EN中文

Journal of Geographical Sciences >

2016 , Vol. 26 >Issue 7: 953 - 968

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11442-016-1309-9

Orginal Article

A review on trade-off analysis of ecosystem services for sustainable land-use management

  • DENG Xiangzheng , 1, 2 ,
  • LI Zhihui 1, 2, 3 ,
  • John GIBSON 4
Expand
  • 1. Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, CAS, Beijing 100101, China
  • 2. Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy, CAS, Beijing 100101, China
  • 3. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China
  • 4. Department of Economics, The University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand

Author: Deng Xiangzheng, PhD and Professor, land use change, global change and regional sustainable development. E-mail:

Received date: 2016-02-02

  Accepted date: 2016-03-15

  Online published: 2016-07-25

Supported by

China National Natural Science Funds for Distinguished Young Scholar, No.71225005

The Key Project in the National Science & Technology Pillar Program of China, No.2013BACO3B00

Copyright

Journal of Geographical Sciences, All Rights Reserved
Fold

Abstract

Ecosystem services are substantial elements for human society. The central challenge to meet the human needs from ecosystems while sustain the Earth’s life support systems makes it urgent to enhance efficient natural resource management for sustainable ecological and socioeconomic development. Trade-off analysis of ecosystem services can help to identify optimal decision points to balance the costs and benefits of the diverse human uses of ecosystems. In this sense, the aim of this paper is to provide key insights into ecosystem services trade-off analysis at different scales from a land use perspective, by comprehensively reviewing the trade-offs analysis tools and approaches that addressed in ecology, economics and other fields. The review will significantly contribute to future research on trade-off analysis to avoid inferior management options and offer a win-win solution based on comprehensive and efficient planning for interacting multiple ecosystem services.

Key words： ecosystem services; trade-offs; land-use management; scale; integrated modeling; multi-criteria analysis; efficiency frontier

Cite this article

DENG Xiangzheng , LI Zhihui , John GIBSON . A review on trade-off analysis of ecosystem services for sustainable land-use management[J]. Journal of Geographical Sciences, 2016 , 26(7) : 953 -968 . DOI: 10.1007/s11442-016-1309-9

1 Introduction

Ecosystem services, which are broadly defined and extensively identified as the benefits obtained either directly or indirectly from ecosystems, are of great significance to human wellbeing. Ecosystem services flow into human society and provide fundamental life-support for human civilization. From clean water supply to erosion control, from food provision to climate regulation, from recreation to scenic beauty, all humans’ life needed are provided by Earth’s ecosystems (Daily et al., 1997). Since the concept of ecosystem being put forward by Tansley (1935), the study of ecological system has gradually become a scientific framework, and has been further strengthened since the end of the 20th century. With varying attentions and perspectives, from the biological basis to economic concerns, the concepts and evaluations of ecosystem services have been evolved through various research projects (Costanza et al., 1998; MEA, 2005; TEEB, 2010; De Groot et al., 2010b). Most of these research efforts were concentrated on the evaluation and mapping of the biophysical or economic values of ecosystem services at different scales, and the impact mechanisms of human activities and natural changes (Li et al., 2013; Deng et al., 2013), shedding lights on the identification of the benefits that human society receive from the nature and providing information for decision making. Clarifying the current situation of ecosystem services is a prerequisite for further analysis and solutions identification.
In real world contexts, as a kind of human civilization, the land-use management activities have profoundly altered the ecosystems. Currently, there is a trend that an ever-large amount of ecosystem goods and services have greatly benefited humans. However, the capacity of global ecosystems for sustainable development is simultaneously degrading, leading to unintentional consequences that will potentially jeopardize the future land-use options (World Bank, 2008). Confronting the global challenges that land use changes substantially affect and alter ecosystem services, trade-off analysis on ecosystem services associated with decisions between land use alternatives has become the focus of land-use management (Ryffel et al., 2014). In order to avoid unwanted and possibly irreversible effects of land-use change, sustainable land-use management should assess and manage inherent trade-offs between meeting the site-specific immediate human requirements and maintaining the long-term ecosystem services provisions. Trade-offs will arise if particular land-use management decisions are made, which will result in changes of the types, magnitudes and interactions of ecosystem services. In addition, since each ecosystem service is not independent, but instead exhibits complex interactions, which will further lead to different environmental or socioeconomic outcomes related to different individuals or groups (Rodríguez et al., 2006). Over time, in spite of the great progress and success in the assessment of ecosystem services trade-offs, the practical application in land-use management decision is limited (Daily et al., 2009). The underlying reason is that most studies have been focused on one or a few services without considering the interdependence and highly non-linear relationships among the ecosystem services (Ring et al., 2010). Land-use management and decision makings with focus only on one type of ecosystem services without considering others will result in policy failure. In this sense, the understanding and knowledge about inter-linkages and potential trade-offs among different ecosystem services should be deepened and expanded to explore new insights in innovations related to institutions and governance (Elmqvist et al., 2013).
Although trade-offs analysis has become a hot topic in ecosystem services researches, few studies were conducted across disciplines. This study aims to explore the most frequent ecosystem services trade-offs associated with land-use practices and management, and compare techniques that measure trade-offs among ecosystem services across spatial and temporal scale based on comprehensive revisits to relevant researches. Firstly, we summarize the definitions and characteristics of ecosystem services trade-offs, then recognize trade-offs among ecosystem services at different scales. Subsequently, we elaborate the technics in different disciplines that are applied to investigate and measure the trade-offs for decision makings. Based on the review works, it will provide a comprehensive framework for future researches on ecosystem services trade-offs, which is critical to decision making for sustainable land-use management.

2 Trade-offs of ecosystem services

2.1 Definitions of trade-offs

Trade-off is a fundamental concept in economics, while being especially applied in an evolutionary context (Garland, 2014). In economic context, a trade-off is commonly expressed as the opportunity cost which is the preferred alternative when taking an economic decision, deriving from the idea that resources are scarce, which means to obtain more of one scarce resource, an individual or group collectively must give up some amount of another scarce good (De Groot et al., 2010a). In the ecosystem services context, the definition of trade-offs is mainly derived from the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA), which is defined as management choices that intentionally change the services provided by ecosystems (MA, 2005a). In addition, The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) described the trade-offs of ecosystem services as the way one ecosystem service responds to the changes in another service (TEEB, 2010). There are also some refined definitions of trade-offs, indicating the interactions among ecosystem services that result in the increasing provision of one ecosystem service at the cost of other services (Haase et al., 2012). Generally, trade-offs of ecosystem services occurs when human interventions enhance the output of an ecosystem service while negatively affect the provision of other services (De Groot et al., 2010a; Elmqvist et al., 2013).

