Synergies, Trade-offs, and Losses of Ecosystem Services in Urban Regions: an Integrated Multiscale Framework Applied to the Leipzig-Halle Region, Germany

Abstract

ABSTRACT. Because we have entered the 'millennium of the cities', urban ecological research needs to account for the provisions ecosystem services provide to urban regions. In urban areas, ecosystem service assessment studies need to account for the complex land use patterns, which change over relatively short periods of time. We discuss an analytical framework for the spatial and temporal integration of different ecosystem services in an urban region to determine synergies, trade-offs and losses, and we employ a case study in Leipzig-Halle, Germany. The following five ecosystem services, which are of special importance for urban areas, were selected: local climate regulation, recreation potential, biodiversity potential, food supply, and above-ground carbon storage. These services were analyzed from 1990 to 2006. Our results identified only slight increases in urbanization (1% or 3 km²) and in mining restoration (-11 km²). However, the detected land use changes led to synergies with biodiversity and climate regulation of > 50% of the total area, whereas trade-offs of approximately 60% were detected between variables such as climate regulation and recreation. Finally, we address both the opportunities and the challenges that were encountered in the integration study, specifically with respect to the application in land use planning.

A review on trade-off analysis of ecosystem services for sustainable land-use management

“…In addition, The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) described the trade-offs of ecosystem services as the way one ecosystem service responds to the changes in another service (TEEB, 2010). There are also some refined definitions of trade-offs, indicating the interactions among ecosystem services that result in the increasing provision of one ecosystem service at the cost of other services (Haase et al, 2012). Generally, trade-offs of ecosystem services occurs when human interventions enhance the output of an ecosystem service while negatively affect the provision of other services (De Groot et al, 2010a;Elmqvist et al, 2013).…”

“…Identifying the specific trade-offs among different types of ecosystem services at different scales would help to convey information in a clear manner and provide decision-making framework about ecosystem services across geographic, ecological and socioeconomic dimensions (Ruhl et al, 2007;Tallis et al, 2008). In addition, it can also facilitate scientists and policy makers a better understanding of the potential consequences of unbalanced treatment of the ecosystem services in the process of land-use management (Haase et al, 2012).…”

Spatial interactions among ecosystem services in an urbanizing agricultural watershed

“…Ecosystem service supply has been mapped at various scales (8-12), and spatial concordance among services has been examined to identify "winwin" opportunities for ecosystem service conservation (13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19). However, few studies have dealt simultaneously with tradeoffs and synergies among a suite of ecosystem services (20)(21)(22), and none have done so using spatially explicit analyses. Thus, little is known about where tradeoffs and synergies among ecosystem services are most pronounced.…”

Spatial covariance of ecosystem services and poverty in China

“…Anderson et al 2009;Willemen et al 2010;Raudsepp-Hearne et al 2010a;Haase et al 2012). Our findings -together with other recent large-scale work (Angelson et al 2014;Ferraro et al 2015) -therefore highlight the importance of largescale studies for understanding the linkages between poverty and ES.…”