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The amount of impervious surface is increasing rapidly worldwide. Although urban expansion has been studied extensively, the alteration of impervious land cover in rural regions remains under-examined. In particular, insights into the utilization of these sealed surfaces are crucially needed to unravel the underlying dynamics of land use changes beyond urban areas. This study focuses on rural regions from a Swiss case study and presents an analysis of the use of sealed surfaces in such regions, rather than solely quantifying the extent of sealed surfaces. Utilizing a synergistic approach that merges detailed cadastral plans with very-high-resolution remote sensing imagery and sophisticated deep learning algorithms, we characterized the uses of sealed surfaces, including buildings and their surroundings. Our findings reveal that 2.1 % of the study area’s rural regions comprises sealed surfaces - an area comparable to the sealed surfaces in the urban regions. Within these rural regions, transport infrastructure represents 68 % of this impervious surface. Buildings account for 12 %, and their surroundings, constituting 13 %, are utilized primarily for agricultural purposes, including farming and livestock activities. The deep learning approach achieved a classification accuracy of 72 % for a shallow model and 79 % for a deeper model, indicating that mapping building types is possible with reasonable accuracy. The outcomes of this study underscore the critical need to factor in the presence and utilization of impervious land cover within rural regions for the sustainable management of land resources.

Aiming at understanding the role of plural values in decision-making, the IPBES Values Assessment defined nature valuation broadly as including biophysical, economic and socio-cultural assessments, including ecosystem service assessment. IPBES reviews of scientific literature revealed a lack of documentation of uptake by stakeholders across method types. The EU project SELINA aims to contribute to increasing uptake of ES assessments at different governance levels. This paper reviews guidance in national and local applications by compiling study design recommendations for ES assessments from 111 guidance documents on ES assessments covering 12 European languages. Guidance documents are evaluated for seven diagnostic topics suggested to increase relevance and robustness of ES assessments: ecosystem condition variables; capacity-potential; supply-demand; spatial scaling and resolution capability; social and health benefit compatibility; economic valuation compatibility; and uncertainty assessment. The paper develops the guidance recommendations across these topics into a set of checklists for practitioners and contractors of ES assessments. We find synergies between these study design features and gaps in guidance in relation to the policy cycle. Checklists are aimed at projects self-assessing and improving their design and implementation to increase robustness of their ES assessment. From a knowledge supply perspective, this is expected to increase the likelihood of uptake of results by stakeholders. We end the paper with some cautions on limitations to uptake from different perspectives and the demand for and political uses of ES assessment knowledge.

Abstract Traffic on roads outside of urban areas (i.e. extra-urban roads) can have major ecological and environmental impacts on agricultural, forested, and natural areas. Yet, data on extra-urban traffic volumes is lacking in many regions. To address this data gap, we produced a global time-series of traffic volumes (Annual Average Daily Traffic; AADT) on all extra-urban highways, primary roads, and secondary roads for the years 1975, 1990, 2000 and 2015. We constructed time series of road networks from existing global datasets on roads, population density, and socio-economic indicators, and combined these with a large collection of empirical AADT data from all continents except Antarctica. We used quantile regression forests to predict the median and 5% and 95% prediction intervals of AADT on each road section. The validation accuracy of the model was high (pseudo-R2 = 0.7407) and AADT predictions from 1975 were also accurate. The resulting map series provides standardised and fine-scaled information on the development of extra-urban road traffic and has a wide variety of practical and scientific applications.

Abstract Although metacommunity theory provides many useful insights for conservation planning, the transfer of this knowledge to practice is hampered due to the difficulty of identifying metacommunities in bioregions. This study aims to identify the spatial extent of metacommunities at bioregional scales using current and historical habitat data, especially because contemporary biodiversity patterns may be a result of time‐lagged responses to historical habitat configurations. Further, this estimation of the metacommunity spatial extent is based on both the habitat structure and the dispersal ability of the species. Focusing on dragonfly and damselfly (odonate) species in the eastern Swiss Plateau, the research uses wetland habitat information spanning over 110 years to create a time series of nine habitat networks between 1899 and 2010. From these networks, we identified the spatial extents of metacommunities based on the year of habitat information as well as on watershed boundaries. To identify the best metacommunity spatial extents, the study investigates whether patch pairs within a metacommunity exhibit greater similarity in species composition (i.e. lower beta‐diversity) than patch pairs between metacommunities. For the different metacommunities, we further investigated correlations between gamma diversity and metacommunity size and compare them to theoretical expectations. In both analyses we found that augmenting spatial metacommunity identification with historical geographical proximity results in stronger associations with biodiversity patterns (beta and gamma diversity) than when using only current‐day habitat or watershed information.

