Search

Ecosystems regulate the global climate by storing and emitting greenhouse gases.

This chapter highlights how ecosystem-based adaptation—informed conservation and management practices that help people adapt to climate change—can enhance the resilience of island communities and reduce ecosystem service risks. On islands, terrestrial, coastal, and marine ecosystems are highly interconnected and provide important ecosystem services to local communities. However, ecosystems are also severely impacted by climate change, natural climate patterns, and human action. Using a ridge-to-reef approach allows accounting for ecosystem connectivity in adaptation planning and policies. Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) are described as a policy option for securing the ecosystem services of island watersheds. Strategies of ecosystem-based adaptation are not only an option for Small Island States, but also for many situations in developed or developing countries.

Talking about ecosystem services is to talk about human relationships with nature, and about aspects of nature that humans value. The concept is thus at the interfaces of nature and society as well as of facts and values.

Pollination of wild and crop plants by animal pollinators is a key ecosystem service that is important to human welfare. Across Europe, climatic conditions are the most important drivers of occurrence and richness of pollinators followed by land cover and soil conditions. However, the example of recent range shifts of important pollinators such as the bumblebees shows that northern range expansions can be limited while southern range contractions can be considerable, leading to severe consequences under future scenarios. The way we utilize our landscape is a likely reason for such strong effects since the response to changing temperature conditions strongly depends on the amount of semi-natural area available in a landscape. In particular, the number of bee species is less sensitive to increasing temperatures when the amount of semi-natural habitat is high, while species richness drastically declines in intensively used agricultural landscapes and even more so with increasing temperatures. Such interactive effects of major drivers of global change bear a big chance for enhancing resilience in pollinator communities and thus in food production systems, e.g. by increasing the amount of semi-natural habitat as is the goal of the EU strategy for Green Infrastructure and some of the regulations in the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

Over the past decades, the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy has been supporting farmers. At the same time, one could observe a sharp decline in farmland-biodiversity.

The Atlas of Ecosystem Services has collected knowledge on drivers, trade-offs, and synergies of ecosystem services and biodiversity, as well as societal responses. It presents case studies from various fields to demonstrate concepts of sustainable land management and governance. In this final chapter, we identify important open questions to sketch avenues for future research in the field (see also Grunewald and Bastian [1]).

New European Union level scenarios have been developed in the FP7 project OpenNESS to fill a thematic gap in existing broad-scale environmental scenarios to assess the uncertainties and risks of different drivers of change for natural capital and ecosystem service provision. The scenarios are aiming at applicability for science and policy-making at different scales, including the European level and regional and local scales. The scenarios are going beyond the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment scenarios, making broader assumptions in covering different types of ecosystem services, and different pathways of ecosystem services provision, including risks of ecosystem service losses. The main research question is addressing uncertainties and risks related to land-use change, exemplified via impacts on a provisioning and a regulating service. The approach is based on participatory scenario development and integrated modelling with the CLIMSAVE modelling framework. Four scenarios were developed (WealthBeing, UnitedWeStand, EcoCentre, RuralRevival). Simulations of the combinations of driving forces caused land-use changes up to +65% for forest, or −37% for grassland, both in UnitedWeStand. The most extreme changes highlighted here for scenario UnitedWeStand can mainly be attributed to the highest increase in irrigation efficiency (+58%) and crop yields (+50%), an almost constant human population in Europe (+1%), moderate increases in meat demands (+10%) and increasing food imports (+10%). In terms of ecosystem services provision, no clear winners and losers could be identified in the four scenarios, but rather different mixes of trade-offs and synergies. Thus, drivers within Europe as well as trade with land-intensive commodities and the policies steering them contribute to lower or increased pressures and risks of ecosystem services loss, e.g., on agricultural land in Europe and the countries of trading partners.

Energy provision affects ecosystems and their services for humans. This applies to all forms of energy, whether fossil resource-based or renewable, ecosystem-based or not.

