Trade-Offs between Ecosystem Services in a Mountain Region

Abstract

ABSTRACT. Mountain ecosystems provide a broad range of ecosystem services (ES). Trade-offs between different ES are an important aspect in the assessment of future sustainable land-use. Management of ES in mountain regions must confront the challenges of spatial and temporal heterogeneity, and interaction with structural changes in agriculture and forestry. Using a social-ecological modeling framework, we assess the relationships between forest and agricultural ES in a mountain region in Switzerland. Based on the concept of jointness in production, we evaluated trade-offs and synergies among food provision, biodiversity conservation, carbon sequestration, and protection against natural hazards. Results show that increasing the provision of a focal ES in a mountain region may result in alternating trade-offs and synergies, depending on the interaction of economic and technological interdependencies. Thus, management schemes aiming to increase the provision of one focal ES have to consider not only the technological or biological nature of interrelationships, but also the economic interdependencies among different ES. Trade-offs and synergies from these interactions strongly depend on the underlying structural and environmental conditions driven by socioeconomic and climatic developments.

A Contextual Analysis of Land-Use and Vegetation Changes in Two Wooded Pastures in the Swiss Jura Mountains

“…Besides landscape and ecological services for which farmers are remunerated, and the growing-though difficult to quantify-importance of soft tourism, new environmental conditions such as a projected 3 to 4°C climate warming will have strong implications for land-use evolution (Briner et al 2013, Gavazov et al 2013 and are a major issue on the political agenda and for individual practices.…”

Implications of land cover change on ecosystems services and people’s dependency: A case study from the Koshi Tappu Wildlife Reserve, Nepal

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

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