2.2 Recognitions of trade-offs

Over time, socioeconomic development and human wellbeing are heavily relying on the provision of natural ecosystem services. On one hand, some of the ecosystem services functions are treated with priority and are intentionally modified due to their critical and important roles in the delivery of goods and services to support the human society, on the other hand, however, some of other services are ignored and damaged (Deng et al., 2011; Seppelt et al., 2013). Ecosystem is of extreme complexity and of great spatial and temporal variation in different ecological contexts. Identifying the specific trade-offs among different types of ecosystem services at different scales would help to convey information in a clear manner and provide decision-making framework about ecosystem services across geographic, ecological and socioeconomic dimensions (Ruhl et al., 2007; Tallis et al., 2008). In addition, it can also facilitate scientists and policy makers a better understanding of the potential consequences of unbalanced treatment of the ecosystem services in the process of land-use management (Haase et al., 2012).
2.2.1 Trade-offs in ecosystems
Considering the complexity and interactions of the ecosystems services for the human society, researches on the trade-off analysis between the provisioning and regulating services and investigations on the relationship of multiple ecosystem services and biodiversity are provoking. Agroecosystem is a good example in this case (Bennett and Balvanera, 2007; Nelson et al., 2008; Ring et al., 2010; TEEB, 2010; Elmqvist et al., 2013).
Agricultural land covers about 35% of the Earth’s terrestrial surface (MA, 2005c), providing a series of provisioning (e.g., food, wood, and water), regulating (e.g., climate, carbon, and erosion), supporting (e.g., pollination, biodiversity/habitat), and cultural (e.g., recreation and education) services (Power, 2010). Over the past decades, humans changed the Earth’s surface extensively for agriculture activities to meet the increasing demand for provisioning services, which severely affect the current and future generation of many regulating services and biodiversity (Bennett and Balvanera, 2007). For agroecosystem, the typical problem is that agricultural intensification and centralization related to the provisioning ecosystem services for higher macro-economic output usually reduce or damage other ecosystem services related to the ecosystem regulation and maintenance, as well as cultural services (Kirchner et al., 2015).
There are several studies explicitly analyzed the possible trade-offs among ecosystem services for agroecosystems. Specific trade-offs have been identified, such as the interactions between agricultural production and regulating services, e.g. sediment yield (Swallow et al., 2009) and carbon sequestration (Crossman et al., 2011). Biodiversity conservation is also commonly viewed as trade-off with agricultural production. Biodiversity is not equated to a specific ecosystem service or bundle. Most studies tried to investigate the trade-offs between biodiversity conservation and bundles of ecosystem services in agroecosystems. Barraguand et al. (2011) explicitly analyzed the trade-offs between valued agricultural production and biological conservation at the landscape scale. Mason et al. (2012) revealed that the investment directed into mitigating the impacts of agriculture on ecosystem services rather than biodiversity restoration would result in lower biodiversity. One research examined the potential trade-offs between agricultural production and biodiversity benefits, revealed that the benefit gained from an increase in biodiversity would outweigh the loss of returns from agricultural production (Dymond et al., 2012).
Little evidence and quantitative analysis on the interactions and linkages among ecosystem services bundles had been recognized as a major research gap regarding ecosystem services (Carpenter et al., 2009) and resulted in mixed conclusions (Bohensky et al., 2006). Recently, in order to provide implications for sustainable land-use management, researches on the types of interactions and the corresponding feedbacks among different ecosystem services are stimulated. For example, Brauman et al. (2007) revealed that water quality regulation services with other services, such as habit for biodiversity and climate regulation, can be co-delivered by vegetation, requiring the analysis of trade-offs among multiple services (Butler et al., 2013). It has been a major research priority to consider biodiversity conservation bundles and ecosystem services bundles during payment implementation (Wendland et al., 2010). In addition, some studies have revealed that when taking multiple services into consideration, the outcomes with maximized net gains of land-use management will be achieved more efficiently (Crossman and Bryan, 2009).
Intensive land-use change and management have been recognized as the major drivers that alter ecosystem services provision from agroecosystems (Sheng et al., 2011; Bryan, 2013). Wang et al. (2015) quantified the multiple ecosystem services in the Sanjiang Plain of China and concluded that the significant loss of ecosystem carbon stocks and natural habitats with grown food production was due to the extensive land conversion from natural wetlands to cultivated land. Similarly, Haines-Yong et al. (2012) confirmed a trade-off between the provisioning services (“crop-based production”) and regulating services (“habitat diversity”). Also, during the process of ecological restoration, which converted the agricultural land back into natural ecosystems, trade-offs can be found among different ecosystem services, such as trade-off between biodiversity and salinity mitigation (Maron and Cockfield, 2008), between carbon sequestration and species conservation (Nelson et al., 2008), food production (Paterson and Bryan, 2012), and water supply (Chisholm, 2010). While, as humans play a critical role in managing the agroecosystem, political practices, socioeconomic incentives and technological progresses are likely to influence the quantity and quality of ecosystem services, which will further affect the direction of trade-offs (Nelson et al., 2009). Compared to the results of the research conducted by Wang et al. (2015), the study in the Loess Plateau of China by Lü et al. (2012) showed an opposite result, indicating synergy between food production and ecosystem carbon stocks with the conversions from farmland to woodland and grassland, which can be contributed to agricultural technological growth, improvement of agricultural management and production efficiency (Lü et al., 2012). Nelson et al. (2009) also identified that policy interventions could modify the negative trade-offs between commodity production and other ecosystem services and also biodiversity conversions. Maes et al. (2012) confirmed that there exist trade-offs among provisioning ecosystem services, regulation services and biodiversity conservation from agroecosystems, while he emphasized that trade-offs can be mitigated through specific management measures, such as increase cropping diversities and plant buffer strips. In this sense, trade-offs between agricultural production and other ecosystem services are not inevitable. Analysis on yields from agroecosystems indicated that with efforts on practice to conserve ecosystem services through measures, such as conservation tillage, crop diversification and biological control, ecosystem services trade-offs would be mitigated, with even improvements in yields (Badgley et al., 2007). These analyses suggest trade-off analysis should be incorporated into the land-use management decision making process, which can make a ‘win-win’ situation possible, where provisioning services are maintained and enhanced whilst other ecosystem services are supported.
2.2.2 Trade-offs of ecosystem services at different scales
The recognition of trade-offs should be conducted at different scales. It is commonly acknowledged that ecosystem services trade-offs occur at different spatial and temporal scale (Rodríguez et al., 2006; Power, 2010) and vary across both space and time (Holland et al., 2011), which increase more uncertainty to be managed. In addition, trade-off analysis from other perspectives are also proposed to be of great significance to land-use management and decision making, such as trade-offs among different stakeholders (Ring et al., 2010) and the reversibility of ecosystem services (Rodríguez et al., 2006).
(1) Trade-offs at time scale. Trade-offs at time scale arises when policy-makers make choices between current and future benefits. Identifying such trade-offs can help policy-makers understand that management decisions should consider the long-term effects of preferring the short-term provision of one ecosystem services at the expense of future use of this same service or other services (Rodríguez et al., 2006). Rodríguez et al. (2005) elaborated a broad topic about the temporal trade-offs during decision makings, which revealed that there would be many important trade-offs between current use of nonrenewable resources and their future use. It was pointed out that slowly natural processes, such as soil formation, groundwater supply and genetic diversity generation that underlay supporting services, were always being ignored since that they were difficult to be detected and quantified, which would seriously damage the long-run sustainable provision of ecosystem services (Rodríguez et al., 2005). For example, the collective activities of farmers to replace the original woody vegetation with pasture and corps for the short-term increase in agricultural production led to the water table being moved toward the surface, bringing salt upward through the soil, which finally resulted in land salinization in the long-term future (Greiner and Cacho, 2001; Briggs and Taws, 2003). Regarding the natural processes, there exist a great deal of uncertainties associated with large time lags in the feedback between changes in ecosystem process and other factors, posing much more difficulties in forecasting eventual outcomes and identifying the critical thresholds of ecosystem services (Holling, 1973; Rockström et al., 2009). For a balanced feedback loop during the resources management, the ability to recognize the trade-offs between current and future desirable states and ‘time preferences’ for ecosystem services becomes important and critical to make better decisions on land-use management (van den Belt et al., 2013).
(2) Trade-offs at spatial scale. Spatial trade-offs could be simply recognized as benefits here while cost there (Ring et al., 2010), it occurs spatially between different landscapes, ecosystems, communities and even countries. For example, the improvement in water productivity with more agricultural inputs in the upstream will consequentially impact the water quality regulation services and incur costs in the downstream (Pattanayak, 2004). Such trade-offs have been illustrated specifically in the agricultural production in the USA, where the highly intensive agriculture relied greatly on artificial fertilization and finally led to massive negative impacts on the fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico (Tilman et al., 2002; Cumming, 2005). Spatial trade-offs are also well-known in economics, the environmental economists use spatial externality to indicate the positive or negative effects of land-use management decisions on ecosystem services in extended areas than those ecosystem services of where the decisions incurred that cost or benefit (Tietenberg, 1988). For example, the extensive division of water from rivers for drinking or agriculture irrigation in the upper regions will trigger water scarcity in the regions lower down the watershed (Falkenmark, 2003), while the local cost to conserve the biodiversity will benefit the global (Ring, 2008). The need to account for the spatial effects outside traditional geopolitical boundaries when facing ecosystem services decisions has been recognized by many managers, while practically it was rare that managers would give consideration to large-scale benefit at the cost of local wellbeing. It implies that incentives are needed to encourage managers think broadly to integrate experiences of small-scale “win-win” solutions to solve large-scale and macro problems (Rodríguez et al., 2005).
(3) Trade-offs among stakeholders. Ecosystem services trade-offs among stakeholders mean that some stakeholders win while others lose, that is, one benefits from a particular ecosystem service at the cost of other individuals (Rodríguez et al., 2006). The UK National Ecosystem Assessment (UKNEA) defined such trade-offs as two outcomes: one is that the quality or quantity of an ecosystem service being utilized by one stakeholder was reduced or deteriorated due to others’ utilization of that or other ecosystem services; the other one is that the utilization of ecosystem services by one stakeholder would lead to the decline of others’ wellbeing (UKNEA, 2011). Different stakeholders derive wellbeing from a variety of ecosystem services based on their choices of development and management of particular services, which are strongly influenced by lots of factors, such as their beliefs, preferences and experiences over time (McShane et al., 2011). Trade-offs occur among different ecosystem services due to inherent biophysical constraints in time and over space, then the divergent preferences on ecosystem services of different stakeholders will trigger conflicts (Martín-López et al., 2012). For instance, land use activities in terrestrial ecosystems impact the water regulation services through hydrological processes, then it will arise the conflicts among a range of associated stakeholders that depend on terrestrial ecosystems and aquatic ecosystems (Silvestri and Kershaw, 2010). In this case, reconciling stakeholders’ divergent preferences over ecosystem services with explicit recognition of the nature of biophysically based trade-offs is crucial to identify sustainable solutions (King et al., 2015). With stakeholders’ preferences being valued and added into the trade-off analysis, it makes the values intrinsic to ecosystem services (Brauman et al., 2007), and most researchers recently thought that the values as sources of conflicts that should be separated with biophysical constraints (Mouchet et al., 2014; Yahdjian et al., 2015). Especially, Cavender-Bares et al. (2015) presented a sustainability framework that characterizes ecosystem services trade-offs in terms of two dimensions of ecosystem service conflicts: biophysical constraints, and divergent preferences and values of stakeholders. The framework enables the identification of driving factors of and direct visualization of trade-offs due to stakeholders’ preferences at spatial or temporal scale (Cavender-Bares et al., 2015). King et al. (2015) further evaluated the utility of the framework for ecosystem services trade-off analysis with critical insights to clarify conflicts among stakeholders under different scenarios.
(4) Trade-offs in terms of reversibility. Reversibility of ecosystem services means the possibility of disturbed ecosystem service being reversed back to its original state once the perturbation ceased (Rodríguez et al., 2005). In addition that trade-offs effects can be felt over time and spatial scale, indeed, some trade-offs may be irreversible. Regarding that the ecosystem services may be changed irreversibly, the importance of thresholds has been highlighted in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA, 2005b). When a system crosses a threshold due to persistent or strong environmental or socioeconomic drivers, it will trigger great costs to society due to the irreversible loss in critical natural capital (Farley, 2012). Ring et al. (2010) interpreted the thresholds as resilience, which stands for a system’s ability to adapt to the perturbations and stay persistent without changes. Further, considering the thresholds, they put forward four types of non-linear dynamics in ecosystems. It includes: a system with ‘no-threshold effect’, where it is revisable no matter how the changes in the controlling variables; a system with ‘threshold, no alternate attractors’, where slight changes in controlling variables will significantly alter the system while it is still revisable if changes pass the threshold; a system with ‘threshold, alternate stable state’, where it may be irreversible with large changes in the controlling variables that pass the thresholds; and a system with ‘irreversible threshold change’, where the changes shall not exceed thresholds to avoid irreversible situations (Ring et al., 2010). The existing of thresholds and relevant irreversible dynamic changes may curse various problems for sustainable development of socioecological systems, e.g. application of fertilizer in agricultural production that exceeds the thresholds will pose negative impacts on water quality. While with recognition of the thresholds, better management measures can be taken to shift the trade-off thresholds, such as that precise agriculture will achieve greater crop yield with same inputs, while with less damages to ecosystems (Cavender-Bares et al., 2015). Thus, being aware of how far-reaching the effect, whether the effect is reversible, and how quickly can it be reversed, managers can make decisions appropriately to mitigate negative effects and even achieve “win-win” situations (Rodríguez et al., 2005).
In dealing with the trade-offs in the context of ecosystem services, there exist multiple interactions and linkages among services at different scales that should be taken into consideration at first place, such as processes and management interventions of different stakeholders across various spatial and temporal scale. In addition, variations in the thresholds of ecosystems are closely related with the reversibility, making it difficult to estimate the ecological status. Facing the above issues, managers should complement their decisions with trade-offs at multiple spatial, temporal and stakeholder scales into consideration, with recognition of the threshold to minimize the negative effects of trade-offs.