Abstract Growing urban population and contemporary urban systems lock-in unsustainable urban development pathways, deteriorating the living quality of urban dwellers. The systemic complexity of these challenges renders it difficult to find solutions using existing planning processes. Alternatively, transformative planning processes are radical, take place on multiple scales, and are often irreversible; therefore, require the integration of local stakeholders’ perspectives, which are often contradictory. We identify perceived levers of urban transformative change using a serious game to facilitate the integration of these perspectives through simulating neighbourhood transformation processes in two European case studies. Building on existing transformation frameworks, we organize, conceptualize, and compare the effectiveness of these levers through demonstrating their interactions with different scales of transformation. Specifically, drawing from close commonalities between large-scale (Three Spheres of Transformation) and place-based (Place-making) transformation frameworks, we show how these interactions can help to develop recommendations to unlock urban transformative change. Results show that access to participation is a key lever enabling urban transformative change. It appears to be mid-level effective to unlock urban transformative change through interactions with the political sphere of transformation and procedural element of Place-making. Ultimately, however, most effective are those levers that interact with all scales of transformation. For example, by engaging a combination of levers including access to participation, public spaces, parking, place-characteristics and place-identity. These findings could be operationalized by self-organized transformation processes focused on repurposing hard infrastructure into public spaces, whilst ensuring continuity of place-based social- and physical features. Local stakeholders could further use such processes to better understand and engage with their individual roles in the transformative process, because interactions with the personal scale, i.e., personal sphere of transformation appear paramount to unlock urban transformative change.

Effective evidence synthesis is important for the integration of scientific research into decision-making. However, fully depicting the vast mosaic of concepts and applications in environmental sciences and ecology often entails a substantial workload. New Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools present an attractive option for addressing this challenge but require sufficient validation to match the vigorous standards of a systematic review. This article demonstrates the use of generative AI in the selection of relevant literature as part of a systematic review on indicators of ecosystem condition. We highlight, through the development of an optimal prompt to communicate inclusion and exclusion criteria, the need to describe ecosystem condition as a multidimensional concept whilst also maintaining clarity on what does not meet the criteria of comprehensiveness. We show that, although not completely infallible, the GPT-3.5 model significantly outperforms traditional literature screening processes in terms of speed and efficiency whilst correctly selecting 83 % of relevant literature for review. Our study highlights the importance of precision in prompt design and the setting of query parameters for the AI model and opens the perspective for future work using language models to contextualize complex concepts in the environmental sciences. Future development of this methodology in tandem with the continued evolution of the accessibility and capacity of AI tools presents a great potential to improve evidence synthesis through gains in efficiency and possible scope.

Changes in climate and land use represent significant risks of biodiversity loss globally, affect ecological stability, impact nature’s contributions to people (NCP, i.e. ecosystem services) and compromise human livelihood. As framings of conservation evolve to consider the interdependence between species and human needs, there is a growing recognition of the importance of NCP and biodiversity in conservation actions. However, knowledge on the interactions and spatial repartition of NCP and biodiversity remains limited. Here we show a comprehensive spatial assessment for 15 NCP and one biodiversity – distribution of threatened species – indicators in Switzerland. Indicators values were computed using a panel of mapping and modelling methods extracted from the literature, or specifically developed for this study. Through the analysis of their relationships, we reveal significant trade-offs and synergies in the spatial repartition of these indicators. Results from a spatial bundle analysis performed on the 16 indicators revealed the existence of four bundles showing a heterogeneous repartition over the Swiss landscape. Furthermore, we identified that topography (slope), climate (temperature and precipitations), and habitat (forest and meadows) were among the most influential factors to explain the spatial distribution of the four bundles. We conclude that various significant relationships exist between NCP and biodiversity indicators in Switzerland, emphasizing the importance of informed conservation approaches considering both NCP and biodiversity supply. This work helps fill the gap in our understanding of the links among different NCP, between NCP and biodiversity, and highlight their relationship to climate and land use, providing key insights for optimizing conservation efforts.

Abstract Previous experiences play a multifaceted role in shaping current perspectives in integrated natural resource management. We used qualitative interviews and a quantitative survey to study the similarities and differences in terms of the links between the diverse actors' previous experiences and their current perspectives on the various issues to be resolved in a real‐world integrated watershed management project. We found that the quantity and quality of experiences in past projects including water management, participation and politics are dissimilarly linked to the information, mental models and beliefs of perspectives regarding present issues. More experienced actors generally have broader perspectives than less experienced actors. Less experienced actors are particularly curious about approaches to water management. Actors with more experience in water management are more focused on ecological issues due to positive experience. Actors with more experience in participation are more sceptical about constructive solutions due to negative experience. Actors with more experience in politics emphasise the importance of agriculture and learning processes due to positive or negative experience. Actors with more negative experience in water management, participation and politics can nevertheless be motivated for participatory processes and integrated natural resource management. We conclude that previous experiences are critical factors that should be considered when designing participatory processes in integrated natural resource management. It could be valuable to include mixed compositions of actors with different types of previous experiences and different aspects of current perspectives to benefit from their complementary strengths. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

Abstract Homogeneous settlement morphologies negatively impact urban vibrancy, the environment, and emotions. Mainly resulting from the separation of functions such as work and living, homogeneous settlements have often been found around large cities. However, it remains unknown whether this phenomenon occurs in settlements of any size and persisted over time. In this study, we investigated the relationship between the internal structures of settlements and their location within a settlement network at a large spatial scale and a fine resolution, over seven time steps covering 120 years of settlement development. Using building footprints and road geometries from historical maps of the Swiss Plateau in combination with historical travel speeds, we analyzed networks at both the local- (building networks) and the regional-scale (settlement networks). Our findings show that particularly small settlements located near larger settlements exhibit a high degree of morphological homogeneity, and that this pattern persisted since the early twentieth century despite strong changes in mobility. These results suggest that the position of a settlement within a settlement network can have an impact on its morphological homogeneity, which in turn can have consequences for the functionality and livability of the settlement and provides useful insight to the development of settlements.

