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The ecosystem service (ES) community aspires to illuminate how nature contributes to human well-being, and thereby elevate consideration of nature in decision making. So far, however, policy impact of ES research has been limited. To understand why, we identify five key elements of ES research that help inform decisions by connecting the supply of ES to those who benefit from them. Our structured review of the ES literature reveals that only 13% of assessments included the full ES chain from place to value. Only 7% of assessments considered the distribution of ES benefits explicitly across demographic or other beneficiary groups (for example, private landowners versus the broader public), although disaggregation across regions or spatial units was more common (44%). Finally, crucial mediating factors that affect who benefits and how (for example, the vulnerability of beneficiaries or the availability of substitutes for ES) were considered in only 35% of assessments. Our results suggest that increasing the decision relevance of ES research requires more effectively predicting the impacts of specific decisions on the value and distribution of ES across beneficiary groups. Such efforts will need to integrate ecological models with socioeconomic and cultural dimensions of ES more closely than does the current ES literature. To increase the policy relevance of ecosystem service benefits research, studies need to better predict the impact of specific decisions, according to an analysis of the literature.

The future of nature's contributions A recent Global Assessment by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services has emphasized the urgent need to determine where and how nature's contribution matters most to people. Chaplin-Kramer et al. have developed a globalscale modeling of ecosystem services, focusing on water quality regulation, coastal protection, and crop pollination (see the Perspective by Balvanera). By 2050, up to 5 billion people may be at risk from diminishing ecosystem services, particularly in Africa and South Asia. Science , this issue p. 255 ; see also p. 184

This chapter presents a deep dive into the current state of science and knowledge around water risks and water security as they relate to nature-based solutions (NBS). It explores the various ways that NBS affect water quantity, quality, and water-related hazards from the point of view of several types of key water users. It presents the strength of the evidence about these relationships and where gaps exist in this evidence base. Finally, this chapter introduces how this scientific knowledge is being put into practice through implementation of NBS and how robust monitoring and evaluation of on the ground projects can continue to build on this scientific understanding.

Conservation decision-makers and practitioners increasingly strive for efficient and equitable outcomes for people and nature. However, environmental management programs commonly benefit some groups of people more than others, and very little is known about how efforts to promote equality (i.e. even distributions) and equity (i.e. proportional distributions) trade-off against efficiency (i.e. total net outcome per dollar spent). Based on a case study in the Brigalow Belt Bioregion, Australia, we quantified trade-offs between equality, equity, and efficiency in planning for flood protection. We considered optimal restoration strategies that allocate a fixed budget (a) evenly among beneficiary sectors (i.e. seeking equality among urban residents, rural communities, and the food sector), (b) evenly among local government areas (LGAs) within the Brigalow Belt (i.e. seeking spatial equality), and (c) preferentially to areas of highest socioeconomic disadvantage (i.e. seeking equity). We assessed equality using the Gini coefficient, and equity using an index of socioeconomic disadvantage. At an AUD10M budget, evenly distributing the budget among beneficiary sectors was 80% less efficient than ignoring beneficiary groups, and did not improve equality in the distribution of flood protection among beneficiary sectors. Evenly distributing the budget among LGAs ensured restoration in four areas that were otherwise ignored, with a modest reduction in efficiency (12%–25%). Directing flood protection to areas of highest socioeconomic disadvantage did not result in additional reductions in efficiency, and captured areas of high disadvantage for the rural and urban sectors that were missed otherwise. We show here that different ways of targeting equity and equality lead to quite different trade-offs with efficiency. Our approach can be used to guide transparent negotiations between beneficiaries and other stakeholders involved in a planning process.

Watersheds are under increasing pressure worldwide, as expanding human activities coupled with global climate change threaten the water security of people downstream. In response, some communities have initiated investments in watershed services (IWS), a general term for policy-finance mechanisms that mitigate diverse watershed threats and promote ecosystem-based adaptation. Here, we explore the potential for increasing the uptake and impact of IWS, evaluating what limits its application and how institutional, financial, and informational barriers can be overcome. Our analysis complements the growing literature on individual programs by identifying levers at regional and global scales. We conclude that mainstreaming IWS as a cost-effective strategy alongside engineered approaches will require advances that (i) lower institutional barriers to implementation and participation in IWS; (ii) introduce structural market changes and standards of practice that account for the value of watersheds’ natural capital; (iii) develop practical tools and metrics of IWS costs and benefits; and (iv) share success stories of replicable institutional and financial models applied in varied contexts.

