Spatial multi-scale relationships of ecosystem services: A case study using a geostatistical methodology

Abstract

Adequately understanding the spatial multi-scale relationships of ecosystem services (ES) is an important step for environmental management decision-making. Here, we used spatially explicit methods to estimate five critical ES (nitrogen and phosphorous purifications, crop production, water supply and soil retention) related to non-point source (NPS) pollution in the Taihu Basin region of eastern China. Then a factorial kriging analysis and stepwise multiple regression were performed to identify the spatial multi-scale relationships of ES and their dominant factors at each scale. The spatial variations in ES were characterized at the 12 km and 83 km scales and the result indicated that the relationships of these services were scale dependent. It was inferred that at the 12 km scale, ES were controlled by anthropogenic activities and their relationships were dependent on socio-economic factors. At the 83 km scale, we suggested that ES were primarily dominated by the physical environment. Moreover, the policy implications of ES relationships and their dominant factors were discussed for the multi-level governance of NPS pollution. Overall, this study presents an optimized approach to identifying ES relationships at multiple spatial scales and illustrates how appropriate information can help guide water management.

Assessment of Green Infrastructure in Riparian Zones Using Copernicus Programme

“…Decision-makers have mentioned the need for a practical tool that shows values or thresholds characterizing ES supply and condition, facilitating the accomplishment of policy objectives [88,89]. The presented approach can serve as a baseline, helping in understanding the indicator frameworks [55].…”

“…With the aim to overcome previous tools' weaknesses on scalability, data availability and possibility to monitor over time [55,58,89,90], the theoretical indicator frameworks [39,[57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65] are linked to the freely-available sources of remotely-sensed data that are suitable to monitor them ( Table 5): (i) products offered in the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service (CLMS) [49] and (ii) satellite-based bio-geophysical indices to monitor vegetated surfaces [52,[78][79][80].…”

How to Detect Scale Effect of Ecosystem Services Supply? A Comprehensive Insight from Xilinhot in Inner Mongolia, China

“…This is because large-scale units in the study can make the impact of meteorological factors such as wind speed and precipitation on these two services more significant, and the ability of high coverage vegetation weakening wind erosion can be brought into full play, while small-scale units may only form a local trade-off between these two services through topographic conditions. This explanation is based on the niche complementary effect in ecology in which a multi-species mixture, compared with a monoculture, can make full use one or more resources in the system to achieve higher productivity and benefits [20,38]. Therefore, the units often include a greater number and type of ES at coarse scales.…”

“…Some researchers have attempted to focus on scale dependence by examining pairwise ES interactions. However, such attempts have been limited to the upscaling on the spatial scale of the same property (such as kilometer grid) [37][38][39], and several researchers even set up only two scale levels for simple comparison. Obviously, it is not yet possible to explain how trade-offs or synergies are related across different levels of scale.…”

“…Thus, the scale dependence of ES supply is multi-dimensional, which can be embodied or detected in the spatial pattern of individual ES, pairwise ES interactions, and ecosystem service bundles. However, most researchers have overlooked the scale dependence of ESB due to method applicability or data reliability [35,38]. This research deficiency leads us to incomprehensive understanding of the scale effect on ES supply and hinders our ability to apply this knowledge to management decisions.…”