Integrating ecosystem services into decision support for management of agroecosystems: Viva Grass tool

Abstract

The area covered by low-input agroecosystems (e.g. semi-natural and permanent grasslands) in Europe has considerably decreased throughout the last century. To support more sustainable management practices and to promote biodiversity and ecosystem service values of such agroecosystems, a decision support tool was developed. The tool aims to enhance the implementation of ecosystem services and address the challenge of their integration into spatial planning. The Viva Grass tool aims to enhance the maintenance of ecosystem services delivered by low-input agroecosystems. It does so by providing spatially-explicit decision support for land-use planning and sustainable management of agroecosystems. The Viva Grass tool is a multi-criteria decision analysis tool for integrated planning. It is designed for farmers, spatial planners and policy-makers to support decisions for management of agroecosystems. The tool has been tested to assess spatial planning in eight case studies across the Baltic States.

Expert-Based Assessment and Mapping of Ecosystem Services Potential in the Nemunas Delta and Curonian Lagoon Region, Lithuania

“…Thereafter, a series of studies have focused on the mapping of the actual flow (real supply) of individual ES in Lithuania, e.g., forest provisional ES [32] and cultural ES of landscape aesthetics [33]. The LIFE VivaGrass project has been dedicated to the mapping and assessment of ES supply in grasslands, with the aim of supporting decision-making in the spatial planning and management of agroecosystems [34]. Finally, practitioners (the Ministry of Environment, the LIFE Naturalit project consortium) have also shown a particular interest in assessing ES provision and optimization in the Natura 2000 network territory [35].…”