We analyze the impacts of investments in sustainable land use practices on ecosystem services in the Upper Tana basin, Kenya. This work supports implementation of the Upper Tana-Nairobi Water Fund, a public-private partnership to safeguard ecosystem service provision and food security. We apply an integrated modelling framework, building on local knowledge and previous field- and model-based studies, to link biophysical landscape changes at high temporal and spatial resolution to economic benefits for key actors in the basin. The primary contribution of this study is that it a) presents a comprehensive analysis for targeting interventions that takes into account stakeholder preferences, local environmental and socio-economic conditions, b) relies on detailed, process-based, biophysical models to demonstrate the biophysical return on those investments for a practical, decision-driven case, and c) in close collaboration with downstream water users, links those biophysical outputs to monetary metrics, including: reduced water treatment costs, increased hydropower production, and crop yield benefits for agricultural producers in the conservation area. This study highlights the benefits and trade-offs that come with conducting participatory research as part of a stakeholder engagement process: while results are more likely to be decision-relevant within the local context, navigating stakeholder expectations and data limitations present ongoing challenges.

In many countries, hydropower development is rapidly becoming a focus of green growth policies. This represents a significant opportunity for ecosystem services-based land management that integrates environmental and development goals to benefit the hydropower sector and support economic growth. In this study, we present an approach for targeting ecosystem-provision investment in hydropower catchments coupled with hydrologic modeling to quantify the benefits of soil and water conservation activities. We demonstrate the application of this approach in five hydropower facility catchments in the state of Himachal Pradesh, India. The results show that there is a high potential for targeted soil and water conservation to increase sediment retention services that benefit hydropower facilities (up to a 44% reduction in sediment transported from uplands into streams), although this benefit is distributed non-uniformly across catchments and levels of investment. The extent to which services can be improved is strongly driven by current land use and management practices that impact how and where conservation activities can be located. Iterative use of the method described here, in a process of stakeholder engagement and capacity-building, enables policy makers to determine the optimal mix of land management strategies and budget allocation to maximize service improvements that support hydropower production.

Water funds seek to promote long-term watershed conservation with multiple benefits for biodiversity and human well-being. This approach has grown rapidly, particularly in Latin America where more than 30 water funds were in operation or development by 2014. To meet the need for evidence to guide ongoing decisions, we assessed the goals and strategies of 16 programs that were operating in 2013–2014 in association with the Latin American Water Funds Partnership. Our findings underscore the diversity within this approach to investment in watershed services. The various financial, governance, and management mechanisms adopted by these programs reflected their distinct biophysical, socio-economic, and political contexts. All 16 water funds aimed to secure water quality (15/16) and/or quantity (including the timing of flows) (14/16). The majority of programs also explicitly strived for co-benefits to local livelihoods (9/16) and biodiversity (11/16). Public funding secured through legislation provided the most funding to date, but private, NGO, and development bank source were also important for some programs. While programs have actively engaged rural land stewards, this stakeholder group was represented on governance boards in just 4 of 16 funds. Additionally, while the majority of water funds with activities on the ground (13/16) reported biophysical and social impact monitoring (8/16), many faced significant logistical, technical, and funding challenges to its implementation. We recommend greater inclusion of rural land stewards on governance boards, increased engagement of the private sector, and a sustained commitment to an evidence-based approach to increase the likelihood that programs will attain their goals.

Development projects must increasingly include mitigation actions to offset their negative environmental and social impacts. However, current mitigation approaches can exacerbate social inequality by ignoring how the spatial location of offsets affects the benefits local people receive from ecosystem services (ES). Here, we present a method for tracking changes in ES benefits resulting from development and mitigation actions. To demonstrate this approach, we use as an example a proposed road through the Peruvian Amazon. We assessed the road's ES impacts and prioritized offsets in a socially equitable way. We found that the road is likely to have a disproportionate negative effect on drinking-water quality for nearby indigenous communities, and that offsets cannot fully compensate for these impacts. Equity was improved by including ES in spatial prioritization of mitigation. Including ES information in a “serviceshed”-based approach reduced average remaining, unmitigated impacts to drinking-water quality m...

