The Integration of Ecosystem Services in Planning: An Evaluation of the Nutrient Retention Model Using InVEST Software

Abstract

Abstract:Mapping ecosystem services (ES) increases the awareness of natural capital value, leading to building sustainability into decision-making processes. Recently, many techniques to assess the value of ES delivered by different scenarios of land use/land cover (LULC) are available, thus becoming important practices in mapping to support the land use planning process. The spatial analysis of the biophysical ES distribution allows a better comprehension of the environmental and social implications of planning, especially when ES concerns the management of risk (e.g., erosion, pollution). This paper investigates the nutrient retention model of InVEST software through its spatial distribution and its quantitative value. The model was analyzed by testing its response to changes in input parameters: (1) the digital terrain elevation model (DEM); and (2) different LULC attribute configurations. The paper increases the level of attention to specific ES models that use water runoff as a proxy of nutrient delivery. It shows that the spatial distribution of biophysical values is highly influenced by many factors, among which the characteristics of the DEM and its interaction with LULC are included. The results seem to confirm that the biophysical value of ES is still affected by a high degree of uncertainty and encourage an expert field campaign as the only solution to use ES mapping for a regulative land use framework.

Adopting an Ecosystem Services-Based Approach for Flood Resilient Strategies: The Case of Rocinha Favela (Brazil)

“…The output of ES assessment is highly dependent on the inputs, such as spatial resolution and data quality, which depend on the individual ES. For example, different studies have highlighted how the Digital Elevation Model (DEM) affects the delivery of nutrients along hill slopes and, therefore, the output [24].…”

“…Given the complexity of interpolation processing for DEM generation and a lack of detailed data, mapping did not extend to the entire metropolitan area of Rio de Janeiro but instead focused on Rocinha, while including the surrounding area with significant slopes and changes of elevation. DEM resolution was set at 5 × 5 m cells, within the range of between 4 and 10 m suggested by Salata et al as the optimal resolution for model performance [24].…”

Decision support tools for forest landscape restoration: Current status and future outlook

“…The probabilistic models generated by ARIES may be more appropriate for use when input data are scarce (Bagstad et al 2013). The deterministic models of InVEST have been widely evaluated at regional and national scales, and model predictions have been subjected to more rigorous testing (Song et al 2015;Salata et al 2017;Redhead et al 2018). …”

The utilization of ecosystem services mapping in land use planning: the experience of LIFE SAM4CP project

“…Notably, the utilization of ES mapping software implies a certain amount of modeling uncertainties and mistakes, such as those related to reliability, rather than their sensitivity to different inputs, or their combination in algorithms with pre-set values that remain obscure to the vast majority of users (Rosenthal et al 2015;Salata et al 2017;De Sy et al 2013). For these reasons, part of the existing bibliography discourages the direct use of ES maps for parcel-based land use planning purposes (Jetten, Govers, and Hessel 2003;Muñoz-Carpena, Zajac, and Kuo 2007;van Griensven et al 2006), while others state that ES maps should not be used for land use prescriptions (at least without a field campaign of expert validation; Nelson et al 2011), notwithstanding that real progress in the paradigm of environmental planning would be achieved in the near future if only pioneering approaches and newer tools were utilized (and in doing so accepting uncertainties but limiting their effects).…”

“…The final result is the product of a geostatistical process that transforms biophysical multipart data into a network design, mainly using the Weighted Overlay, the Hotspot Analysis and the Aggregation of Polygons. Therefore, this study does not perform a technical 'mapping' assessment of ESs, testing the sensitivity of an input to output variation (Salata et al 2017), assuming, as a precondition, that the outcomes (maps of several ESs) of the abovementioned research LIFE SAM4CP served to aid the re-design of parcel-based land use zoning. This study:…”