This study examines the siting scenarios for renewable energy installations (REI) in a mountainous region of Europe (Switzerland), incorporating the external costs of ecosystem services and, innovatively, social preferences. This approach challenges the prevalent techno-economic siting paradigm, which often overlooks these externalities. To minimize the external costs of the scenarios while maximizing energy yield, Marxan, an optimization software, was employed. The energy target for all scenarios is set at 25 TWh/a, stemming from the energy gap anticipated due to the phase-out of Swiss nuclear reactors by 2050. This target is met using renewable energy infrastructure such as wind, roof-mounted photovoltaic, and ground-mounted photovoltaic systems. By integrating social preferences into the optimization, this study showcases a promising implementation that transcends the software's intended applications. It complements techno-economic approaches and offers alternative decision-making avenues. The conventional "roof first" strategy proved ineffective in preventing extensive land use for the development of new renewable energy infrastructure. Strategies incorporating ground-mounted photovoltaic infrastructure were more spatially, ecologically, and socially efficient than those without. The strategy optimized for energy yield exhibited the highest spatial efficiency but incurred significant ecosystem service costs and, surprisingly, had low social costs. In contrast, the strategy prioritizing ecosystem services was the most efficient in terms of ecosystem service costs but had elevated social costs and was spatially less efficient than other strategies. The strategy optimized for social preferences incurred the lowest social costs and excelled in spatial efficiency and ecosystem service costs. Notably, this strategy employed a limited number of planning units linked to both high ecosystem service and social costs. The findings underscore that incorporating social preferences significantly enhances the evaluation of siting options. This inclusion allows for the social acceptance of investments to be factored into costs, facilitating more informed and inclusive decisions.

Abstract Urban expansion is generating unprecedented homogenization of landscapes across the world. This uniformization of urban forms brings along dramatic environmental, social, and health problems. Reverting such processes requires activating people’s sense of place, their feeling of caring for their surroundings, and their community engagement. While emotions are known to have a modulating effect on behavior, their role in urban transformation is unknown. Drawing on large cognitive-psychological experiments in two countries, we demonstrate for the first time that urban homogenization processes lower people’s affective bounds to places and ultimately their intentions to engage with their neighbourhoods. The dulled emotional responses in peri-urban areas compared to urban and rural areas can be explained by lower social cohesion and place attachment. The findings highlight the significance of considering emotions in shaping just, equitable, sustainable, and resilient cities.

Agricultural intensification has profoundly changed agricultural landscapes with important biodiversity impacts. There is increasing knowledge on the general effects of landscape structure and management practices on plant and animal species but understanding the role of surrounding landscape structure for patch-scale biodiversity is more complex. While it can be reasonably assumed, that adjacent habitats are more important than more distant ones, the importance of landscape structure has often been tested at the landscape scale but rarely at smaller scales such as patch-surroundings. We assessed the influence and interdependences of landscape composition and configuration (LCC) and land use/land cover (LULC) on bird species richness and abundance through a multi-scale analysis with specific focus on the surrounding patches. In two agricultural regions in Switzerland, we collected point data of birds on 36 transects (500 m) and combined them with detailed spatial data on LULC. Bird richness and abundance were correlated to sets of landscape metrics as proxies for LCC computed at the transect-scale as well as for the patch surroundings. We analysed patch LULC as well as the most important patch-surrounding metrics using generalized linear mixed models. The results illustrate that patch LULC is the most important predictor of bird richness and abundance. Woody structures increase bird richness, followed by extensive management on patch scale. On the transect-scale semi-natural structure and heterogeneous LCCs are beneficial for bird richness and abundance. The effect of patch-surrounding structure LCCs is only small and interacts with patch LULC. Birds in grassland benefit from fallows in the surroundings, while in cropland they tend to respond positively to surrounding extensive grassland. Our results highlight that considering surroundings can help improve patch-based biodiversity assessments, which will then better predict the consequences of farmland management and make the outcome more applicable for practice.

Abstract Recent years have seen a massive development of geospatial sensing systems informing the use of space. However, rarely do these sensing systems inform transformation towards urban sustainability. Drawing on four global urban case examples, we conceptualize how passive and active sensing systems should be harnessed to secure an inclusive, sustainable and resilient urban transformation. We derive principles for stakeholders highlighting the need for an iterative dialogue along a sensing loop, new modes of governance enabling direct feeding of sensed information, an account for data biases in the sensing processes and a commitment to high ethical standards, including open access data sharing.

Abstract Dynamic process‐based modelling is often proposed as a powerful tool to understand complex socio‐environmental problems and to provide sustainable solutions as it allows disentangling cause and effect of human behaviour and environmental dynamics. However, the impact of such models in decision‐making and to support policy‐making has so far been very limited. In this paper, we want to take a critical look at the reasons behind this situation and propose steps that need to be taken to change it. We investigate a number of good practice examples from fields where models have influenced policy‐making and management to identify the main aspects that promote or impede the application of these models. Specifically, we compare examples that differ in their extent to how explicitly they represent human behaviour as part of the model, ranging from purely environmental systems (including models for river management, honeybee colonies and animal diseases), where modelling techniques have long been established, to coupled socio‐environmental systems (including models for land use, fishery management and sustainable water use). We use these examples to synthesise four key factors for successful modelling for policy and management support in socio‐environmental systems. They cover (a) the specific requirements caused by modelling the human dimension, (b) the importance of data availability and accessibility, (c) essential elements of the partnership between modellers and decision‐makers and (d) insights related to characteristics of the decision process. For each of these aspects, we give recommendations specifically to modellers, decision‐makers or both to make the use of models for practice more effective. We argue that if all parties involved in the modelling and decision‐making process take into account these suggestions during their collaboration, the full potential that socio‐environmental modelling bears can increasingly unfold. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.