3 Quantification analysis of trade-offs

Management of the complex socio-ecological system requires tools to depict trade-offs among ecosystem services. As reviewed above, the major barriers to effective management contribute to that services trade-offs differ across time and space, and that different groups of stakeholders possess different preferences for services. To deal with the barriers, researches in different disciplines have applied a variety of tools and approaches to quantitatively analyze these ecosystem service trade-offs. For a comprehensive knowledge of tools and approaches, we conduct a review of how ecosystem services trade-offs being analyzed at different scales from various perspectives.

3.1 Mapping trade-offs via correlation analysis and cluster analysis

GIS-based spatial mapping analyses are frequently applied to provide detailed information on ecosystem services indicators and further assist to understand and visualize potential trade-offs (Kirchner et al., 2015). For example, Maes et al. (2012) confirmed trade-offs between multiple ecosystem services and biodiversity with GIS-based spatial mapping and correlation analysis in Europe. Similarly, Maskell et al. (2013) identified intensive trade-offs between soil carbon storage and above-ground net primary production based on maps and pairwise correlations. The two examples above just investigated the trade-offs among multiple ecosystem services across space with no changes at time scale. While in practical terms, trade-offs are usually identified in response to land-use changes under particular management actions and measures or designed scenarios over time. Jiang et al. (2013) mapped changes in agricultural production, carbon storage and biodiversity, and further conducted spatial statistic analysis on the trade-offs at landscape scale in the UK during 1930-2000. In addition, trade-off analysis is mostly conducted from the perspective of biophysical supply side, while studies are scarcely conducted to assess and map ecosystem services trade-offs from the aspect of social demand side. To address both biophysical supply and social demand sides, Castro et al. (2014) identified ecosystem services trade-offs based on correlation analysis, both on the supply and the social demand sides, and analyzed spatial mismatches among the ecosystem services on biophysical, socio-cultural and economic dimensions within a spatial unit (Castro et al., 2014).
Correlation analysis of the trade-offs based on mapping simply identifies the interactions between pairs of ecosystem services, while trade-offs and synergies are more generally found within the bundles of services, indicating that a more integrated perspective on bundles of services is required for trade-off analysis among ecosystem services (Haines-Young et al., 2012). Regarding the interactions among ecosystem services bundles, cluster analysis was mostly applied. Cluster analysis based on mapping is a powerful tool to identify ecosystem service bundle types and analyze ecosystem services trade-offs and synergies (Raudsepp-Hearne et al., 2010). Especially, it is a more appropriate way when prior knowledge about what the trade-offs involve is not available (Medcalf et al., 2014). Raudsepp-Hearne et al. (2010) applied the concept of ecosystem service bundles to analyze interactions among ecosystem services, in which cluster analysis determined the provision of all 12 ecosystem services and grouped the 137 municipalities into six data clusters. Also, Haines-Young et al. (2012) explored the trade-offs between the selected services with cluster analysis, in which seven spatially explicit clusters were distinguished with distinct evolutionary trajectories of ecosystem services.
GIS-based spatial mapping with accompanied correlation or cluster analysis on the interactions among ecosystem services is a useful tool to provide specific information for trade-off analysis. Nonetheless, it is criticized that there are some shortcomings, such as less focused on biodiversity, mostly dominated at regional scale, and rarely considered detailed bottom-up economic modeling of land-use management (Kirchner et al., 2015).

3.2 Integrated modeling for trade-off analysis

In comparison with the widely applied GIS-based tool for spatial ecosystem services trade-off mapping analysis, integrated modeling approach can deal with some shortcomings raised above, which not only allows for a spatially explicit quantification of the ecosystem services changes over time and space (Huber et al., 2013), but also can link disciplinary data and models to clarify complex interactions between the human society and the ecosystems (Falloon and Betts, 2010; Laniak et al., 2013). Recently, the integrated modeling approach has been widely applied in the assessment of trade-offs in ecosystem services (Nelson et al., 2009; Polasky et al., 2011; Willemen et al., 2012). For example, Briner et al. (2012) designed an integrative modeling framework-Alpine Land Use Allocation Model (ALUAM), which not only specifically considers the spatial scale at which decisions are made, but also the economic interdependencies among ecosystem services. Further, they applied the ALUAM to evaluate spatially explicit trade-offs among food provision, protection against natural hazards, carbon sequestration, and biodiversity in a mountain region in the Swiss Alps within designed scenarios (Briner et al., 2013).
Among the integrated modeling tools, the most currently available and applied tool is the Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Trade-offs (InVEST) (Nelson et al., 2009; Tallis et al., 2011), which was designed to inform decisions about resources management and planning. Nelson et al. (2009) applied InVEST to investigate the trade-offs between biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services under stakeholder-defined scenarios of land-use/land-cover change in the Willamette Basin. It showed that such trade-offs varied in different scenarios, suggesting that analyzing trade-offs between ecosystem services did great favor in more effective, efficient, and defensible decision makings (Nelson et al., 2009). Goldstein et al. (2012) revealed the trade-offs between carbon storage and water quality and also between environmental improvement and financial returns under seven land-use planning scenarios based on InVEST, which support the implement of the plan for diversified agriculture and forestry management. However, Jackson et al. (2013) pointed out that InVEST was widely applied at large scale and with coarse resolution, in comparison, they designed the Polyscape tool, which can be used to disentangle spatially explicit ecosystem services trade-offs to support landscape management, from individual field scale through to catchments scale. Further, they compared the similarities and dissimilarities among different tools, such as Artificial Intelligence for Ecosystem Services (ARIES) tool, Envision tool, and the framework and models developed within Multiscale Integrated Earth Systems project (MIMES) (Jackson et al., 2013).
There has been great advances in the development and application of integrated modeling approach for ecosystem services and trade-off analysis, while comparing the dissimilarities among the integrated modeling tools, it can be noted that, considering the spatial differences and regional heterogeneities, there still exist space and opportunities for innovations on multi-scale and multi-regional integrated modeling frameworks for ecosystem services trade-off analysis at a higher spatial resolution (Crossman et al., 2013).

3.3 Multi-criteria analysis of trade-offs

Ecosystem management will inevitably involve conflicting objectives, trade-offs, uncertainties and conflicting value judgments (Sanon et al., 2012), making it a complex process for policy design for ecosystem management. To address above interdisciplinary and complex problems, multi-criteria analysis, as a tool that can take both ecological and socioeconomic criteria into consideration, is mostly applied to conduct ecological economic analysis (Huang et al., 2011; Fontana et al., 2013). Multi-criteria analysis had been applied in various disciplinary researches and recently been broadly introduced and utilized to solve the problems in ecosystem services management (Daily et al., 2009; Nelson et al., 2009). For example, Cheung and Sumaila (2008) applied the multi-criteria analysis to explore the trade-offs between conflicting conservation and socioeconomic objectives for tropical marine ecosystems management.
Traditional multi-criteria analysis deals with only the implicit trade-offs through introducing the weights expressed by the stakeholders (Van Huylenbroeck, 1997), to enhance the transparency, Sanon et al. (2012) assigned numerical values for ecosystem services to elaborate and quantify the trade-offs between the stakeholder’s objectives based on a participatory approach (Sanon et al., 2012). In addition, combining the Geographical Information System (GIS) with multi-criteria analysis, Nguyen et al. (2015) proposed a spatial multi-criteria analysis, which integrates ecological aptitude, environmental impact and socio-economic feasibility criteria in a step-wise procedure to analyze objectives that affected by spatially-distributed diagnostic factors. Further, Vollmer et al. (2015) demonstrated an application of a four-step spatial multi-criteria analytical approach that involves scenario development, ecosystem service quantification and mapping, preference weighting, and optimization to maximize preferred ecosystem services while minimizing cost, which can support decision making for efficient polices to manage ecosystem services.

3.4 Trade-off analysis based on production theory

Multi-criteria analysis has a long history of being applied to analyze the trade-offs in ecosystem services, in parallel, the production theory developed by the economics discipline has also been applied to production of ecosystem services (Barbier, 2007) and to examine services trade-offs (Naidoo and Ricketts, 2006). Production theory is a subfield of microeconomics that concerns trade-offs between different inputs for production, i.e. considering the process of different inputs being converted into different outputs (Varian and Repcheck, 2010). A production theory analysis can be linked not only to the ecosystem services with market value as inputs in the production function, but also to the others not connected to market output (Chee, 2004; Barbier, 2007). As that not all services can be simultaneously maximally delivered to humans, thus stakeholders must make decisions according to their preferences, then when applying production theory to ecosystem services trade-off analysis for decision making, the key principle is to achieve the sustainable and efficient delivery of multiple interacting services to human society (Tallis et al., 2008).
The Cobb-Douglas Production functions are the most widely used types to depicts the production theory (Chisasa and Makina, 2013), while it cannot cope with the complex systems that with multiple inputs/multiple outputs production systems that influenced by natural resources, external environmental attributes, and the preferences of land managers. To address the multiple-inputs/multiple outputs production functions, the efficiency frontier method has become popular (Grosskopf et al., 1992), which can be traced back to the ideas put forward by Farrell (Farrell, 1957). Specifically, the productive efficiency is treated as a relative concept, which can be illustrated as Pareto-efficient options for optimal utilization of two or more services, where the system cannot increase one service without sacrificing other services (Nelson et al., 2008; Polasky et al., 2008).
In recent years, the efficiency frontier analysis has been utilized in a variety of researches to examine trade-offs between different ecosystem services, especially in agro-ecosystems (Bekele et al., 2013; Balbi et al., 2015; Mastrangelo and Laterra, 2015). Lester et al. (2013) conducted a review on the ecosystem services trade-off analysis framework that based on economic theory, and summarized six common types of ecosystem service interactions based on the insights gained from frontier shapes, including non-interacting services, direct trade-off, convex trade-off, concave trade-off, non-monotonic concave trade-off, and backward S trade-off. All the frontier shapes focus on two dimensions, which are the easiest ways to visualize, while the concept and logit can be applied to trade-offs in multiple dimensions as well (Cavender-Bares et al., 2015). For example, to deal with the conflicts between the production of marketable ecosystem goods and the provision of non-marketed ecosystem services in agro-ecosystems, Bekele et al. (2013) combined the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model and the productive frontier analysis to analyze a 6-dimensional trade-offs between three provisioning services and three regulating services, which confirmed that provisioning and regulatory services aggregately formed a linear to convex ecological-economic production possibilities frontiers. The efficiency frontier is an effective method to judge the biophysical constraints of the ecosystem services production system, which combines with the information about value of services from stakeholders’ perspective, and further identifies optimal management approaches that yield the greatest net benefits, while the problem that there may exist uncertainty about the production frontier and values still remains to be dealt with (Cavender-Bares et al., 2015)