The ecological and social impacts of wind power plants affect the provision of ecosystem services in many ways, mainly with respect to cultural services as well as habitat provision. These challenges need to be considered when a proper institutional framework for the deployment of wind power is to be designed to mitigate trade-offs between different ecosystem services. Understanding how the current institutional framework affects the spatial allocation of wind turbines and the related impacts on ecosystem services is a first step towards this insight. Using the cases of Germany and Sweden, we show that both noninstitutional and institutional factors may have a significant impact on the distribution of wind turbines. Their relative importance varies with geographical and regulatory contexts.

Little is known about the effect of inner-city brownfield re-use on Ecosystem Services (ESS). Can Ecosystem Services be maintained and at the same time new planning projects realized? In this text, we analyze the effects of brownfield-re-use on ESS through comparing the current situation with a potential revitalization scenario referring to the empirical example of Bayerischer Bahnhof in Leipzig, Germany. We focus on the Ecosystem service of regulating the microclimate and combine microclimate modelling tools with urban planning research.

As any other system, ecosystems are more than the sum of their parts. These parts – the abiotic environment and organisms at different trophic levels – interact, thus creating biogeochemical cycles and food webs. Roughly speaking, these interactions make ecosystems work. Some ecosystem functions generate ecosystem services (decomposition, for example is an important biogeochemical process for soil formation and nutrient cycling). Evidence is increasing that biodiversity loss will reduce ecosystem functioning and related ecosystem services.

Half of the drinking water consumed in Europe originates from groundwater resources and about one-third from surface waters. EU directives and national legislation should ensure that drinking water is safe and clean, and that drinking water resources will be protected sustainably against anthropogenic forces resulting from extraction, pollution, or inadequate drinking water infrastructures.

Pesticides are currently applied on a large scale in agricultural crops, but also in urban areas, private gardens, and households [1–6].

Climate change is already affecting terrestrial ecosystems and biodiversity in Europe [1].

A growing human population coupled with increasing per capita consumption, changing diets, increasing food waste, and ineffective regulation, have led to rising demands on ecosystems for the services they supply [1].

Pollution of ecosystems by a constantly increasing load of anthropogenic chemicals is a major driver of ecosystem service risk. This chapter summarizes relevant abiotic and biotic processes that determine the persistence, degradation, and ultimate destination of anthropogenic chemicals. It also summarizes research challenges for predicting the ability of an ecosystem to biodegrade an anthropogenic chemical by addressing the following questions: “What makes a chemical available for biodegradation?” and “What makes an ecosystem capable of biodegradation?”

Efforts are increasing to integrate the sustainable provision of ecosystem services into land management decision-making. These efforts, however, are challenged by (1) the variety of methods to map and quantify ecosystem services, and (2) the scarcity of knowledge on how environmental policies and management decisions affect relationships among ecosystem services. A better understanding of relationships among ecosystem services is therefore much needed. This chapter introduces the part of the Atlas framework that focuses on relationships among ecosystem services. It contains a typology and common definitions of different types of relationships, provides a brief overview of the diversity of methods and approaches used, includes a summary of empirical evidence, and, finally, discusses implications for planning and management.

Which ecosystem services are addressed? Timber production, crop production, crops for bioenergy use, livestock production, water quality regulation, recreation, erosion control, pollination, nitrogen retention, flood regulation

Policies and, more specifically, policy instruments to achieve certain policy objectives, are important means to govern and manage ecosystem service risks and are thus a main class of societal responses to ecosystem service risks. When focusing on ecosystem services and associated risks, it is essential to keep in mind biodiversity and ecosystem service governance. Due to the manifold synergies and potential trade-offs between biodiversity and ecosystem services, as well as those among different ecosystem services, such governance arrangements usually involve several policies and policy instruments, so-called policy mixes.