Governments, development banks, corporations, and nonprofits are increasingly considering the potential contribution of watershed conservation activities to secure clean water for cities and to reduce flood risk. These organizations, however, often lack decision-relevant, initial screening information across multiple cities to identify which specific city-watershed combinations present not only water-related risks but also potentially attractive opportunities for mitigation via natural infrastructure approaches. To address this need, this paper presents a novel methodology for a continental assessment of the potential for watershed conservation activities to improve surface drinking water quality and mitigate riverine and stormwater flood risks in 70 major cities across Latin America. We used publicly available geospatial data to analyze 887 associated watersheds. Water quality metrics assessed the potential for agricultural practices, afforestation, riparian buffers, and forest conservation to mitigate sediment and phosphorus loads. Flood reduction metrics analyzed the role of increasing infiltration, restoring riparian wetlands, and reducing connected impervious surface to mitigate riverine and stormwater floods for exposed urban populations. Cities were then categorized based on relative opportunity potential to reduce identified risks through watershed conservation activities. We find high opportunities for watershed activities to mitigate at least one of the risks in 42 cities, potentially benefiting 96 million people or around 60% of the urbanites living in the 70 largest cities in Latin America. We estimate water quality could be improved for 72 million people in 27 cities, riverine flood risk mitigated for 5 million people in 13 cities, and stormwater flooding mitigated for 44 million people in 14 cities. We identified five cities with the potential to simultaneously enhance water quality and mitigate flood risks, and in contrast, six cities where conservation efforts are unlikely to meaningfully mitigate either risk. Institutions investing in natural infrastructure to improve water security in Latin America can maximize their impact by focusing on specific watershed conservation activities either for cleaner drinking water or flood mitigation in cities identified in our analysis where these interventions are most likely to reduce risk.

The question of watershed response to changes in land use and land cover has received a great deal of attention in the hydrologic literature. One of the primary tools for quantifying such changes has been the paired watershed approach. In general this approach applies a linear regression analysis to relate water yield from a control watershed to a physiographically similar watershed in close proximity, and to predict changes in yield following treatment. Although much research on paired watershed experiments has focused on quantification of the impacts of land-use and land cover changes on water yield, little attention has been brought to evaluating explicitly the methodology used to quantify such effects. An alternative method is proposed for examining treatment impacts and their duration, through the application of a cumulative recursive residual test of model stability. The results from a paired watershed study of ponderosa pine watersheds in north-central Arizona are analyzed using both a traditional linear regression analysis and a recursive residuals approach. The results suggest that the linear regression approach may fail to account for the true complexity of watershed response to vegetation treatments, by underestimating the interactions of treatment impacts, shifts in climatic drivers, and revegetation rates.