4 Conclusions

For ensuring sustainable land-use management, it is critical to conduct trade-off analysis of ecosystem services closely associated with land-uses, which allows the decision-makers to better understand the corresponding consequences of different choices and achieve a solution to long-run sustainable development of socio-ecological systems.
Trade-offs arise when biophysical constrains change or humans make management interventions, which will change the types, magnitudes and interactions among services provided by ecosystems. Investigations on the trade-offs among individual ecosystem services and biodiversity are mostly provoked, further analysis on the interactions among ecosystem services bundles has also gained great achievements. On one hand, intensive land-use change and management are recognized as the major factors affecting ecosystem services provisions and incurring trade-offs, on the other hand, the major barriers that inhabit the sustainable resource planning and management contribute to ecosystem services trade-offs at different scales, which can be classified in terms of temporal and spatial scale, stakeholders’ preference, and the degree of irreversibility. Thus, taking the ecosystem services trade-offs at different scales into consideration during decision-making is important for sustainable land use management to avoid negative effects and achieve synergetic outcomes.
In dealing with the problem of ecosystem services trade-offs, a wide variety of analytical tools and approaches have been developed and applied for management decisions, including the assessments that explicitly linked spatial information on service supply to conduct correlation or cluster analysis, the integrated modeling framework for the systemic assessment, and also approaches based on the multi-criteria decision theory and economic production theory. While, evaluation of trade-offs is complex due to the multiple dimensions, interactions, variations and uncertainties with different physical units across time and space, thus quantifying the non-linear dynamics of trade-offs between ecosystem services in the social-ecological systems driven by both biophysical drivers and management decisions still remains a big challenge for sustainable land-use management.

Conflict of Interests

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interests regarding the publication of this paper.

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

References

Publishing order | Descend order by publishing year | Descend order by cited within
1
Badgley C, Moghtader J, Quintero Eet al., 2007. Organic agriculture and the global food supply.Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems, 22(2): 86-108.The principal objections to the proposition that organic agriculture can contribute significantly to the global food supply are low yields and insufficient quantities of organically acceptable fertilizers. We evaluated the universality of both claims. For the first claim, we compared yields of organic versus conventional or low-intensive food production for a global dataset of 293 examples and estimated the average yield ratio (organic: non-organic) of different food categories for the developed and the developing world. For most food categories, the average yield ratio was slightly < 1.0 for studies in the developed world and > 1.0 for studies in the developing world. With the average yield ratios, we modeled the global food supply that could be grown organically on the current agricultural land base. Model estimates indicate that organic methods could produce enough food on a global per capita basis to sustain the current human population, and potentially an even larger population, without increasing the agricultural land base. We also evaluated the amount of nitrogen potentially available from fixation by leguminous cover crops used as fertilizer. Data from temperate and tropical agroecosystems suggest that leguminous cover crops could fix enough nitrogen to replace the amount of synthetic fertilizer currently in use. These results indicate that organic agriculture has the potential to contribute quite substantially to the global food supply, while reducing the detrimental environmental impacts of conventional agriculture. Evaluation and review of this paper have raised important issues about crop rotations under organic versus conventional agriculture and the reliability of grey-literature sources. An ongoing dialogue on these subjects can be found in the Forum editorial of this issue.

DOI

2
Balbi S, del Prado A, Gallejones Pet al., 2015. Modeling trade-offs among ecosystem services in agricultural production systems.Environmental Modelling & Software, 72: 314-326.Although agricultural ecosystems can provide humans with a wide set of benefits agricultural production system management is mainly driven by food production. As a consequence, a need to ensure food security globally has been accompanied by a significant decline in the state of ecosystems. In order to reduce negative trade-offs and identify potential synergies it is necessary to improve our understanding of the relationships between various ecosystem services (ES) as well as the impacts of farm management on ES provision. We present a spatially explicit application that captures and quantifies ES trade-offs in the crop systems ofin the Basque Country. Our analysis presents a quantitative assessment of selected ES including crop yield, water supply and quality, climate regulation and air quality. The study is conducted usinga technique that enables flexible integration of models to overcome the service-by-service modeling approach applied traditionally in ES assessment.

DOI

3
Bank W, 2008. Sustainable Land Management Sourcebook. Washington, DC: World Bank.

4
Barbier E B, 2007. Valuing ecosystem services as productive inputs.Economic Policy, 22(49): 178-229.This paper explores two methods for valuing ecosystems by valuing the services that they yield to various categories of user and that are not directly valued in the market, and illustrates the usefulness of these methods with an application to the valuation of mangrove ecosystems in Thailand. The first method is known as the production function approach and relies on the fact that ecosystems may be inputs into the production of other goods or services that are themselves marketed, such as fisheries. I discuss issues that arise in measuring the input into fisheries, particularly those due to the fact that the fishery stock is changing over time, and the shadow value of the ecosystem consists in its contribution to the maintenance of the stock as well as its contribution to current output. The second method is known as the expected damage approach and is used to value the services of storm protection in terms of the reduction in expected future storm damage that the ecosystem can provide. These two methods are shown to yield very different valuations of ecosystems from those that would be derived by the methods typically used in cost-benefit analyses. I argue that they represent a significant improvement on current practice." Copyright (c) CEPR, CES, MSH, 2007.

DOI

5
Barraquand F, Martinet V, 2011. Biological conservation in dynamic agricultural landscapes: Effectiveness of public policies and trade-offs with agricultural production.Ecological Economics, 70(5): 910-920.Land use change and land management intensification are major drivers of biodiversity loss, especially in agricultural landscapes, that cover a large and increasing share of the world's surface. Incentive-based agri-environmental policies are designed to influence farmers' land-use decisions in order to mitigate environmental degradation. This paper evaluates the effectiveness of agri-environmental schemes for biological conservation in a dynamic agricultural landscape under economic uncertainty. We develop a dynamic ecological economic model of agricultural land-use and spatially explicit population dynamics. We then relate policies (subsidies to grassland, taxation of agricultural intensity) to the ecological outcome (probability of persistence of a species of interest). We also analyze the associated trade-offs between agricultural production (in value) and biological conservation (in probability of persistence) at the landscape scale. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

DOI

6
Bekele E G, Lant C L, Soman Set al., 2013. The evolution and empirical estimation of ecological-economic production possibilities frontiers.Ecological Economics, 90: 1-9.This paper presents a graphical model of an ecological-economic production possibilities frontier (EEPPF) that explicitly considers the roles of market failure and technological asymmetry in the provision of ecosystem goods and services. An empirical example of a 6-dimensional EEPPF is provided using a watershed in Illinois where three provisioning ecosystem services (corn, soybeans, hay) and three regulating services (flood control, water quality, and carbon retention) are the objectives. When aggregated, provisioning and regulatory services form a linear-to-convex EEPPF, but regulatory services can be increased from 10 to over 90% of optimal with a reduction in provisioning services (crops) from 100 to 78% of optimal. While corn and soybeans are shown to form a trade-off with all other ecosystem services, hay is complementary with flood control, water quality and carbon retention. These three regulating services are complementary with one another, with water quality and carbon correlated at 0.80. These results demonstrate the use of GIS, distributed watershed models such as SWAT, and genetic algorithms as a valuable method to estimate empirical EEPPFs. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

DOI

7
Bennett E M, Balvanera P, 2007. The future of production systems in a globalized world.Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 5(4): 191-198.Human life is ultimately dependent on ecosystem services supplied by the biosphere. These include food, disease regulation, and recreational opportunities. Over the past 50 years, humans have changed ecosystems more rapidly and extensively than at any other time in human history, primarily to meet our growing demands for provisioning ecosystem services (eg food, freshwater, and timber). These changes have impacted other ecosystem services (eg climate regulation and erosion control). Current demand for ecosystem services is growing rapidly. How these demands are met will play a major role in determining the ecological, economic, and cultural future of the planet. While much is known about improving management of production systems to be more sustainable, research gaps remain. Challenges for ecologists include understanding the connection between management regimes, ecosystem structures and provision of multiple types of ecosystem services, understanding interactions among ecosystem services, and exploring the role of thresholds and resilience in production systems. Understanding these systems and how to manage them to ensure resilient provision of multiple ecosystem services is a key challenge for ecology. La vida humana depende en última instancia de los servicios ecosistémicos que proporciona la biosfera. 07stos incluyen alimento, control de enfermedades y oportunidades recreativas. En los últimos 50 a09os los humanos han alterado los ecosistemas mas rápida y extensamente que durante cualquier otro periodo de la historia, principalmente para satisfacer la creciente demanda de servicios de aprovisionamiento (e.g., alimento, agua potable y

DOI

8
Bohensky E L, Reyers B, Van Jaarsveld A S, 2006. Future ecosystem services in a Southern African river basin: A scenario planning approach to uncertainty.Conservation Biology, 20(4): 1051-1061.Scenario planning is a promising tool for dealing with uncertainty, but it has been underutilized in ecology and conservation. The use of scenarios to explore ecological dynamics of alternative futures has been given a major boost by the recently completed Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, a 4-year initiative to investigate relationships between ecosystem services and human well-being at multiple scales. Scenarios, as descriptive narratives of pathways to the future, are a mechanism for improving the understanding and management of ecological and social processes by scientists and decision makers with greater flexibility than conventional techniques could afford. We used scenarios in one of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment's subglobal components to explore four possible futures in a Southern African river basin. Because of its ability to capture spatial and temporal dynamics, the scenario exercise revealed key trade-offs in ecosystem services in space and time and the importance of a multiple-scale scenario design. At subglobal scales, scenarios are a powerful vehicle for communication and engagement of decision makers, especially when designed to identify responses to specific problems. Scenario planning has the potential to be a critical ingredient in conservation as calls are increasingly made for the field to help define and achieve sustainable visions for the future.

DOI PMID

9
Brauman K A, Daily G C, Duarte T Ket al., 2007. The nature and value of ecosystem services: An overview highlighting hydrologic services.Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 32: 67-98.