Biogenic residues and waste materials from agriculture are often referred to as part of a globally accessible, unused potential of biomass to produce fibres, biomaterials, biochemicals, and bioenergy, and are thus important ecosystem goods from provisioning services.

Understanding drivers of change, their impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services, as well as their relationships to decision- making, constitutes a major challenge for scientists and policy makers.

Soil plays a central role in the functioning of terrestrial systems. This role is at risk given the enormous loss of soil through desertification and degradation amounting to 12 million hectares per year [1].

Forests represent an important pool in the global carbon cycle. However, biomass stocks and carbon fluxes are variable due to the fact that forest dynamics are driven by processes that act on different spatial and temporal scales. Estimating forest biomass and productivity for larger regions is therefore a major challenge. In this study, horizontal and vertical forest structure is used to improve forest ecosystem service mapping by remote sensing. By linking remote sensing techniques with vegetation modelling (here FORMIND) and forest inventories, forest structure maps were derived for Germany (resolution 4 km). Using these maps, the role of forest structure for selected ecosystem services of forests has been investigated. For forest state estimations (like biomass) horizontal forest structure plays a key role while for productivity estimations both horizontal and vertical structures are relevant. This concept of forest structure classification in combination with forest modelling and remote sensing has high potential for applications at continental scales as future remote sensing missions will provide information on forest structure.

The first framework for characterizing human impact on biological systems was developed to study biotic responses of different human impact factors like air, water and soil pollution, and general land use.

LEGATO stands for “Land-use intensity and Ecological EnGineering—Assessment Tools for risks and Opportunities in irrigated rice based production systems.”

This part of The Atlas of Ecosystem Services focuses on the types of societal responses to addressing drivers and risks to ecosystems, as well as on societal demand and dependence on ecosystem services (Fig. 47.1). Society is affected by changes in ecosystem services provision that occur because of drivers affecting ecosystems and because of trade-offs between different ecosystem services. This has implications for human wellbeing and values [1, 2]. In response to these implications, different forms of land management can be triggered which either affect ecosystem properties [3] or target the management of different drivers [4]. In this context, the search for suitable governance options is considered one of the most pressing research challenges in the field of ecosystem services [5]. While work in this field has often aimed for providing additional arguments for conservation and hence decision-making [6], there have been few examples of how such information actually feeds in decision-making processes leading to societal responses to ecosystem service risks. Providing policy-relevant ecosystem service information tailored for decision-making processes has so far not been a focus in ecosystem service research [7, 8].

Biodiversity and many ecosystem services possess the attributes of public goods; private markets, therefore, cannot fully recognize their value and will thus fail to ensure their sustainable management (market failure). Public policies therefore have an essential role to play in safeguarding biodiversity and managing ecosystem service risks. This chapter highlights the complex challenges inherent in the choice and design of policy responses that may cause governance failures or governance risks which themselves pose risks to ecosystem services.

The future is uncertain. Given our seriously limited clairvoyant abilities, this is a trivial fact, which applies to all domains of human life – including our interactions with ecosystems. In the context of ecosystems and the goods and services they provide to us, this uncertainty about the future has multiple facets.

Our framework (Fig. 1.1) depicts different components of a dynamic in which ecosystem services are provided and managed [1]. The impact of on ecosystems can lead to a loss of ecological processes and properties, which are the basis for the provision of ecosystem services to society.

Which ecosystem services are addressed? General introduction to the ecosystem service concept.

Biogas production can push risk factors for the provision of ecosystem services and show interdependencies comparable to live stock farming. Spatial distribution analysis were used to assessing regional emphases for risks to ecosystem services. Of special interest specific densities of livestock farming, biogas production and the share of maize within crop rotations on farmland at a district level were taken into account. Biogas plants and cow sheds act very similar in terms of the required feedstock and incurring residues and in doing so for arable land. So it is recommended, that biogas and livestock farming should be jointly considered with respect to their need for feedstocks and the local capacity for sustainable application of manure as well as digestate. This can be achieved by a joint calculation of nutrient balances for both production systems.

