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Soil organic carbon (SOC) 1 1 SOC: Soil Organic Carbon. plays a crucial role in regulating the global carbon cycle and its feedbacks within the Earth system. Compelling evidence exists that soil carbon stocks have reduced in many regions of the world, with these reductions often associated with agriculture. In a Danish context, research also suggests that soil carbon stocks are declining. The scope of Payment for Ecosystem Service (PES) approaches to effectively and efficiently address climate regulation will depend on the spatial distribution of the carbon assimilation capacity, current land use, the value of avoided emissions and land owners' objectives and preferences in terms of participating in initiatives to increase SOC. We map the carbon sequestration potential under different scenarios, value the potential sequestered carbon in terms of marginal costs of using voluntary agreements with agricultural land managers and compare these to the marginal abatement costs curve used in Danish climate policy. The cost effectiveness of reduced tillage as a climate mitigation PES scheme critically depends on the current debate on the net effects of carbon sequestration in reduced tillage practices. Based on existing IPCC guidelines, we find that reduced tillage has considerable potential for contributing to a cost effective climate mitigation policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change is expected to lead to more frequent and severe fluvial flood events in Northern Europe. Nature Based Solutions are increasingly recognised as a natural insurance against flood risks in vulnerable areas. This requires collaboration at landscape scale between providers and beneficiaries of flood control. In particular, mechanisms to incentivise owners of land could potentially offer cost-effective ways to reduce damage to urban infrastructure. We conduct a choice experiment among farmers located in the vicinity of a river to assess their willingness to accept a contract that would allow a local Danish municipality to periodically flood farmland to reduce urban flood risks. Results indicate that farmers on average are hesitant about entering into abatement contracts, especially if they have prior experience of crop losses due to extreme weather events. If they were to agree on a contract they would prefer a separate compensation for lost crops; a collective negotiation and higher rather than lower yearly payments. Surprisingly, data did not show a significant preference for or against a requirement to grow flood resistant crops. The results suggest that a contract with a separate damage compensation and based on individual negotiation would on average require an annual payment of 290Euro/ha for farmers with no prior experience of crop losses and 469Euro/ha for farmers who have experienced crop losses. The paper discusses the potentials and limitations of landscape scale Nature Based Solutions for climate adaptation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the relative importance of societal drivers and changing climate on anthropogenic nutrient inputs to the Baltic Sea. Shared Socioeconomic Pathways and Representative Concentration Pathways are extended at temporal and spatial scales relevant for the most contributing sectors. Extended socioeconomic and climate scenarios are then used as inputs for spatially and temporally detailed models for population and land use change, and their subsequent impact on nutrient loading is computed. According to the model simulations, several factors of varying influence may either increase or decrease total nutrient loads. In general, societal drivers outweigh the impacts of changing climate. Food demand is the most impactful driver, strongly affecting land use and nutrient loads from agricultural lands in the long run. In order to reach the good environmental status of the Baltic Sea, additional nutrient abatement efforts should focus on phosphorus rather than nitrogen. Agriculture is the most important sector to be addressed under the conditions of gradually increasing precipitation in the region and increasing global demand for food. Unlabelled Image • We provide plausible projections for nutrient pollution to the Baltic Sea until 2100. • Projected overall nutrient loads at 2100 range from 52% to 115% of the initial levels. • Changing society outweighs climate change in the effects on nutrient loading. • Projections of nutrient loading are most sensitive to changes in agriculture. • Combatting eutrophication should focus on reducing phosphorus loads to the Baltic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We considered the relationship between street trees and mental health with the aim of developing systems thinkinginformed hypotheses to improve the implementation and evaluation of this popular nature-based solution (NBS). We integrated qualitative and quantitative evidence using causal loop diagraming (CLD), and then further analyzed and extended these diagrams with the aid of systems archetypes to identify key system structures. From these CLDs, we identified three systems thinking-informed hypotheses: 1) although there are many ways in which street trees may improve mental health, tree health is critical in realizing many of these benefits and minimizing dis-benefits; 2) communities which have benefited from street trees in the past are more likely to be able to advocate for additional trees, further entrenching historical inequities in street tree distribution; and 3) efforts to address these inequities through new tree planting initiatives may ultimately fail or even exacerbate existing challenges if they do not include sustained resources for tree maintenance, with direct and indirect impacts on inequities in mental health. Using a systems thinking lens was a useful way to deeply consider a purported but under-theorized co-benefit of a popular nature-based solution and identify policyrelevant hypotheses to guide future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Baltic Sea is suffering from eutrophication caused by nutrient discharges from land to sea, and these loads might change in a changing climate. We show that the impact from climate change by mid-century is probably less than the direct impact of changing socioeconomic factors such as land use, agricultural practices, atmospheric deposition, and wastewater emissions. We compare results from dynamic modelling of nutrient loads to the Baltic Sea under projections of climate change and scenarios for shared socioeconomic pathways. Average nutrient loads are projected to increase by 8% and 14% for nitrogen and phosphorus, respectively, in response to climate change scenarios. In contrast, changes in the socioeconomic drivers can lead to a decrease of 13% and 6% or an increase of 11% and 9% in nitrogen and phosphorus loads, respectively, depending on the pathway. This indicates that policy decisions still play a major role in climate adaptation and in managing eutrophication in the Baltic Sea region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Baltic Sea provides benefits to all of the nine nations along its coastline, with some 85 million people living within the catchment area. Achieving improvements in water quality requires international cooperation. The likelihood of effective cooperation is known to depend on the distribution across countries of the benefits and costs of actions needed to improve water quality. In this paper, we estimate the benefits associated with recreational use of the Baltic Sea in current environmental conditions using a travel cost approach, based on data from a large, standardized survey of households in each of the 9 Baltic Sea states. Both the probability of engaging in recreation (participation) and the number of visits people make are modeled. A large variation in the number of trips and the extent of participation is found, along with large differences in current annual economic benefits from Baltic Sea recreation. The total annual recreation benefits are close to 15 billion EUR. Under a water quality improvement scenario, the proportional increases in benefits range from 7 to 18% of the current annual benefits across countries. Depending on how the costs of actions are distributed, this could imply difficulties in achieving more international cooperation to achieve such improvements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on ecosystem services mapping and valuing has increased significantly in recent years. However, compared to provisioning and regulating services, cultural ecosystem services have not yet been fully integrated into operational frameworks. One reason for this is that transdisciplinarity is required to address the issue, since by definition cultural services (encompassing physical, intellectual, spiritual interactions with biota) need to be analysed from multiple perspectives (i.e. ecological, social, behavioural). A second reason is the lack of data for large-scale assessments, as detailed surveys are a main source of information. Among cultural ecosystem services, assessment of outdoor recreation can be based on a large pool of literature developed mostly in social and medical science, and landscape and ecology studies. This paper presents a methodology to include recreation in the conceptual framework for EU wide ecosystem assessments (Maes et al., 2013), which couples existing approaches for recreation management at country level with behavioural data derived from surveys and population distribution data. The proposed framework is based on three components: the ecosystem function (recreation potential), the adaptation of the Recreation Opportunity Spectrum framework to characterise the ecosystem service and the distribution of potential demand in the EU. Results show that 38% of the EU is characterised by a high outdoor recreation potential, which is easily accessible, and that such areas can host about 35.4% of potential demand for close-to-home trips (<8 km). This proportion increases to 37.6% for long distance travelling (<80 km). The analysis framework can be applied to quantify the availability of outdoor recreation potential as an ecosystem service to EU citizens, to describe through country profiles differences in ecosystem service provision at regional level, and can be used as an input to land use planning processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]