10
Briggs S V, Taws N, 2003. Impacts of salinity on biodiversity: Clear understanding or muddy confusion?Australian Journal of Botany, 51(6): 609-617.Dryland salinity has been known for several decades in eastern Australia. Its causes have been known for at least five decades. Why did it take so long for the problem to be officially recognised? Why is it taking so long for impacts of dryland salinity on terrestrial biodiversity to be investigated in eastern Australia? To answer these questions we delve back into human history and then move forwards to modern times. Historically, salt has connotations of punishment, money, status and love. Today, salt ignites powerful emotions in humans in modern institutions. Controlling the salinity agenda enhances status and provides resources. Impacts of salinity on biodiversity are often ignored when powerful groups with little interest in biodiversity compete for dominance of the salinity agenda. After discussing these factors, the paper presents information about impacts of dryland salinity on terrestrial biodiversity in eastern Australia. The limited research conducted shows that dryland salinity threatens vegetation communities that are already depleted from extensive clearing. Native ground species of plants in salinised woodlands are replaced by exotics and weeds. Trees die. The paper concludes with recommendations for future actions to enhance understanding and management of impacts of dryland salinity on terrestrial biodiversity in eastern Australia.

DOI

11
Briner S, Elkin C, Huber Ret al., 2012. Assessing the impacts of economic and climate changes on land-use in mountain regions: A spatial dynamic modeling approach. Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment, 149: 50-63.Future land-use changes are predicted to be influenced by both climate-driven environmental changes and concomitant changes in local economic conditions. Assessing the impact of climate change on ecosystems, and the goods and services that they provide, therefore requires an understanding of the dynamic link between land-cover, ecosystem services and economic-driven land-use decisions. The economic land allocation model (ALUAM) simulates the competition between forest and a range of agricultural land-uses to estimate land-use conversions in a spatially explicit manner at high resolution. Using a modular framework, ALUAM was linked with the forest-landscape model LandClim, and a crop yield model, that simulate the response of forests and crops to changes in climate. An iterative data exchange between the models allows a detailed assessment of the dynamic changes in the provision of agricultural and forest based services. We apply our model to the temperature sensitive inner-alpine region of Visp, Switzerland. Our results demonstrate that land-use is influenced directly by environmental shifts and economic decisions, but are also highly dependent on the interactions between these two components. These shifts in land-use will correspondingly affect the provision of ecosystem goods such as food and timber production.

DOI

12
Briner S, Huber R, Bebi Pet al., 2013. Trade-offs between ecosystem services in a mountain region.Ecology and Society, 18(3): 35.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.

DOI

13
Bryan B A, 2013. Incentives, land use, and ecosystem services: Synthesizing complex linkages.Environmental Science & Policy, 27: 124-134.Incentive schemes are increasingly used to motivate the supply of ecosystem services from agro-ecosystems through changes in land use and management. Here, I synthesize the complex effects of incentives on ecosystem services through their influence on land use and management. Linkages between incentives and land use change, and between land use change and ecosystem services can be one-to-many, many-to-one, and many-to-many. Change in land use and management can affect multiple ecosystem services, with both co-benefits and trade-offs. Incentives can motivate multiple changes in land use and management and multiple incentives often interact with both synergies and tensions in their effect upon ecosystem services. These vary over both space and time, and can be non-linear. Depending on incentive design, changes in ecosystem service supply can also have a feedback effect on incentive prices. I suggest that continued quantitative development is required to further explore these linkages: in the influence of incentives on land use change; in the impact of land use change on ecosystem services, and; in ecosystem service supply feedbacks on incentive prices. Quantifying and understanding these linkages is essential to progress more comprehensive analyses of the impact of incentives on ecosystem services, and the design of incentives capable of realizing synergies and avoiding tensions.

DOI

14
Butler J R, Wong G Y, Metcalfe D Jet al., 2013. An analysis of trade-offs between multiple ecosystem services and stakeholders linked to land use and water quality management in the Great Barrier Reef, Australia. Agriculture,Ecosystems & Environment, 180: 176-191.

15
Carpenter S R, Mooney H A, Agard Jet al., 2009. Science for managing ecosystem services: Beyond the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(5): 1305-1312.

16
Castro A J, Verburg P H, Martín-López Bet al., 2014. Ecosystem service trade-offs from supply to social demand: A landscape-scale spatial analysis.Landscape and Urban Planning, 132: 102-110.Quantitative studies that assess and map the relationship between the supply and social demand of ecosystem services are scarce. Here we address both supply and social demand sides by spatially analyzing ecosystem service trade-offs from three value-dimensions 鈥 i.e., biophysical, socio-cultural and economic, and across different landscape units in southeast Spain. To accomplish this goal, within different landscape units, we quantify the supply side by mapping the biophysical values of five ecosystem services, and the social demand exploring their socio-cultural and economic values by analyzing social preferences and contingent valuation methods, respectively. Our results show that the assessments of ecosystem services using different value-dimensions are complementary and useful for (1) identifying ecosystem service trade-offs, both on the supply- and on the social demand-side, and (2) analyzing spatial mismatches among the three value-dimensions of ecosystem services. We also believe that our approach facilitates the exploration of ecosystem services trade-offs on a spatial landscape scale, and results can be used by managers to identify areas in which services are declining or priority areas for conservation based on maximizing ecosystem services, and will be useful in detecting potential conflicts associated with new management and planning practices.

DOI

17
Cavender-Bares J, Polasky S, King Eet al., 2015. A sustainability framework for assessing trade-offs in ecosystem services.Ecology and Society, 20(1): 17.Achieving sustainability, i.e., meeting the needs of current populations without compromising the needs of future generations, is the major challenge facing global society in the 21st century. Navigating the inherent trade-offs between provisioning, regulating, cultural, and supporting ecosystem services, and doing so in a way that does not compromise natural capital needed to provide services in the future, is critical for sustainable resource management. Here we build upon existing literature, primarily from economics and ecology, to present an analytical framework that integrates (1) the ecological mechanisms that underpin ecosystem services, (2) biophysical trade-offs and inherent limits that constrain management options, (3) preferences and values of stakeholders, and (4) explicit analysis of how systems evolve through time to ensure the goal of meeting the needs of future generations. Well-known ecological models define the relationships and trade-offs among services that represents an 'efficiency frontier.' Well-known methods in economics that combine preferences that define the willingness of stakeholders to trade off ecosystem services on the efficiency frontiers illuminate desirable outcomes that meet human needs. System dynamics show how the system will evolve with consequent impacts on ecosystem services and human well-being and the effects this has on achieving sustainability. Heterogeneity in biophysical constraints, uncertainty, technological advances, and obstacles imposed by societal factors and governance regimes influence potential and realized ecosystem services. Using a set of contrasting scenarios, we illustrate how progress can be made toward sustainability and the important obstacles that must be addressed in doing so. Our framework for analyzing sustainability drawn from economics and ecology is intended to make an integration of concepts from both disciplines accessible to a wider audience."

18
Chee Y E, 2004. An ecological perspective on the valuation of ecosystem services.Biological Conservation, 120(4): 549-565.Ecosystem services are the conditions and processes through which natural ecosystems and the species that make them up, sustain and fulfil human life. Ecosystem service valuation is being developed as a vehicle to integrate ecological understanding and economic considerations to redress the traditional neglect of ecosystem services in policy decisions. This paper presents a critical review on the neoclassical economic framework, tools used for economic valuation of ecosystem services and the economic welfare approach to collective decision-making, from an ecological perspective. The applicability of the framework and techniques for valuing ecosystem services are evaluated in light of the challenges posed by the complex, non-linear nature of many ecosystem services. Decisions concerning ecosystem management are often complex, socially contentious and fraught with uncertainty. Although judicious application of economic valuation techniques to ecosystem services can provide valuable information for conceptualizing decision choices and evaluating management options, there are serious limitations in the economic welfare approach to decision-making. These shortcomings and their implications for ecosystem management are elucidated and alternative approaches that emphasize participation, explicit treatment of uncertainty and transparent decision-making processes are discussed.

DOI

19
Cheung W W, Sumaila U R, 2008. Trade-offs between conservation and socio-economic objectives in managing a tropical marine ecosystem.Ecological Economics, 66(1): 193-210.Understanding the trade-off relationships between ecological, economic and social objectives is important in designing policies to manage or restore ecosystems. Using the northern South China Sea (NSCS) as a case study, we explore the trade-offs between conservation and socio-economic objectives in managing fisheries in tropical marine ecosystems. Using a numerical optimization routine and ecosystem modelling (Ecopath with Ecosim), the study shows that current management of the NSCS is sub-optimal both in terms of conservation and economic objectives. Therefore, improvement in both conservation status and economic benefits can be achieved by reducing fishing capacity. However, the implementation of conservation plans may be hindered by the reduced number of fisheries-related jobs and the lack of alternative livelihoods. Similar trade-offs are apparent in many tropical marine ecosystems. Thus, this paper supports claims from previous studies that solving the alternative livelihood problems appears to be a priority for improving management and conservation in these ecosystems. A buy-back scheme that is funded by fishers might be effective in reducing fishing capacity. However, public funds are required if management objectives focus strongly on conservation. This might be justified by the direct or indirect benefits to society that could be provided by well-conserved ecosystems. This study highlights the conflict between maximizing conservation and social objectives, although win in solutions between conservation and economic objectives may be possible.

DOI

20
Chisasa J, Makina D, 2013. Bank credit and agricultural output in South Africa: A Cobb-Douglas empirical analysis. International Business & Economics Research Journal (IBER), 12(4): 387-398.We empirically examine the impact of bank credit on agricultural output in South Africa using the Cobb-Douglas production function. We utilize time series data of agricultural output, bank credit, capital accumulation, labour and rainfall from 1970 - 2009. With agricultural output as the dependent variable, we determine OLS estimates of the Cobb-Douglas production function. We observe that bank credit has a positive and significant impact on agricultural output in South Africa. With other factors of production kept constant, a 1% increase in credit results in 0.6% increase in agricultural output. Capital accumulation is also observed to have a positive and significant impact on agricultural output, albeit lower than that of credit, as a 1% increase in capital accumulation results in 0.4% increase in output, other factors kept constant. In terms the Cobb-Douglas elasticities, the combined effect of credit (0.6%) and capital accumulation (0.4%) gives constant returns to scale, meaning that doubling the two inputs will double agricultural output.

21
Chisholm R A, 2010. Trade-offs between ecosystem services: Water and carbon in a biodiversity hotspot.Ecological Economics, 69(10): 1973-1987.Carbon sequestration by afforestation can help mitigate global climate change but may have adverse environmental and economic impacts in some regions. For example, economic incentives for carbon sequestration may encourage the expansion of Pinus radiata timber plantations in the Fynbos biome of South Africa, with negative consequences for water supply and biodiversity. I built a dynamic ecological conomic model to investigate whether afforestation of a Fynbos catchment with Pinus radiata is economically viable when the potential benefits of carbon sequestration and timber production are balanced against the losses to water supply. I found that afforestation appears viable to the forestry industry under current water tariffs and current carbon accounting legislation, but would appear unviable if the forestry industry were to pay the true cost of water used by the plantations. I also found that under various plausible future economic scenarios, afforestation can be associated with either large future economic gains or losses, suggesting a need for future analyses based on branches of decision theory that deal with severe uncertainty. I conclude with a general recommendation that climate legislation should be explicit about the conditions under which afforestation for carbon sequestration of native vegetation is a legitimate climate mitigation strategy.