Land system archetypes are unique patterns of land-use intensity within prevailing environmental and socio-economic conditions that occur repeatedly across the terrestrial surface of the earth [1].

The unprecedented rates of climate and land use change associated with habitat loss and fragmentation entail major risks for biodiversity in general. A loss of within species level variability, i.e.,.

Which ecosystem services are addressed? Most relevant renewable food resources, i.e., provisioning ecosystem services from agriculture (crops, meat, dairy products) and aqua culture.

Failures to incorporate the broad spectrum of values of nature and its services into decision-making has resulted in perpetuation of land use decisions that degrade natural capital and put the provision of specific ecosystem services at risk. The international TEEB-study (The Economics of Ecosystem and Biodiversity) employs an economic perspective to understand the incentives behind land use decisions and to illustrate the consequences of alternative land use options in economic terms. In this chapter we use the example of ploughing up grasslands in Germany for demonstrating ecosystem service values of grasslands and for highlighting ecosystem service risks from its conversion.

This chapter sketches out a framework that provides a heuristic perspective for better understanding and analysing community resilience in biodiversity management and research.

Little is known about the effect of inner-city brownfield re-use on Ecosystem Services (ESS). Can Ecosystem Services be maintained and at the same time new planning projects realized? In this text, we analyze the effects of brownfield-re-use on ESS through comparing the current situation with a potential revitalization scenario referring to the empirical example of Bayerischer Bahnhof in Leipzig, Germany. We focus on the Ecosystem service of regulating the microclimate and combine microclimate modelling tools with urban planning research.

This article presents a case study on long-term land-use and impervious cover change along the urban-to-rural gradient in the city of Leipzig, Germany. The gradient concept offers a promising approach to firstly integrate historical data into current land-use change impact assessment and, secondly, to uncover effects of iterative and simultaneous phases of urban growth and decline including sprawl and compaction.

Future uncertainties and risks for socio-environmental systems are often addressed in the form of scenarios. This study aims to identify the biggest future risks and uncertainties for the study region Central Germany and the question which land use changes and impacts on selected ecosystem services related to agricultural production can be expected in the coming decades.For this purpose, we co-developed scenario storylines along the largest uncertainties, how the region may change with different stakeholders and used environmental models to simulate land-use changes and impacts on selected ecosystem services related to agricultural production.The study revealed that Climate change may have beneficial (e.g. maize, sugar beet) or adverse effects (e.g. barley, wheat) on crop yield levels, depending on crop type and level of climate change. In the scenarios crop production is additionally influenced by different levels of regional preferences influencing crop land extent (e.g., afforestation), crop management (e.g., organic production), and crop types used for food or bioenergy production. As driving factors such as climate change, land availability, and land management all influence agriculture, integrated studies like this are needed to assess future crop production. However, sustainability objectives may prefer other than the most productive agricultural pathways providing additional benefits such as regulating or cultural services.

Climate regulation provided by urban trees and green spaces is one of the main ecosystem services for urban areas. Urban green spaces are increasingly threatened by urbanization, and changing temperatures and precipitation due to climate change might impair the ability of trees to cool their surroundings. Thus urban planning is faced with the challenge of improving climate regulation in the face of urbanization and climate change. How should the urban green spaces be designed to meet this challenge? Does climate regulation improve with higher tree diversity, or is a single tree species sufficient?

Inland surface waters (i.e., lakes, reservoirs, running waters, and wetlands) are highly valued ecosystems [1] and are greatly relevant to global biodiversity [2].

Many non-native species have been introduced because they provide one or more ecosystem service. As some of these species also cause disservices, case-by-case approaches are required to assess risks vs. opportunities related to their spread.

Understanding drivers of change, their impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services, as well as their relationships to decision- making, constitutes a major challenge for scientists and policy makers.