Identifying key ecosystem service providing areas to inform national-scale conservation planning

Abstract

Effectively conserving ecosystem services in order to maintain human wellbeing is a global need that requires an understanding of where ecosystem services are produced by ecosystems and where people benefit from these services. However, approaches to effectively identify key locations that have the capacity to supply ecosystem services and actually contribute to meeting human demand for those services are lacking at broad spatial scales. We developed new methods that integrate measures of the capacity of ecosystems to provide services with indicators of human demand and ability to access these services. We then identified important areas for three ecosystem services currently central to protected area management in Canada—carbon storage, freshwater, and nature-based recreation—and evaluated how these hotspots align with Canada’s current protected areas and resource development tenures. We find that locations of ecosystem service capacity overlap only weakly (27–36%) with actual service providing areas (incorporating human access and demand). Overlapping hotspots of provision for multiple ecosystem services are also extremely limited across Canada; only 1.2% (∼56 000 km2) of the total ecosystem service hotspot area in Canada consists of overlap between all three ecosystem services. Canada’s current protected area network also targets service capacity to a greater degree than provision. Finally, one-half to two-thirds of current ecosystem service hotspots (54–66%) overlap with current and planned resource extraction activities. Our analysis demonstrates how to identify areas where conservation and ecosystem service management actions should be focused to more effectively target ecosystem services to ensure that critical areas for ecosystem services that directly benefit people are conserved. Further development of these methods at national scales to assess ecosystem service capacity and demand and integrate this with conventional biodiversity and conservation planning information will help ensure that both biodiversity and ecosystem services are effectively safeguarded.

Rotational grazing can mitigate ecosystem service trade‐offs between livestock production and water quality in semi‐arid rangelands

“…An alternative approach to manage trade‐offs is to modify current management at local scales so that actions focused on production of one ES do not diminish the provision of another (Bennett et al., 2009; Rieb & Bennett, 2020). Altering local management to mitigate trade‐offs rather than using regional‐scale assessments to segregate or re‐arrange land use may be desirable when more than one ES is generated in the same location on landscapes, that is, ES hotspots (Turner et al., 2013) and when these key locations are limited (Mitchell et al., 2021). Discovering management solutions requires an understanding of how a range of possible actions influence ecosystem functioning and the resulting ES supply (Chabert & Sarthou, 2020; Demestihas et al., 2019; Mach et al., 2015).…”

Five Steps to Inject Transformative Change into the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework

“…The problem is that protected areas as currently configured are static in nature, exhibit poor connectivity, and, as climate change accelerates, redistributions of species and ecosystems will increasingly undermine their biodiversity protection value (Hoffman et al 2019 , Elsen et al 2020 , Lawler et al 2020 ). Spatial modeling shows that, as climate shifts, much of high-biodiversity value terrestrial habitat (Mokany et al 2020 ), marine habitat (Ramirez et al 2017 ), and multiple ecosystem services to support people (Mitchell et al 2021 ) will lack protection. And given that impacts will likely create novel ecosystems, notions of ecosystem restoration and recovery will also need to be revised because of new climate conditions (Heger et al 2019 , Prober et al 2019 ).…”

Identifying priority areas for surface water protection in data scarce regions: An integrated spatial analysis for Zambia

“…The importance of each sub-catchment and river reach in Zambia for its potential water provision was assessed following methodological approaches that have been applied or proposed in other studies at large spatial scales (Green et al, 2015;Abell et al, 2017a;Mitchell et al, 2021). Following established terminology used for freshwater ecosystem service assessments (Mitchell et al, 2015), water provision was analysed looking at two distinct elements: the 'capacity' of the landscape to supply water and the 'demand' for that water by downstream users.…”

“…To support these goals, various approaches to identify critical areas for aquatic biodiversity conservation have been developed (Linke, Turak & Nel, 2011; see also Discussion for further examples) but similar prioritization methods for broader freshwater ecosystem services have only recently received more attention (Brauman, 2015). In particular, novel quantification and systematic mapping approaches are urgently needed to identify key locations for freshwater protection at large scales (Mitchell et al, 2021) and in data-scarce regions for which little hydrological and biodiversity information is readily available.…”