Focusing Conservation Efforts on Ecosystem Service Supply May Increase Vulnerability of Socio-Ecological Systems

Abstract

Growing concern about the loss of ecosystem services (ES) promotes their spatial representation as a key tool for the internalization of the ES framework into land use policies. Paradoxically, mapping approaches meant to inform policy decisions focus on the magnitude and spatial distribution of the biophysical supply of ES, largely ignoring the social mechanisms by which these services influence human wellbeing. If social mechanisms affecting ES demand, enhancing it or reducing it, are taken more into account, then policies are more effective. By developing and applying a new mapping routine to two distinct socio-ecological systems, we show a strong spatial uncoupling between ES supply and socio-ecological vulnerability to the loss of ES, under scenarios of land use and cover change. Public policies based on ES supply might not only fail at detecting priority conservation areas for the wellbeing of human societies, but may also increase their vulnerability by neglecting areas of currently low, but highly valued ES supply.

Spatial Suitability Evaluation of an Arid City Based on the Perspective of Major Function Oriented Zoning: A Case Study of Urumqi City in Xinjiang, China

“…With the wide application of GIS technology and RS data in spatial analyses, their use has been gradually increasing for spatial suitability evaluations based on overlay analysis [28]. In particular, the scholars are more interested in ecological suitability evaluation that gradually develop from a single-factor assessment such as water security [29], biodiversity conservation [30], and soil erosion protection [31] to multifactor comprehensive evaluation, such as the landscape evaluation model [32], ecological vulnerability evaluation [33], ecological importance evaluation [34], ecological function analysis [35], and multicriteria land suitability evaluation based on GIS [36]. These changes can better reflect the inter-relationship between urban land expansion and ecological protection.…”

A dynamic management framework for socio-ecological system stewardship: A case study for the United States Bureau of Ocean Energy Management

“…An introduction with a positive effect on an internal process/cycle could be the arrival of a new process, just as the introduction of non-native species could have positive effects on alpha diversity and increase resilience (Allen et al, 1999(Allen et al, , 2014Forys and Allen, 2002). It is worth mentioning that ES-based approaches would need to be consolidated in conjunction with a solid resilience-based approach, such as the one addressed in this paper, to prevent undesirable outcomes as noted by Ruhl and Stuart Chapin (2013) and more specifically by Laterra et al (2016). After this consideration for resilience, an ecosystem-based approach can be safely designed as recently shown by Elliff and Kikuchi (2015).…”

A transnational perspective of global and regional ecosystem service flows from and to mountain regions

“…Such modelling of the routing requires a huge amount of data and therefore tends to concentrate on the local scale 6 , whereas regional or global studies remain focused on a rather theoretical level or on the potential provision of ecosystem services as opposed to their actual use 15,16 . Spatial relationships additionally depend on the socio-ecological system, as human interactions influence the level of ecosystem services provision through land management decisions, and different societies may value and demand specific ecosystem services in different ways 17 . Specifically, studies have addressed flows of ecosystem services along rural-urban gradients 18,19 , from protected areas to the adjacent beneficiaries 20,21 or within watersheds 22 , but global ecosystem services flows from mountain regions have only been analysed in terms of spatial mismatches 23 .…”