DOI

22
Costanza R, d’Arge R, De Groot Ret al., 1998. The value of the world’s ecosystem services and natural capital.Ecological Economics, 1(25): 3-15.

23
Crossman N D, Bryan B A, 2009. Identifying cost-effective hotspots for restoring natural capital and enhancing landscape multifunctionality.Ecological Economics, 68(3): 654-668.Much effort is expended toward planning for conservation, natural resource management and sustainable land use in agricultural landscapes. Although often not explicitly stated, the aims of these efforts are often to restore natural capital for the provision of ecosystem services and stimulate multifunctionality in landscapes. However, the scarcity of resources for, and the potential economic impact of, ameliorative actions that restore natural capital necessitates the identification of cost-effective geographic priorities, or hotspots , which provide multiple ecosystem goods and services. This requires the integrated spatial modelling of multiple environmental and economic processes accompanied by clear goals and performance indicators. Identification of hotspots provides guidance for highly targeted land use change that cost-effectively adds to the stocks of natural capital in a landscape. Additionally, the multifunctionality of the landscape can be increased through the provision of multiple ecosystem goods and services. This paper begins by examining data requirements for identifying geographic hotspots for land use change. This study integrates traditionally disparate landscape-scale biophysical and economic data and models. The elements of natural capital considered here are species and ecosystems, soil and water resources, and the atmosphere. It is demonstrated that locating ameliorative actions towards hotspots will be more cost-effective at restoring natural capital and stimulating landscape multifunctionality than a random targeting approach. We calculate these efficiencies using a small set of indicators for assessing aspects of multifunctionality. The focus of this study is the agricultural landscapes of the Lower Murray region of south-eastern Australia.

DOI

24
Crossman N D, Bryan B A, de Groot R Set al., 2013. Land science contributions to ecosystem services.Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 5(5): 509-514.We provide an overview of the contribution of land science to improving ecosystem service quantification, valuation and management. We briefly review the impacts of land use and land management change on ecosystem services, the complexity of relationships between the land system and the supply and use of ecosystem services, and the latest developments in the science and policy of quantifying and valuing ecosystem services provided by land. We suggest a number of areas where land science can contribute to improving the quantification and valuation of ecosystem services. First and foremost are better assessments of the changes that occur to ecosystem service supply from changes to land use and management and subsequent biophysical processes. Also needed are new high spatial and temporal resolution integrated assessment models developed at global to local scales that include the biophysical and socio-economic drivers of land use change and ecosystem service supply and demand impacts. Finally, tools and models that follow standards and use consistent approaches are needed to provide certainty to end users and decision makers. A way forward is to strengthen international cross-disciplinary collaborations; the land science and ecosystem service communities are well placed to do this.

DOI

25
Crossman N D, Bryan B A, Summers D M, 2011. Carbon payments and low-cost conservation.Conservation Biology, 25(4): 835-845.A price on carbon is expected to generate demand for carbon offset schemes. This demand could drive investment in tree-based monocultures that provide higher carbon yields than diverse plantings of native tree and shrub species, which sequester less carbon but provide greater variation in vegetation structure and composition. Economic instruments such as species conservation banking, the creation and trading of credits that represent biological-diversity values on private land, could close the financial gap between monocultures and more diverse plantings by providing payments to individuals who plant diverse species in locations that contribute to conservation and restoration goals. We studied a highly modified agricultural system in southern Australia that is typical of many temperate agriculture zones globally (i.e., has a high proportion of endangered species, high levels of habitat fragmentation, and presence of non-native species). We quantified the economic returns from agriculture and from carbon plantings (monoculture and mixed tree and shrubs) under six carbon-price scenarios. We also identified high-priority locations for restoration of cleared landscapes with mixed tree and shrub carbon plantings. Depending on the price of carbon, direct annual payments to landowners of AU$7/ha/year to $125/ha/year (US$6-120/ha/year) may be sufficient to augment economic returns from a carbon market and encourage tree plantings that contribute more to the restoration of natural systems and endangered species habitats than monocultures. Thus, areas of high priority for conservation and restoration may be restored relatively cheaply in the presence of a carbon market. Overall, however, less carbon is sequestered by mixed native tree and shrub plantings.

DOI

26
Cumming G, 2005. Ecology in global scenarios.Ecosystems and Human Well-being: 45.

27
Daily G C, Alexander S, Ehrlich P Ret al., 1997. Ecosystem Services: Benefits Supplied to Human Societies by Natural Ecosystems. Ecological Society of America Washington (DC).Human societies derive many essential goods from natural ecosystems, including seafood, game animals, fodder, fuelwood, timber, and pharmaceutical products. These goods represent important and familiar parts of the economy. What has been less appreciated until recently is that natural ecosystems also perform fundamental life-support services without which human civilizations would cease to thrive. These include the purification of air and water, detoxification and decomposition of wastes, regulation of climate, regeneration of soil fertility, and production and maintenance of biodiversity, from which key ingredients of our agricultural, pharmaceutical, and industrial enterprises are derived. This array of services is generated by a complex interplay of natural cycles powered by solar energy and operating across a wide range of space and time scales. The process of waste disposal, for example, involves the life cycles of bacteria as well as the planet-wide cycles of major chemical elements such as carbon and nitrogen. Such processes are worth many trillions of dollars annually. Yet because most of these benefits are not traded in economic markets, they

28
Daily G C, Polasky S, Goldstein Jet al., 2009. Ecosystem services in decision making: Time to deliver.Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 7(1): 21-28.Over the past decade, efforts to value and protect ecosystem services have been promoted by many as the last, best hope for making conservation mainstream - att

DOI

29
De Groot R, Fisher B, Christie M et al., 2010a. Integrating the ecological and economic dimensions in biodiversity and ecosystem service valuation. In: The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB): Ecological and Economic Foundations. Earthscan.

30
De Groot R S, Alkemade R, Braat Let al., 2010b. Challenges in integrating the concept of ecosystem services and values in landscape planning, management and decision making.Ecological Complexity, 7(3): 260-272.<h2 class="secHeading" id="section_abstract">Abstract</h2><p id="">Despite the growing body of literature on ecosystem services, still many challenges remain to structurally integrate ecosystem services in landscape planning, management and design. This paper therefore aims to provide an overview of the challenges involved in applying ecosystem service assessment and valuation to environmental management and discuss some solutions to come to a comprehensive and practical framework.</p><p id="">First the issue of defining and classifying ecosystem services is discussed followed by approaches to quantify and value ecosystem services. The main part of the paper is focussed on the question how to analyze trade-offs involved in land cover and land use change, including spatial analysis and dynamic modelling tools. Issues of scale are addressed, as well as the question how to determine the total economic value of different management states.</p><p id="">Finally, developments and challenges regarding the inclusion of ecosystem services in integrative landscape planning and decision-making tools are discussed.</p><p id="">It is concluded that the ecosystem service approach and ecosystem service valuation efforts have changed the terms of discussion on nature conservation, natural resource management, and other areas of public policy. It is now widely recognized that nature conservation and conservation management strategies do not necessarily pose a trade-off between the &ldquo;environment&rdquo; and &ldquo;development&rdquo;. Investments in conservation, restoration and sustainable ecosystem use are increasingly seen as a &ldquo;win-win situation&rdquo; which generates substantial ecological, social and economic benefits.</p>

DOI

31
Deng X Z, Li Z H, Huang J K et al., 2013. A revisit to the impacts of land use changes on the human wellbeing via altering the ecosystem provisioning services.Advances in Meteorology, 2013.It is widely acknowledged that land use changes (LUC) associated with climate variations are affecting the human wellbeing. This paper conducted a revisit to relevant researches on the impacts of LUC on human wellbeing via specifically altering the ecosystem provisioning services. First, the explorations on the influences of LUC on ecosystem provisioning services were reviewed, including the researches on the influences of LUC on agroecosystem services and forest and/or grassland ecosystem services. Then the quantitative identification of the impacts of LUC on ecosystem provisioning services was commented on. In the light of enhanced observation and valuation methods, several approaches to ecosystem services and improved models for assessing those ecosystem services were assessed. The major indicators used to uncover the influences of LUC on human wellbeing were summarized including the increase of inputs and the reduction of outputs in production and the augmented health risk induced by the irrational land uses. Finally, this paper uncovered the research gaps and proposed several research directions to address these gaps.

DOI

32
Deng X Z, Zhao Y H, Wu Fet al., 2011. Analysis of the trade-off between economic growth and the reduction of nitrogen and phosphorus emissions in the Poyang Lake Watershed, China.Ecological Modelling, 222(2): 330-336.Lake eutrophication leading to water pollution is a major global concern. In recent years, rapid economic growth and the increase in the intensity of resource exploitation in China have caused the influx of nitrogen and phosphorus into lakes. This in turn has led to more severe lake eutrophication, more frequent outbreaks of algal blooms, and the degradation of lake ecosystems. An effective plan balancing economic growth with the reduction of nitrogen and phosphorus emissions is greatly needed. The design and implementation of such a plan requires the collection and analysis of pertinent data. In this paper, we use the environmental computable general equilibrium (ECGE) model to identify the most effective way to balance economic growth with the reduction of nitrogen and phosphorus emissions. For the multiregional analysis, we use social accounting matrices (SAMs) and a provincial trade matrix based on the assumptions of the gravity model. We consider the Poyang Lake Watershed as a case study to illustrate the utility of the model. Based on present conditions in the Poyang Lake Watershed, restricting nitrogen and phosphorus emissions from sectors with the highest emissions is more effective for balancing economic growth and the reduction of nitrogen and phosphorus emissions than restricting nitrogen and phosphorus emissions from all sectors. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

DOI

33
Dymond J R, Ausseil A-G E, Ekanayake J Cet al., 2012. Tradeoffs between soil, water, and carbon: A national scale analysis from New Zealand.Journal of Environmental Management, 95(1): 124-131.The tradeoffs between the regulation of soil erosion, provision of fresh water, and climate regulation associated with new Pinus radiata forests in New Zealand are explored using national models. These three ecosystem services for which there is strong demand are monetised as commodities (avoided soil erosion is NZ $1 per tonne; water is NZ $1 per cubic metre; and sequestered carbon is assumed to be NZ$73 per tonne). This permits their summation on a spatial basis to produce a national map of the net benefit of these ecosystem services. Net benefit is spatially variable depending primarily on the relative mix of forest growth rates and demand for irrigation water. New P.radiata forests (once mature) generally reduce mass-movement erosion by an order of magnitude. This provides significant benefits for erosion control where there are high natural rates of erosion. Benefits are especially large in catchments where high sedimentation is increasing flood risk and degrading aquatic ecosystems. The generally high growth rates of P.radiata in New Zealand (8.5 tonnesCha(-1)yr(-1) on average for existing forest) add significant environmental benefits of carbon sinks to climate regulation. However, the reduction of water yield associated with new forests (between 30% and 50%) can neutralise these benefits in catchments where there is demand for irrigation water, such as the eastern foothills of the Southern Alps and the tussock grasslands in the South Island.