Integrated regional planning aims to achieve sustainable development by considering multiple socio-economic, environmental, and ecological goals. However, determining the synergies and trade-offs between sustainability goals is a challenging task that requires an in depth analysis of the system-level effects of the implementation of planning policies. For example, polycentricity (i.e. multiple urban centres) is a common regional urban planning goal, which has shown to be beneficial for a region’s socio-economic conditions, but may also change the configuration of the settlement network (i.e. settlements connected by roads and traffic). Given the dependency of animal species on well-connected habitat networks, another possible planning goal is to maximise habitat availability (i.e. the total amount of habitat that is accessible for an individual animal). However, changes to a region’s settlement network can have a variety of impacts on the region’s habitat networks. Due to these interactions, it is unclear whether maximising polycentricity and habitat availability are compatible planning goals. To address this question, we developed a mathematical model of interacting settlement and habitat networks in a region of Switzerland. The settlement network model allowed us to predict commuter and traffic flows in our study region under a certain distribution of jobs and people across the municipalities. The level of polycentricity in our region was measured by calculating the hierarchy in the commuter flow network. The traffic flow network was linked to the habitat network, which was used to calculate the mean habitat availability. With multi-objective optimisations, both polycentricity and habitat availability were maximised by changing the distributions of jobs and people. Although both goals could be improved compared to the current situation, there was a trade-off between polycentricity and habitat availability along the Pareto front. Developing the region towards either of the planning goals could be achieved by changing the distribution of jobs and people mainly in mid-sized municipalities and by a strong collaboration between municipalities. Our results increase the understanding of the complex interactions in urban regions and can lead to recommendations for integrated urban and conservation planning.

The concept of ecological infrastructure (EI) as a lens for landscape management has the potential to address environmental challenges, such as biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation, by instrumentalizing Nature’s Contributions to People (NCP). NCPs stems from the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) and refers to the various ways in which the natural world provides benefits, values, and services that directly and indirectly contribute to the well-being, livelihoods, and cultural aspects of human societies. This research explores this potential by proposing an archetype analysis of social-ecological-technological systems (SETS) to manage EI. We derived archetypes using machine learning and clustering on a data-driven SETS framework co-produced with experts in EI management. The archetype analysis was conducted by combining K-means with hierarchical clustering on spatial patterns to generate clusters with similar configurations of social, ecological, and technological subsystems. The approach is illustrated for the canton of Geneva, Switzerland, which experiences high urbanization and ecological pressures. The resulting spatially explicit archetypes of SETS facilitate policy recommendations tailored to multifunctional landscapes, which can be used to derive coherent management strategies for EI. In addition, the approach demonstrates that by taking an integrated landscape approach and engaging with diverse stakeholders, it is possible to develop effective landscape-based management recommendations for promoting the sustainable provision of NCPs and biodiversity within the concept of EI.

The identification of relationships between multiple ecosystem services (ES) (i.e. trade-offs, synergies and bundles) is essential for ES management. However, the identification of ES relationships may be susceptible to spatial autocorrelation — a statistical bias due to ES observations being related to each other across space. Spatial autocorrelation remains largely overlooked in the literature on ES relationships and its implications are not clear. Here we assess the implication of not accounting for spatial autocorrelation when determining ES relationships using four ES found in the city-state of Singapore. We quantify the ES relationships using some of the most common methods of determining relationships between ES: correlation, regression and principal component analysis. We then compare each method with the corresponding method that accounts for spatial autocorrelation. We found that accounting for spatial autocorrelation resulted in less statistically significant ES relationships, especially at finer resolutions, in correlations (33.3% less significant relationships) and regressions (50% less relationships). Depending on the spatial resolution, different ES were bundled when accounting for spatial autocorrelation when using principal component analysis. Our results suggest that not accounting for spatial autocorrelation in ES relationship studies is likely to result in the misidentification of ES trade-off, synergies and bundles. We thus recommend that future ES relationship studies consider the effects of spatial autocorrelation in their analyses.

The Mountain Research Initiative (MRI) promotes basic and applied research to understand how drivers and processes of global change present challenges and opportunities in mountain social-ecological systems. It convenes a global network that collectively generates and synthesizes knowledge on global change in mountains that also supports decisions and actions to enable sustainable development. Building on the considerable social and intellectual wealth fostered by the MRI over its past 20-plus years of existence, we outline future directions aimed at supporting and further developing the network as well as our flagship and community-led activities aimed at linking and scaling interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research efforts within and across mountain regions worldwide.

The European Union (EU) Horizon 2020 Coordination and Support Action ESMERALDA aimed at developing guidance and a flexible methodology for Mapping and Assessment of Ecosystems and their Services (MAES) to support the EU member states in the implementation of the EU Biodiversity Strategy’s Target 2 Action 5. ESMERALDA’s key tasks included network creation, stakeholder engagement, enhancing ecosystem services mapping and assessment methods across various spatial scales and value domains, work in case studies and support of EU member states in MAES implementation. Thus ESMERALDA aimed at integrating various project outcomes around four major strands: i) Networking, ii) Policy, iii) Research and iv) Application. The objective was to provide guidance for integrated ecosystem service mapping and assessment that can be used for sustainable decision-making in policy, business, society, practice and science at EU, national and regional levels. This article presents the overall ESMERALDA approach of integrating the above-mentioned project components and outcomes and provides an overview of how the enhanced methods were applied and how they can be used to support MAES implementation in the EU member states. Experiences with implementing such a large pan-European Coordination and Support Action in the context of EU policy are discussed and recommendations for future actions are given.

