Does it make economic sense to restore rivers for their ecosystem services?

Abstract

Summary1. Temperate forests managed to maximize sustainable yield of wood products can reduce the availability of dead wood on the forest floor and in adjacent streams, which in turn can impair ecological processes such as retention and transformation of organic matter. Lack of tools to link ecological processes with their effects on human well-being leads forest managers to ignore the cost on other services from terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. 2. We examine how adding dead wood to restore stream channel complexity affects the provision and value of selected ecosystem services, mainly related to the retention and transformation of matter and cycling of nutrients, as well as to the effects on aquatic biota. Specifically, we evaluated the cost-effectiveness of stream restoration through a comparative analysis of four reach-scale projects in streams flowing through temperate forest and into a drinking water reservoir and two scenarios of active and passive restoration at the basin scale. 3. Results indicate that the lack of dead wood in streams has an important economic cost because of the effects on fish provisioning, opportunities for recreation and tourism, water purification and erosion control. Active reach-scale restoration resulted in a 10-to 100-fold increase in the monetary benefits provided by streams, accounting as much as 1Á8 € per metre of restored river length each year. Results of the reach-scale cost-benefit analyses estimated that the time required to recover the active restoration investment ranged from 15 to 20 years in low-to middle-order streams. 4. Synthesis and applications. Our study showed that restoration of natural wood loading in streams greatly increases the ecosystem services they provide. The benefits in terms of the analysed services surpass the costs of active restoration over realistic timeframes, whereas this was not the case for passive restoration. Inclusion of other ecosystem services such as conservation of biodiversity might make restoration more economically profitable. Overall, our study provides a decision framework for managing temperate riparian forests in the context of ecological services.

Social success of in-stream habitat improvement: from fisheries enhancement to the delivery of multiple ecosystem services

“…Perceived changes in fish provisioning seemed to influence the overall perceptions of restoration benefits (Acuña et al 2013). Abundance of the target fish species may be an indicator of ecological integrity, but it is also seen as a resource that affects fisheries opportunities, the attractiveness of the river, and local employment (Dufour andPiégay 2009, Schultz et al 2012).…”

“…For example, Palmer et al (2005) have suggested that ecological, stakeholder, and learning success form the main cornerstones for effective river restoration. Despite increasing interest, ecosystem services and other socioeconomic outcomes have rarely been identified in this context, limiting our understanding of the full benefits and costs of ecological restoration (Acuña et al 2013, Wortley et al 2013.…”

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“…Coarser sediment elements in more structurally intact river reaches indicate that erosion and subsequent fine sediment deposition may contribute additional fine sediments in many of the more disturbed reaches of the studied river (Nascimento et al, 2012). Accordingly, additional structural elements, such as coarse particulate organic matter, may be especially important for the biotic community and should be a focus of habitat restoration in human-impacted tropical rivers (Acuña et al, 2013). Conversely, massive gravel extraction in the few river reaches exhibiting coarser sediments should be especially deleterious.…”

Planning for the conservation and management of ecosystem services in Central Chile

“…areas that can be seen up to 65 times from viewpoints). This map was classified in a qualitative scale map using the natural breaks categories of the visibility raster map ranging from: very low (1)(2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10)(11)(12), low (13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25), medium (26)(27)(28)(29)(30)(31)(32)(33)(34)(35)(36)(37), high (38)(39)(40)(41)(42)(43)(44)(45)(46)(47)(48)(49)…”

“…Subject to (2) Where is a control variable indicating if a planning unit (i = 1,…, N) is selected = 1) or not = 0) and is the cost of the planning unit. Eq.…”