DOI PMID

34
Elmqvist T, Tuvendal M, Krishnaswamy J et al., 2013. Managing trade-offs in ecosystem services. In: Kumar P, Thiaw I (eds.). Values, Payments and Institutions for Ecosystem Management. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 70-89.

35
Falkenmark M, 2003. Freshwater as shared between society and ecosystems: From divided approaches to integrated challenges. Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society B:Biological Sciences, 358(1440): 2037-2049.

36
Falloon P, Betts R, 2010. Climate impacts on European agriculture and water management in the context of adaptation and mitigation: The importance of an integrated approach.Science of the Total Environment, 408(23): 5667-5687.

37
Farley J, 2012. Ecosystem services: The economics debate.Ecosystem Services, 1(1): 40-49.The goal of this paper is to illuminate the debate concerning the economics of ecosystem services. The sustainability debate focuses on whether or not ecosystem services are essential for human welfare and the existence of ecological thresholds. If ecosystem services are essential, then marginal analysis and monetary valuation are inappropriate tools in the vicinity of thresholds. The justice debate focuses on who is entitled to ecosystem services and the ecosystem structure that generates them. Answers to these questions have profound implications for the choice of suitable economic institutions. The efficiency debate concerns both the goals of economic activity and the mechanisms best suited to achieve those goals. Conventional economists pursue Pareto efficiency and the maximization of monetary value, achieved by integrating ecosystem services into the market framework. Ecological economists and many others pursue the less rigorously defined goal of achieving the highest possible quality of life compatible with the conservation of resilient, healthy ecosystems, achieved by adapting economic institutions to the physical characteristics of ecosystem services. The concept of ecosystem services is a valuable tool for economic analysis, and should not be discarded because of disagreements with particular economists' assumptions regarding sustainability, justice and efficiency.

DOI

38
Farrell M J, 1957. The measurement of productive efficiency.Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series A (General): 253-290.Two aqueous suspensions, one containing crystals of uniform size and the other containing colloidal particles, were made with each of seven solid contact poisons (two DDT-analogues, DDT, rotenone, 2-bromomercurithiophen, dieldrin and endrin). The relative toxicity of each pair of suspensions was found in dipping or measured-drop tests on as many as possible of the species Oryzaephilus surinamennsis L., Tribolium castaneum Herbst and Tenebrio molitor L. In addition, some tests were made by injection of colloidal suspensions. In each test, insects were kept after treatment at two temperatures: 28 degrees C. and 11, 17 or 20 degrees C.; counts of kill were made after 24 hr. The tests measured three different kinds of temperature coefficient of insecticidal action. In the contact tests, the colloid was nearly always more toxic than the crystals. In all the tests, except those with dieldrin, the relative toxicity (colloid : crystals) was greater at the lower after-treatment temperature, i.e. the temperature coeficient of the relative toxicity was negative. But in the case of dieldrin, the coefficient was positive. The DDT-analogues, DDT, rotenone and endrin were more toxic at the lower after-treatment temperature, i.e. they had negative temperature coefficients of kill by contact action. In all these cases the temperature coefficient of kill by contact action was greater for colloid than for crystals. Dieldrin and 2-bromomercurithiophen had positive temperature coefficients of kill by contact action. With dieldrin, the temperature coefficient was greater for colloid than for crystals; but with 2-bromomercurithiophen, the reverse was true. The temperature coeficient of kill by injection was negative for DDT, but positive for dieldrin and endrin; the other poisons were not tested by injection. A possible explanation for the results of the contact tests is given in an Appendix. The explanation is based on a number of assumptions about the penetration of insect cuticle by solid poisons. These assumptions lead to the conclusion that the effect of temperature on the relative toxicity depends on the temperature coefficient of kill by internal action of the poison on the insect. This can be measured by injection tests. If it is negative or zero, the ratio of toxicities (colloid: crystals) by contact action, measured quite soon after treatment of the insects, will be greater at a low temperature after treatment than at a high temperature after treatment; but if the coefficient is positive, the effect of temperature on relative toxicity cannot be foretold. The experimental results seem to confirm the assumptions.

DOI

39
Fontana V, Radtke A, Fedrigotti V Bet al., 2013. Comparing land-use alternatives: Using the ecosystem services concept to define a multi-criteria decision analysis.Ecological Economics, 93: 128-136.In landscape planning, land-use types need to be compared including the ecosystem services they provide. With multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA), ecological economics offers a useful tool for environmental questions but mostly case-specific criteria are applied. This, however, makes it difficult to compare findings. Therefore, we present a systematic framework that includes the ecosystem services as criteria into MCDA. The ecological quantification of the provided ecosystem services is combined with the assigned importance of the single ecosystem services. In a case study from the central Alps, we compared three land-use alternatives resulting from land-use change caused by socio-economic pressures: traditional larch (Larix decidua) meadow, spruce forest (abandonment) and intensive meadow (intensification).<br/>Criteria for the MCDA model were selected by experts, criteria importance was ranked by stakeholders and criteria values were assessed with qualitative and quantitative indicators. Eventually spruce forest was ranked as the best land-use alternative followed by traditional larch meadow and intensive meadow. The combined approach of MCDA using ecosystem services as criteria showed how criteria weightings and criteria indicator values influence land-use alternatives' performance. The MCDA-model visualizes the consequences of land-use change for ecosystem service provision, facilitating landscape planning by structuring environmental problems and providing data for decisions. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

DOI

40
Garland T, 2014. Quick guide: Trade-offs.Current Biology, 24(2): R60-R61.

41
Goldstein J H, Caldarone G, Duarte T Ket al., 2012. Integrating ecosystem-service tradeoffs into land-use decisions.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109(19): 7565-7570.Recent high-profile efforts have called for integrating ecosystem-service values into important societal decisions, but there are few demonstrations of this approach in practice. We quantified ecosystem-service values to help the largest private landowner in Hawaii, Kamehameha Schools, design a land-use development plan that balances multiple private and public values on its North Shore land holdings (Island of O hu) of 10,600 ha. We used the InVEST software tool to evaluate the environmental and financial implications of seven planning scenarios encompassing contrasting land-use combinations including biofuel feedstocks, food crops, forestry, livestock, and residential development. All scenarios had positive financial return relative to the status quo of negative return. However, tradeoffs existed between carbon storage and water quality as well as between environmental improvement and financial return. Based on this analysis and community input, Kamehameha Schools is implementing a plan to support diversified agriculture and forestry. This plan generates a positive financial return ($10.9 million) and improved carbon storage (0.5% increase relative to status quo) with negative relative effects on water quality (15.4% increase in potential nitrogen export relative to status quo). The effects on water quality could be mitigated partially (reduced to a 4.9% increase in potential nitrogen export) by establishing vegetation buffers on agricultural fields. This plan contributes to policy goals for climate change mitigation, food security, and diversifying rural economic opportunities. More broadly, our approach illustrates how information can help guide local land-use decisions that involve tradeoffs between private and public interests.

DOI PMID

42
Greiner R, Cacho O, 2001. On the efficient use of a catchment’s land and water resources: Dryland salinization in Australia.Ecological Economics, 38(3): 441-458.

43
Grosskopf S, Hayes KandYaisawarng S, 1992. Measuring economies of diversification: A frontier approach.Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, 10(4): 453-459.The purpose of this paper is to improve the statistical analysis of multiproduct firm behavior. The authors offer a new empirical technique that can be used to directly analyze issues such as subadditivity, expansion path subadditivity, economies of scope, and economies of diversification. Previous applied work has used "nonfrontier" estimation techniques. The authors show how to introduce frontier approaches to multiproduct cost analysis, which can be applied to any of these concepts and improve the statistical analysis. Specifically, the authors introduce an empirical test using frontier techniques that allows for direct measures of economies of diversification at the firm-specific level.

DOI

44
Haase D, Schwarz N, Strohbach Met al., 2012. Synergies, trade-offs, and losses of ecosystem services in urban regions: An integrated multiscale framework applied to the Leipzig-Halle Region, Germany.Ecology and Society, 17(3): 22.

45
Haines-Young R, Potschin M, Kienast F, 2012. Indicators of ecosystem service potential at European scales: Mapping marginal changes and trade-offs.Ecological Indicators, 21: 39-53.For a subset of NUTS-x regions for which change trajectories for 1990–2000, 2000–2006 and 2000–2030 are available, trade-offs between the four services have been analyzed using cluster analyses. The latter allowed us to simultaneously analyze the state of the four services in year 2000 and the individual trajectories of each service over three time periods. As a result we obtained seven regions with distinct trade-off patterns. To our knowledge this is one of the first continental-wide analyses where land use trajectories are taken into account to construct an indicator to estimate the balance between a set or bundle of ecosystem services. The relationship between the outputs of this work and the development of rapid assessment and accounting frameworks is discussed.

DOI

46
Holland R A, Eigenbrod F, Armsworth P Ret al., 2011. The influence of temporal variation on relationships between ecosystem services.Biodiversity and Conservation, 20(14): 3285-3294.A growing literature aims to identify areas of congruence in the provision of multiple ecosystem goods and services. However, little attention has been paid to the effect that temporal variation in the provision of such services may have on understanding of these relationships. Due to a lack of temporally and spatially replicated monitoring surveys, such relationships are often assessed using data from disparate time periods. Utilising temporally replicated data for indices of freshwater quality and agricultural production we demonstrate that through time the biophysical values of ecosystem services may vary in a spatially non-uniform way. This can lead to differing conclusions being reached about the strength of relationships between services, which in turn has implications for the prioritisation of areas for management of multiple services. We present this first analysis to illustrate the effect that the use of such temporally disparate datasets may have, and to highlight the need for further research to assess under what circumstances temporal variation of this sort will have the greatest impact.