As the concept of ecosystem services is being operationalised and implemented in policies, a better guidance on the selection of suitable methods for ecosystem services mapping and assessment is needed to allow more sound, transparent and comparable processes. A vast range of assessments focusing on different sets of ecosystem services at various scales is existing and the applied methods cover different disciplines from ecology to economy and social sciences. This complicates the assessment of single or bundles of ecosystem services across spatio-temporal scales and requires a broad expertise. A tiered approach for ecosystem services assessment allows selecting the appropriate application of a certain method for tackling a specific question at a given scale. In this publication, we illustrate how the EU H2020 project ESMERALDA supported the development of such a tiered approach for assessing ecosystem services. The iterative exchanges between experienced researchers and practitioners in mapping and assessing ecosystem services in various contexts allowed the co-production of an approach to guide the choice of methods. Ultimately, the proposed tiered approach will not only support communication of the ecosystem services concept, but will also reduce the tendency for selecting an unsuitable approach for solving complex problems linked to ecosystem services-based resource management.

The fast pace of urbanisation may benefit or be detrimental to the socio-economic status of urban areas. Understanding how the configuration of urban areas influences the socio-economic status of their inhabitants is of crucial importance for urban planning. In theory, urban scaling laws and polycentric development are two well-known concepts developed to increase our understanding of urbanisation and its socio-economic effects. In practice, however, they fall short to explain the socio-economic status of urban regions. The urban scaling concept is constructed from a theoretical perspective, but functional relationships between urban centres are not taken into account in scaling models. In contrast, the concept of polycentricity is developed from a practical perspective and incorporates the socio-economic effect of relationships between urban centres in the process of urban development. However, polycentricity lacks a theoretical foundation, which would explain the socio-economic status of urban regions. In this study, we assess whether combining both concepts improves the ability to explain personal incomes in metropolitan areas in Switzerland. We first delineated metropolitan areas by implementing a modularity maximisation algorithm on the settlement network. Nodes in this network are Swiss municipalities and links are inter-municipal commuter flows. We found a strong relationship between the hierarchical organisation of functional connections within metropolitan areas and the socio-economic status of these areas. Both concepts were complementary and combining them proved to enhance the ability to explain socio-economic status. The combined model is a theoretical progress, which complements the traditional approaches and increases our understanding of cities and urbanisation processes.

Mountains play a key role in the provision of nature's contributions to people (NCP) worldwide that support societies' quality of life. Simultaneously, mountains are threatened by multiple drivers of change. Due to the complex interlinkages between biodiversity, quality of life and drivers of change, research on NCP in mountains requires interdisciplinary approaches. In this study, we used the conceptual framework of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) and the notion of NCP to determine to what extent previous research on ecosystem services in mountains has explored the different components of the IPBES conceptual framework. We conducted a systematic review of articles on ecosystem services in mountains published up to 2016 using the Web of Science and Scopus databases. Descriptive statistical and network analyses were conducted to explore the level of research on the components of the IPBES framework and their interactions. Our results show that research has gradually become more interdisciplinary by studying higher number of NCP, dimensions of quality of life, and indirect drivers of change. Yet, research focusing on biodiversity, regulating NCP and direct drivers has decreased over time. Furthermore, despite the fact that research on NCP in mountains becoming more policy-oriented over time, mainly in relation to payments for ecosystem services, institutional responses remained underexplored in the reviewed studies. Finally, we discuss the relevant knowledge gaps that should be addressed in future research in order to contribute to IPBES.

The microclimatic conditions of the urban environment influence significantly the thermal comfort of human beings. One of the main human biometeorology parameters of thermal comfort is the Mean Radiant Temperature (Tmrt), which quantifies effective radiative flux reaching a human body. Simulation tools have proven useful to analyze the radiative behavior of an urban space and its impact on the inhabitants. We present a new method to produce detailed modeling of Tmrt spatial distribution using the 3-D Discrete Anisotropic Radiation Transfer model (DART). Our approach is capable to simulate Tmrt at different scales and under a range of parameters including the urban pattern, surface material of ground, walls, roofs, and properties of the vegetation (coverage, shape, spectral signature, Leaf Area Index and Leaf Area Density). The main advantages of our method are found in (1) the fine treatment of radiation in both short-wave and long-wave domains, (2) detailed specification of optical properties of urban surface materials and of vegetation, (3) precise representation of the vegetation component, and (4) capability to assimilate 3-D inputs derived from multisource remote sensing data. We illustrate and provide a first evaluation of the method in Singapore, a tropical city experiencing strong Urban Heat Island effect (UHI) and seeking to enhance the outdoor thermal comfort. The comparison between DART modelled and field estimated Tmrt shows good agreement in our study site under clear-sky condition over a time period from 10:00 to 19:00 (R2 = 0.9697, RMSE = 3.3249). The use of a 3-D radiative transfer model shows promising capability to study urban microclimate and outdoor thermal comfort with increasing landscape details, and to build linkage to remote sensing data. Our methodology has the potential to contribute towards optimizing climate-sensitive urban design when combined with the appropriate tools.