Ecosystem services science has developed at a fast rate in Latin America, a region characterized by a high biological and cultural diversity, strong emphasis in foreign investment, and high socioeconomic inequities. Here we conducted the following analyses at the regional and national scales: (1) how and when did the study of ecosystem services arise in each country?, (2) what is our present understanding of ecosystem service supply, delivery to societies, and social and economic values?, (3) what is the state of the art in integrating tradeoffs among services and in using interdisciplinary perspectives?, and (4) how has ecosystem service research been connected to policy design or management for sustainability? A large literature review (>1000 references) showed that in Latin America ES supply and links to policy have been the most frequently assessed. Overall, emphasis has been placed on a few services, namely carbon and water. Payments for ecosystem services have received considerable attention in the region, though with strong differences across nations and with important limitations in their application. The future of the ecosystem service paradigm in Latin America will largely depend on its capacity to demonstrate effectiveness in meeting both conservation and development goals. © 2012 Elsevier B.V. Fil: Balvanera, Patricia. University of Stanford; Estados Unidos. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; México. Columbia University; Estados Unidos Fil: Uriarte, María. Columbia University; Estados Unidos Fil: Almeida-Leñero, Lucía. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; México Fil: Altesor, Alice. Universidad de la República; Uruguay Fil: DeClerck, Fabrice. Bioversity International; Italia Fil: Gardner, Toby. University of Cambridge; Reino Unido Fil: Hall, Jefferson. Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute; Panamá Fil: Lara, Antonio. Universidad Austral de Chile; Chile. Fundación Centro de los Bosques Nativos; Chile Fil: Laterra, Pedro. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Agrarias; Argentina Fil: Peña Claros, Marielos. University of Agriculture Wageningen; Países Bajos Fil: Silva Matos, Dalva M.. Universidade Federal do São Carlos; Brasil Fil: Vogl, Adrian L.. University of Stanford; Estados Unidos Fil: Romero Duque, Luz Piedad. Universidad de Ciencias Aplicadas y Ambientales; Colombia Fil: Arreola, Luis Felipe. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; México Fil: Caro Borrero, Ángela Piedad. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; México Fil: Gallego, Federico. Universidad de la República; Uruguay Fil: Jain, Meha. Columbia University; Estados Unidos Fil: Little, Christian. Fundación Centro de los Bosques Nativos; Chile. Universidad Austral de Chile; Chile Fil: de Oliveira Xavier, Rafael. Universidade Federal do São Carlos; Brasil Fil: Paruelo, José. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Parque Centenario. Instituto de Investigaciones Fisiológicas y Ecológicas Vinculadas a la Agricultura. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Agronomía; Argentina Fil: Peinado, Jesús Emilio. Universidad Católica de Colombia; Colombia Fil: Poorter, Lourens. University of Agriculture Wageningen; Países Bajos Fil: Ascarrunz, Nataly. Instituto Boliviano de Investigación Forestal; Bolivia Fil: Correa, Francisco. Universidad de Medellin; Colombia Fil: Cunha Santino, Marcela B.. Universidade Federal do São Carlos; Brasil Fil: Hernández Sánchez, Amabel Paula. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; México Fil: Vallejos, María. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Parque Centenario. Instituto de Investigaciones Fisiológicas y Ecológicas Vinculadas a la Agricultura. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Agronomía; Argentina

The Brazos River, the second largest basin in Texas, represents one of the most highly developed river systems in the state. Thirty-nine reservoirs with capacities greater than 5,000 acre-feet are currently in operation in the basin. Impacts on stream ecosystems are evidenced by changes in flow regimes and resulting changes in fish assemblages over the past 50 years. These changes have been widely attributed to human impacts, through the construction of dams, diversion of water supplies for agricultural and municipal uses, and land use change. However, streamflow regimes result from a complex mix of drivers that include climate, topography, land cover, land use practices, reservoir management practices, dam releases, and water consumption patterns, making determination of anthropogenic impacts problematic. This study quantifies changes in flow regime and probable historical drivers including precipitation, dam construction, population growth, and changing water demand in the Brazos River basin over the past 100 years. Results indicate that the climate of the basin has been relatively stable over the study period, while large-scale changes in human population densities and intense water resources development are correlated with impacts on flow regimes, decreasing the frequency and magnitude of high flow events and stabilizing low flows. These changes have resulted in an increase of habitat generalist fish species, a decrease of native obligate riverine fishes, and an overall homogenization of species assemblages. The results of this study indicate the importance of combining ecological data with an assessment of social drivers for a greater understanding of the dynamics of river basin systems.

Determining watershed response to vegetation treatment has been the subject of numerous hydrologic studies over the years. However, generalizing the information obtained from traditional paired-watershed studies to other watersheds in a region is problematic because of the empirical nature of such studies and the context dependence of hydrologic responses. This paper addresses the issue of generalizing hydrologic information through integration of process-based modeling and field observations from small-scale watershed experiments. To this end, the results from application of a process-based model were compared with the results from small-scale watershed experiments in ponderosa pine forests of Arizona. The model simulated treatment impacts reasonably well when compared to the traditional paired-watershed approach. However, the model tended to overestimate water yields during periods of low flow, and there was a significant difference between the two approaches in the estimation of treatment impacts during the first four years following treatment. The results indicate that the lumped-parameter modeling approach used here may be limited in its ability to detect small changes, and tends to overestimate changes that occur immediately following treatment. It is concluded that watershed experiments can be highly informative due to their direct examination of cause-effect relationships, while process-based models are useful for their processing power and focus on functional relationships. The integrated use of both watershed experiments and process-based models provides a way to generalize hydrologic information, illuminate the processes behind landscape treatment effects, and to generate and test hypotheses.