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Changes relating to the development of land use often negatively impact on ecosystem services (ES), which in turn impairs the ability of ecosystems to sustain such services. The assessment of land suitability is a critical step in land use planning, but it may have some shortcomings and may fail to represent the diversity of ES-related features of geographical places. To address this issue, this paper proposes a method that integrates the ES approach with contemporary land suitability evaluation. The study consists of three steps: (1) Land suitability analysis: represents the geology, morphology, land capability, hydrology, erosion and habitat vulnerability, (2) Integrated ES mapping: represents the integrated value of provisioning, regulating and cultural ES potential together and (3) Land suitability evaluation based on integrated ES mapping (ES-Integrated Suitability Map): represents ES-based land suitability. The results demonstrate that there is a significant difference between the conventional and ES-integrated land suitability evaluations. According to the results of the conventional land suitability analysis, while 29.8% of land has excellent and 23.6% good suitability conditions for new development, the ES-integrated land suitability evaluation reveals that only 0.18% and 5.35% of land has excellent and good suitability for new development, respectively, in Duzce. This study shows that the introduction of the ES approach can have an important contribution to spatial decision-making. In addition, this method provides an approach to represent the place-based attributes of space better through the integration of ES into land suitability and can thus help to make environmental concerns a priority in spatial decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The decline in ecosystem services (ES) across the world is mostly associated with land use change, which is the basic outcome of ecosystem degradation. The changes associated with land use development often negatively impact ecosystems to sustain their services. The lack of capability of contemporary land suitability (overlay) analysis on ES-based decision support approach necessitates a new way of analytical method integrating ES to promote sustainability more efficiently in spatial decision making and ecosystem management. Although there is a growing attention on ES-based data improvement and spatialization of ES data through mapping and valuation at local and global levels, the configuration of analytical decision support tool of ES has not been developed yet to be used for spatial decision-making purposes. In this paper, a case study for the application of ES-based decision support approach is presented to contribute as a spatial decision support tool. Duzce, a province distinguished with being another major drinking water supplier of Istanbul, is selected as a case. The aim of the paper is to explore the relevancy of ES-based land suitability (ESLS) assessment approach as a decision support tool in spatial decision making by comparing with the contemporary land suitability (overlay) analysis. Both approaches have been developed and superimposed with multilayered/multi-functional spatial assessments to achieve an integrated final output separately. The findings of the research prove that ES-based analytical approach for spatial decision making can better formulate and contribute to more holistic and comprehensive spatial decision making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]