Agricultural transitions from subsistence to export-oriented production make households more reliant on volatile agricultural commodity markets and can increase households' exposure to crop price and yield shocks. At the same time, subsistence farming is also highly vulnerable to crop failures. In this work, we define household livelihood vulnerability as the probability of falling under an income threshold. We propose the use of a Bayesian network (BN) to calculate the income distribution based on household and community-level variables. BNs reflect relationships of dependence between variables and represent all variables as probability distributions, which allows for the explicit propagation of variability and uncertainty between variables. We focus on two agricultural frontier case study areas (CSAs) in northern Lao PDR that are at different stages in the transition from subsistence to export-oriented agriculture. Because agricultural production is the main livelihood activity in both CSAs, we develop a BN that calculates the probability distribution of net household agricultural production income. BN structure and parameterization are based on data collected in 110 household surveys across both CSAs, as well as interviews with villagers, government officials, and private sector actors. We analyze the effect of crop price and yield variability, land-use portfolio, and land holdings, on the probability of having a negative net agricultural income, which reflects a household's ability to meet its food consumption needs through cash crop sales. Results show that agricultural income is highly sensitive to rubber plantation area, rubber yield, and rubber price given the very large income potential of the crop. Households with larger agricultural areas have a lower probability of falling under an agricultural income threshold regardless of their diversification choices. Households that own more high-value cash crops are more buffered against rice yield shocks despite having higher agricultural income variability. However, low-income households are better off if they maintain a minimum level of rice sufficiency in combination with high-value cash crop production. Diversifying upland cash crops by increasing the share of cardamom (a low-value but low-volatility crop) at the expense of rubber (a highly lucrative crop with high price volatility) does not have a sizable beneficial impact, because returns from cardamom are significantly lower than for rubber. We show that BNs can be useful tools for the design and evaluation of rural development policies.

Large scale and rapid urbanization processes call for a better quality of urban planning to support human well-being. While compact cities aim to reduce land consumption, densification puts pressure on the remaining green areas, influencing ecosystem services provision and ultimately the life quality of the growing urban population. Supply of and demand for urban ecosystem services differ however greatly across the globe. In this study, we derive a set of urban typologies and their related ecosystem services bundles in both a temperate and a tropical city. We show that the supply of urban ecosystem services does not increase linearly with green area coverage, but is highly dependent on the urban form. While the surface sealed by infrastructures and the buildings themselves play a key role in influencing ecosystem services provision, we observe that the share of trees is particularly important for supporting regulating ecosystem services in built up neighborhoods. With a similar average surface-to-volume ratio, open midrise neighborhoods in Singapore provide more water flow regulation and air pollution control services than the same urban typology in Zurich. Microclimate regulation, in contrast, does not seem to be dependent on the context, but more on the amount of built up surface. Interestingly, we observe that open midrise neighborhoods synergistically support the supply of many regulating services in both case study areas, including microclimate regulation, water flow regulation and air pollution control. Large water and forest patches are unquestionably essential in both Singapore and Zurich to support bundles of ecosystem services, particularly also for recreational activities. Using open data, the approach can be transferred to other cities and support decision makers in their efforts to plan the sustainable development of cities across the world.

Worldwide, the expansion of settlement and transport infrastructure is one of the most important proximate as well as ultimate causes of biodiversity loss. As much as every modern human society depends on a network of settlements that is well-connected by transport infrastructure (i.e., settlement network), animal and plant species depend on networks of habitats between which they can move (i.e., habitat networks). However, changes to a settlement network in a region often threaten the integrity of the region's habitat networks. Determining plans and policy to prevent these threats is made difficult by the numerous interactions and feedbacks that exist between and within the settlement and habitat networks. Mathematical models of coupled settlement and habitat networks can help us understand the dynamics of this social-ecological system. Yet, few attempts have been made to develop such mathematical models. In this paper, we promote the development of models of coupled settlement and habitat networks for biodiversity conservation. First, we present a conceptual framework of key variables that are ideally considered when operationalizing the coupling of settlement and habitat networks. In this framework, we first describe important network-internal interactions by differentiating between the structural (i.e., relating to purely physical conditions determining the suitability of a location for living or movement) and functional (i.e., relating to the actual presence, abundance or movement of people or other organisms) properties of either network. We then describe the main one-way influences that a settlement network can exert on the habitat networks and vice versa. Second, we give several recommendations for the mathematical modeling of coupled settlement and habitat networks and present several existing modeling approaches (e.g., habitat network models and land-use transport interaction models) that could be used for this purpose. Lastly, we elaborate on potential applications of models of coupled settlement and habitat networks in the development of complex network theory, in the assessment of system resilience and in conservation, transport and urban planning. The development of coupled settlement and habitat network models is important to gain a better system-level understanding of biodiversity conservation under a rapidly urbanizing and growing human population.

Public landscape impact assessment of renewable energy installations is crucial for their acceptance. Thus, a sound assessment basis is crucial in the implementation process. For valuing landscape perception, the visual sense is the dominant human sensory component. However, the visual sense provides only partial information about our environment. Especially when it comes to wind farm assessments, noise produced by the rotating turbine blades is another major impact factor. Therefore, an integrated visual and acoustic assessment of wind farm projects is needed to allow lay people to perceive their impact adequately. This paper presents an approach of linking spatially referenced auralizations to a GIS-based virtual 3D landscape model. We demonstrate how to utilize a game engine for 3D visualization of wind parks, using geodata as a modeling basis. In particular, the controlling and recording of specific parameters in the game engine is shown in order to establish a link to the acoustical model. The resulting prototype has high potential to complement conventional tools for an improved public impact assessment of wind farms.

