Distinction, quantification and mapping of potential and realized supply-demand of flow-dependent ecosystem services

Abstract

This study addresses and conceptualizes the possible dependence of ecosystem services on prevailing air and/or water flow processes and conditions, and particularly on the trajectories and associated spatial reach of these flows in carrying services from supply to demand areas in the landscape. The present conceptualization considers and accounts for such flow-dependence in terms of potential and actually realized service supply and demand, which may generally differ and must therefore be distinguished due to and accounting for the prevailing conditions of service carrier flows. We here concretize and quantify such flow-dependence for a specific landscape case (the Stockholm region, Sweden) and for two examples of regulating ecosystem services: local climate regulation and storm water regulation. For these service and landscape examples, we identify, quantify and map key areas of potential and realized service supply and demand, based for the former (potential) on prevailing relatively static types of landscape conditions (such as land-cover/use, soil type and demographics), and for the latter (realized) on relevant carrier air and water flows. These first-order quantification examples constitute first steps towards further development of generally needed such flow-dependence assessments for various types of ecosystem services in different landscapes over the world.

Identifying the Areas Benefitting from the Prevention of Wind Erosion by the Key Ecological Function Area for the Protection of Desertification in Hunshandake, China

“…Several other researchers have identified mismatches between SPAs and SBAs [10,[63][64][65] that include cases in which the water provided by a study area is used by the people in the downstream areas while the people within the study area use water from farther upstream. Therefore, it is difficult to develop effective management policies based on the results of such supply and demand budgets, so several studies have investigated the flow of ecosystem services to determine the spatial relationships between SPAs and SBAs [14,66,67]. However, few studies have investigated the flow of wind erosion prevention.…”

A spatio-temporal delineation of trans-boundary ecosystem service flows from Inner Mongolia

“…One emphasizes the spatio-temporal connection process between the SPAs and SBAs and mainly reveals the dynamic mechanism of ES flows based on a distributed ecosystem model, such as the Artificial Intelligence for Ecosystem Services (ARIES) system constructed by the University of Vermont (Bagstad et al 2014, Zank et al 2016 or the distributed hydrological model (Francesconi et al 2016, Schmalz et al 2016. The other understanding is based on the gray/black box theory, which does not consider the status and structure of the ecosystem and emphasizes only the ultimate utility and the balance between ES supply and demand (Baró et al 2016, Goldenberg et al 2017. However, regardless of the method adopted when simulating ES flows, the transregional effect should be quantitatively reflected to establish the spatio-temporal relationship between supply and demand.…”

How to Guarantee the Sustainability of the Wind Prevention and Sand Fixation Service: An Ecosystem Service Flow Perspective

“…Early research focused on the quantification of ESs supply and demand separately [6,11]. Since then, some studies have tried to map the beneficiaries and emphasize the relationship between ESs and human welfare by visualizing the ESF, including the analytical framework construction [7][8][9][11][12][13] and the ESF analysis for specific ESs [14][15][16]. For the whole research framework, Turner et al [7] established a space flow model for ESF by measuring the value of global ESs, which was an important step in simulating the ESF and estimating the value of ESs benefit.…”

“…For a type of ESs, Jiang et al [14] evaluated the ESF of soil conservation, water yield, carbon deposition, and food supply services in the Three-River Headwaters region of China based on the Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Trade-Offs (InVEST), Revised Wind Erosion Equation (RWEQ) and Carnegie-Ames-Stanford Approach (CASA) models. The quantification and mapping of ESF over landscapes has been studied for local climate regulations and storm water regulations in urban and peri-urban areas [15]. The ESF for the water supply service was established to calculate the water supply service flow path at the grid and regional scales in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, which revealed the real path of the ESF between SSAs and SBAs [16].…”