related anthropogenic drivers, ecosystems are often degraded, which hinders the delivery of ecosystem services. This study aims to quantify the impacts of land use and climate change on two regulating ecosystem services—carbon sequestration and water purification in terms of nitrogen retention in the Czech Republic. While employing approaches of scenarios and modeling, we illustrate current and potential future status of these ecosystem services. Our results show that among the ecosystem change drivers, one of the dominant domestic land‐use change of ALARM BAMBU (Business‐As‐Might‐Be‐Usual) scenario is change of arable land and grassland to forest area that increases by 4.5% in 2080 compared to 2000. The results of ecosystem service modeling based on BAMBU scenario for the years 2050 and 2080 indicate that the highest yearly carbon sequestration rate occurred in 2000–2050, reaching 640 GgC·yr−1, 2000–2080 shows decline in this regulating service by 16%. Average nitrogen leaching to water streams reached 0.75 kgN·ha−1·yr−1 for BAMBU in 2050 scenario and 0.80 kgN·ha−1·yr−1 for BAMBU in 2080 scenario as a result of decreasing nitrogen load, which suggested a decrease in nitrogen pollution compared to 2000. Since ecosystem services have not been extensively mainstreamed into research and policies in eastern European countries, we aim to contribute to improvement of knowledge on current status and potential future pathways of the provision of regulating ecosystem services in the Czech Republic.

Sustainability policy considerations for ecosystem management in central and eastern europe

“…Krkoška Lorencová et al. () use scenarios and modeling to assess different management approaches and future pathways, with their respective risks and opportunities. They focus on impacts of land‐use change and climate change on two regulating ecosystem services: carbon sequestration and water purification.…”

Land degradation risk mapping using topographic, human-induced, and geo-environmental variables and machine learning algorithms, for the Pole-Doab watershed, Iran

“…Identifying the causes of LD is essential for its prevention. Globally, LULCC (decline in rangeland area and conversion to farmland with low productivity) is recognized as a major driver of LD (Krkoška Lorencová et al 2016). An increasing proportion of land with low productivity and a lack of financial resources for land managers in developing countries are exacerbating the risk of LD and lowering resilience within rangeland landscapes (Darabi et al 2018;Pirnia et al 2018;Cowie et al 2019;Pirnia et al 2019).…”

“…The environmental problems associated with LD are particularly severe in dryland regions, which poses a threat to many people, especially in developing countries, such as Iran (Khosravi et al 2015;Darabi et al 2018). During the recent decades, land degradation in Iran (e.g., soil erosion, such as gully development) has accelerated in Iran due to many factors, such as increasing population, socio-economic development, LULCC (demand for agricultural products has resulted in large-scale conversion of rangeland and forest to cropland), over-exploitation of water resources, geology and topography, and climate change (Pour et al 2009;Seraji et al 2009;Davudirad et al 2016;Bakhshandeh et al 2019).…”

Using stakeholders' preference for ecosystems and ecosystem services as an economic basis underlying strategic conservation planning

“…In contrast, land-use changes that favor urban expansion and industrialization negatively affect ecosystems, resulting in degradation and decline of ecosystem services ( Liu et al., 2012 ; Huang et al., 2013 ; Krkoška lorencová et al., 2016 ; Motoshita et al., 2016 ). While it has a negative impact on human well-being, the decline of the ecosystem services is being overshadowed by the potential economic gains of these land-use changes.…”