Increased urbanization and climate change have resulted in the intensification of the urban heat island (UHI) effect, particularly in tropical cities. One of the main causes of UHI is the man-made urban surfaces influencing the radiation budget by absorbing, reflecting, and emitting radiation at various wavelengths. The radiative budget of a city is directly influenced by the urban geometry, surface materials, direct solar radiation and incident angle, and atmospheric diffuse radiation. Vegetation cover, in contrast, can decrease UHI by intercepting radiation and through the process of photosynthesis. Better understanding the effect of urban vegetation on the radiative budget can thus contribute towards the mitigation of the UHI effect and ultimately the development of climate resilient urban spaces. To analyze the contribution of vegetation to the radiative budget of a city, a detailed simulation of the complex interaction between the built environment and the vegetation is required. This study proposes an approach for analyzing the 3-D structure of both vegetation and built environment to quantify the contribution of vegetation to the radiative budget of an urban landscape. In a first step, a detailed 3-D model of Singapore including buildings and vegetation was reconstructed using a combination of free and commercial Earth Observation data. Then, the 3-D Discrete Anisotropic Radiative Transfer (DART) model was repurposed to estimate the radiation absorbed by the urban surfaces accounting for the presence of vegetation cover with changing Leaf Area Density (LAD) conditions. The presence of trees in the scene accounted for a significant reduction of the absorbed radiation by buildings and ground. For example, in the case of a residential low-building neighborhood, although having low tree cover, the reduction of the absorbed radiation by buildings and ground was up to 15.5% for a LAD =1. The field validation shows good agreement (R2 = 0.9633, RMSE = 10.8830 and Bias = −1.3826) between the DART-simulated shortwave exitance and upwelling shortwave measurements obtained from a net radiometer mounted on a local flux tower in the urban area of Singapore, over the studied period. Our approach can be used for neighborhood-scale analysis, at any desired location of a city, to allow test scenarios with varying surface materials and vegetation properties.

To determine the resilience of complex social-ecological systems (SESs) it is necessary to have a thorough understanding of the system behavior under changing political, economic, and environmental conditions (i.e., external system stressors). Such behavior can be predicted if one knows the stable and unstable equilibrium states in a system and how these equilibria react to changes in the system stressors. The state of the system rapidly or gradually changes either toward (i.e., stable equilibrium) or away from (i.e., unstable equilibrium) an equilibrium. However, the equilibrium states in a SES are often unknown and difficult to identify in real systems. In contrast, agent-based SES models can potentially be used to determine equilibria states, but are rarely used for this purpose. We developed a generic approach to identify stable and unstable equilibria states with agent-based SES models. We used an agent-based SES model to simulate land-use change in an alpine mountain region in the Canton of Valais, Switzerland. By iteratively running this model for different input settings, we were able to identify equilibria in intensive and extensive agriculture. We also assessed the sensitivity of these equilibria to changes in external system stressors. With support-vector machine classifications, we created bifurcation diagrams in which the stable and unstable equilibria as a function of the values of a system stressor were depicted. The external stressors had a strong influence on the equilibrium states. We also found that a minimum amount of direct payments was necessary for agricultural extensification to take place. Our approach does not only provide valuable insights into the resilience of our case-study region to changing conditions, but can also be applied to other (agent-based) SES models to present important model results in a condensed and understandable format.

The perception of the visual landscape impact is a significant factor explaining the public’s acceptance of energy infrastructure developments. Yet, there is lack of knowledge how people perceive and accept power lines in certain landscape types and in combination with wind turbines, a required setting to achieve goals of the energy turnaround. The goal of this work was to demonstrate how 3D point cloud visualizations could be used for an eye tracking study to systematically investigate the perception of landscape scenarios with power lines. 3D visualizations of near-natural and urban landscapes were prepared based on data from airborne and terrestrial laser scanning. These scenes were altered with varying amounts of the respective infrastructure, and they provided the stimuli in a laboratory experiment with 49 participants. Eye tracking and questionnaires served for measuring the participants’ responses. The results show that the point cloud-based simulations offered suitable stimuli for the eye tracking study. Particularly for the analysis of guided perceptions, the approach fostered an understanding of disturbing landscape elements. A comparative in situ eye tracking study is recommended to further evaluate the quality of the point cloud simulations, whether they produce similar responses as in the real world.

Ecosystem services inherently involve people, whose values help define the benefits of nature's services. It is thus important for researchers to involve stakeholders in ecosystem services research. However, a simple and practicable framework to guide such engagement, and in particular to help researchers anticipate and consider key issues and challenges, has not been well explored. Here, we use experience from the 12 case studies in the European Operational Potential of Ecosystem Research Applications (OPERAs) project to propose a stakeholder engagement framework comprising three key elements: creating space, aligning motivations, and building trust. We argue that involving stakeholders in research demands thoughtful reflection from the researchers about what kind of space they want to create, including if and how they want to bring different interests together, how much space they want to allow for critical discussion, and whether there is a role for particular stakeholders to serve as conduits between others. In addition, understanding their own motivations - including values, knowledge, goals, and desired benefits - will help researchers decide when and how to involve stakeholders, identify areas of common ground and potential disagreement, frame the project appropriately, set expectations, and ensure each party is able to see benefits of engaging with each other. Finally, building relationships with stakeholders can be difficult but considering the roles of existing relationships, time, approach, reputation, and belonging can help build mutual trust. Although the three key elements and the paths between them can play out differently depending on the particular research project, we suggest that a research design that considers how to create the space in which researchers and stakeholders will meet, align motivations between researchers and stakeholders, and build mutual trust will help foster productive researcher-stakeholder relationships.

Ecosystems provide life-sustaining services upon which human civilization depends, but their degradation largely continues unabated. Spatially explicit information on ecosystem services (ES) provision is required to better guide decision making, particularly for mountain systems, which are characterized by vertical gradients and isolation with high topographic complexity, making them particularly sensitive to global change. But while spatially explicit ES quantification and valuation allows the identification of areas of abundant or limited supply of and demand for ES, the accuracy and usefulness of the information varies considerably depending on the scale and methods used. Using four case studies from mountainous regions in Europe and the U.S., we quantify information gains and losses when mapping five ES - carbon sequestration, flood regulation, agricultural production, timber harvest, and scenic beauty - at coarse and fine resolution (250 m vs. 25 m in Europe and 300 m vs. 30 m in the U.S.). We analyze the effects of scale on ES estimates and their spatial pattern and show how these effects are related to different ES, terrain structure and model properties. ES estimates differ substantially between the fine and coarse resolution analyses in all case studies and across all services. This scale effect is not equally strong for all ES. We show that spatially explicit information about non-clustered, isolated ES tends to be lost at coarse resolution and against expectation, mainly in less rugged terrain, which calls for finer resolution assessments in such contexts. The effect of terrain ruggedness is also related to model properties such as dependency on land use-land cover data. We close with recommendations for mapping ES to make the resulting maps more comparable, and suggest a four-step approach to address the issue of scale when mapping ES that can deliver information to support ES-based decision making with greater accuracy and reliability.

What are the factors that hinder or support publishing interdisciplinary research? What does a successful interdisciplinary publishing process look like? We address these questions by analyzing the publishing process of the interdisciplinary research project titled "Mountland." Project researchers published most of their main results as a Special Feature of Ecology and Society. Using the story wall method and qualitative content analysis, we identified ten factors contributing to the success or failure of publishing interdisciplinary research. They can be assigned to four groups of resources: scientific resources, i.e., previous joint research, simultaneously written manuscripts; human resources, i.e., coordination, flexibility, composition of the team; integrative resources, i.e., vision of integration, chronology of results; and feedback resources, i.e., internal reviews, subject editors, external reviewers. According to this analysis, an ideal-typical publishing process necessitates, among other things, (1) a strong, interdisciplinary coordinator, (2) a clear shared vision of integration and a common framework, (3) flexibility in terms of money and time, (4) a certain sense of timing regarding when and how to exchange results and knowledge, (5) subject editors who are familiar with the specific project and its interdisciplinary merits, and (6) reviewers who are open minded about interdisciplinary efforts.

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.

Mountain regions provide essential ecosystem goods and services (EGS) for both mountain dwellers and people living outside these areas. Global change endangers the capacity of mountain ecosystems to provide key services. The Mountland project focused on three case study regions in the Swiss Alps and aimed to propose land-use practices and alternative policy solutions to ensure the provision of key EGS under climate and land-use changes. We summarized and synthesized the results of the project and provide insights into the ecological, socioeconomic, and political processes relevant for analyzing global change impacts on a European mountain region. In Mountland, an integrative approach was applied, combining methods from economics and the political and natural sciences to analyze ecosystem functioning from a holistic human-environment system perspective. In general, surveys, experiments, and model results revealed that climate and socioeconomic changes are likely to increase the vulnerability of the EGS analyzed. We regard the following key characteristics of coupled human-environment systems as central to our case study areas in mountain regions: thresholds, heterogeneity, trade-offs, and feedback. Our results suggest that the institutional framework should be strengthened in a way that better addresses these characteristics, allowing for (1) more integrative approaches, (2) a more network-oriented management and steering of political processes that integrate local stakeholders, and (3) enhanced capacity building to decrease the identified vulnerability as central elements in the policy process. Further, to maintain and support the future provision of EGS in mountain regions, policy making should also focus on project-oriented, cross-sectoral policies and spatial planning as a coordination instrument for land use in general.

Mountain ecosystems are highly sensitive to global change. In fact, the continued capacity of mountain regions to provide goods and services to society is threatened by the impact of environmental changes on ecosystems. Although mapping ecosystem services values is known to support sustainable resource management, the integration of spatially explicit local expert knowledge on ecosystem dynamics and social responses to global changes has not yet been integrated in the modeling process. This contribution demonstrates the importance of integrating local knowledge into the spatially explicit valuation of ecosystem services. Knowledge acquired by expert surveys flows into a GIS-based Bayesian Network for valuing forest ecosystem services under a land-use and a climate change scenario in a case study in the Swiss Alps. Results show that including expert knowledge in ecosystem services mapping not only reduces uncertainties considerably, but also has an important effect on the ecosystem services values. Particularly the iterative process between integrating expert knowledge into the modeling process and mapping ecosystem services guarantees a continuous improvement of ecosystem services values maps while opening a new way for mutual learning between scientists and stakeholders which might support adaptive resource management.