DOI

47
Holling C S, 1973. Resilience and stability of ecological systems.Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, 1-23.ABSTRACT THIS REVIEW EXPLORES BOTH ECOLOGICAL THEORY AND THE BEHAVIOR OF NATURAL SYSTEMS TO SEE IF DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES OF THEIR BEHAVIOR CAN YIELD DIFFERENT INSIGHTS THAT ARE USEFUL FOR BOTH THEORY AND PRACTICE. THE RESILIENCE AND STABILITY VIEWPOINTS OF THE BEHAVIOR OF ECOLOGICAL SYSTEMS CAN YIELD VERY DIFFERENT APPROACHES TO THE MANAGEMENT OF RESOURCES. THE STABILITY VIEW EMPHASIZES THE EQUILIBRIUM, THE MAINTENANCE OF A PREDICTABLE WORLD, AND THE HARVESTING OF NATURE'S EXCESS PRODUCTION WITH AS LITTLE FLUCTUATION AS POSSIBLE. THE RESILIENCE VIEW EMPHASIZES DOMAINS OF ATTRACTION AND THE NEED FOR PERSISTENCE. BUT EXTINCTION IS NOT PURELY A RANDOM EVENT: IT RESULTS FROM THE INTERACTION OF RANDOM EVENTS WITH THOSE DETERMINISTIC FORCES THAT DEFINE THE SHAPE, SIZE AND CHARACTERISTICS OF THE DOMAIN OF ATTRACTION. THE VERY APPROACH, THEREFORE, THAT ASSURES A STABLE MAXIMUM SUSTAINED YIELD OF A RENEWABLE RESOURCE, MIGHT SO CHANGE THESE CONDITIONS THAT THE RESILIENCE IS LOST OR IS REDUCED SO THAT A CHANCE AND RARE EVENT THAT PREVIOUSLY COULD BE ABSORBED CAN TRIGGER A SUDDEN DRAMATIC CHANGE AND LOSS OF STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY OF THE SYSTEM. A MANAGEMENT APPROACH BASED ON RESILIENCE, ON THE OTHER HAND, WOULD EMPHASIZE THE NEED TO KEEP OPTIONS OPEN, THE NEED TO VIEW EVENTS IN A REGIONAL RATHER THAN A LOCAL CONTEXT, AND THE NEED TO EMPHASIZE HETEROGENEITY. THE RESILIENCE FRAMEWORK DOES NOT REQUIRE A PRECISE CAPACITY TO PREDICT THE FUTURE BUT ONLY A QUALITATIVE CAPACITY TO DEVISE SYSTEMS THAT CAN ABSORB AND ACCOMMODATE FUTURE EVENTS IN WHATEVER UNEXPECTED FORM THEY MAY TAKE.

DOI

48
Huang I B, Keisler J, Linkov I, 2011. Multi-criteria decision analysis in environmental sciences: Ten years of applications and trends.Science of the Total Environment, 409(19): 3578-3594.Decision-making in environmental projects requires consideration of trade-offs between socio-political, environmental, and economic impacts and is often complicated by various stakeholder views. Multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) emerged as a formal methodology to face available technical information and stakeholder values to support decisions in many fields and can be especially valuable in environmental decision making. This study reviews environmental applications of MCDA. Over 300 papers published between 2000 and 2009 reporting MCDA applications in the environmental field were identified through a series of queries in the Web of Science database. The papers were classified by their environmental application area, decision or intervention type. In addition, the papers were also classified by the MCDA methods used in the analysis (analytic hierarchy process, multi-attribute utility theory, and outranking). The results suggest that there is a significant growth in environmental applications of MCDA over the last decade across all environmental application areas. Multiple MCDA tools have been successfully used for environmental applications. Even though the use of the specific methods and tools varies in different application areas and geographic regions, our review of a few papers where several methods were used in parallel with the same problem indicates that recommended course of action does not vary significantly with the method applied. Published by Elsevier B.V.

DOI

49
Huber R, Bugmann H, Buttler Aet al., 2013. Sustainable land-use practices in European mountain regions under global change: An integrated research approach.Ecology and Society, 18(3): 37.This Special Feature on sustainable land-use practices in European mountain regions presents results from the inter- and transdisciplinary research project MOUNTLAND. The goal was to investigate the sensitivity of the provision of ecosystem services to both climatic and land-use changes and to suggest alternative policies and governance structures for mitigating the impact of such changes and enhancing sustainable management practices in mountain regions. The individual articles provide: (1) new scientific findings regarding the impacts of climate and land-use changes on ecosystem processes in three sensitive mountain regions of Switzerland; (2) an assessment of the feedback effects arising from changing socioeconomic and political conditions, land use, and adaptation to climate change, using modeling techniques and transdisciplinary stakeholder interactions; and (3) suggestions for alternative policy solutions to ensure sustainable land use in mountain regions. In our synthesis of the project, we provide insights from the ecological, socioeconomic, and political sciences in the context of human- environment interactions in mountain regions. The innovation of this Special Feature lies in the fact that all articles present truly inter- or transdisciplinary research, ranging from natural sciences to economics and political sciences, based on an overarching set of unifying research questions.

DOI

50
Jackson B, Pagella T, Sinclair Fet al., 2013. Polyscape: A GIS mapping framework providing efficient and spatially explicit landscape-scale valuation of multiple ecosystem services.Landscape and Urban Planning, 112: 74-88.This paper introduces a GIS framework (Polyscape) designed to explore spatially explicit synergies and trade-offs amongst ecosystem services to support landscape management (from individual fields through to catchments of ca 10,000 km(2) scale). Algorithms are described and results presented from a case study application within an upland Welsh catchment (Pontbren). Polyscape currently includes algorithms to explore the impacts of land cover change on flood risk, habitat connectivity, erosion and associated sediment delivery to receptors, carbon sequestration and agricultural productivity. Algorithms to trade these single-criteria landscape valuations against each other are also provided, identifying where multiple service synergies exist or could be established. Changes in land management can be input to the tool and "traffic light" coded impact maps produced, allowing visualisation of the impact of different decisions. Polyscape hence offers a means for prioritising existing feature preservation and identifying opportunities for landscape change. The basic algorithms can be applied using widely available national scale digital elevation, land use and soil data. Enhanced output is possible where higher resolution data are available (e.g., LIDAR, detailed land use or soil surveys). Deficiencies in the data are reduced by incorporating local stakeholder knowledge (increasing stakeholder participation in the negotiation process). (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

DOI

51
Jiang M K, Bullock J MandHooftman D A, 2013. Mapping ecosystem service and biodiversity changes over 70 years in a rural English county.Journal of Applied Ecology, 50(4): 841-850.1. Biodiversity and ecosystem services continue to be compromised by land-use change, which is often focussed on enhancing agricultural production. Assessment of losses would be aided by analyses of temporal changes in the extent and spatial pattern of services and biodiversity. To date, no studies have mapped long-term changes in ecosystem services using historical maps. 2. We mapped changes between the 1930s - before the considerable intensification of land use in the UK starting in the 1940s - and 2000 in climate change amelioration services (carbon storage), provisioning services (agriculture and forestry) and plant species richness (biodiversity) for Dorset, a rural English county. 3. We combined land-use maps (1-ha resolution) with multiple proxies of service delivery for the 10 different Broad Habitats in the region. Biodiversity was mapped using plant survey data from the two time periods. We used bootstrapping to include uncertainty due to the different proxies and Gini coefficients to quantify statistical changes in spatial pattern. 4. Overall, we found significant increases in agricultural provisioning and large losses in biodiversity over the period, which reflect widespread conversion and intensification of land use. We found no change in Dorset's carbon store, because carbon lost through land-use intensification was balanced by increases in woodland over the 20th century. 5. The carbon storage and the delivery of provisioning services both became more unequally distributed, indicating a change from relatively homogeneous delivery of services to concentration into hotspots. The maps from the year 2000 showed spatial dissociation of hotspots for carbon, provisioning and biodiversity, which suggests that, compared to the 1930s, modern, intensive land use creates conflicts in delivery of multiple services and biodiversity. 6. Synthesis and applications. Detailed maps of historical changes in location-specific service delivery and biodiversity provide valuable information for land-use planning, highlight trade-offs and help to identify drivers. Furthermore, historical maps provide an important baseline to indicate the suitability and potential success of suggested actions, such as habitat restoration, and their relevance to traditional land use. Various frameworks could be informed by our approach, including the ecosystem service aims of the EU biodiversity strategy and the newly created UK Nature Improvement Areas.

DOI

52
King E, Cavender-Bares J, Balvanera Pet al., 2015. Trade-offs in ecosystem services and varying stakeholder preferences: evaluating conflicts, obstacles, and opportunities.Ecology and Society, 20(3): 25.In efforts to increase human well-being while maintaining the natural systems and processes upon which we depend, navigating the trade-offs that can arise between different ecosystem services is a profound challenge. We evaluated a recently developed simple analytic framework for assessing ecosystem service trade-offs, which characterizes such trade-offs in terms of their underlying biophysical constraints as well as divergences in stakeholders' values for the services in question. Through a workshop and subsequent discussions, we identified four different types of challenging situations under which the framework allows important insights to clarify the nature of stakeholder conflicts, obstacles to promoting more sustainable outcomes, and potential enabling factors to promote efficiency and sustainability of ecosystem service yields. We illustrated the framework's analytical steps by applying them to case studies representing three of the challenging situations. We explored the fourth challenging situation conceptually, using published literature for examples. We examined the potential utility and feasibility of using the framework as a participatory tool in resource management and conflict resolution. We concluded that the framework can be instrumental for promoting pluralism and insightful analysis of tradeoffs. The insights offered here may be viewed as hypotheses to be tested and refined as additional unforeseen challenges and benefits are revealed as the framework is put into practice.

DOI

53
Kirchner M, Schmidt J, Kindermann Get al., 2015. Ecosystem services and economic development in Austrian agricultural landscapes: The impact of policy and climate change scenarios on trade-offs and synergies.Ecological Economics, 109: 161-174.

54
Laniak G F, Olchin G, Goodall Jet al., 2013. Integrated environmental modeling: A vision and roadmap for the future.Environmental Modelling & Software, 39: 3-23.Integrated environmental modeling (IEM) is inspired by modern environmental problems, decisions, and policies and enabled by transdisciplinary science and computer capabilities that allow the environment to be considered in a holistic way. The problems are characterized by the extent of the environmental system involved, dynamic and interdependent nature of stressors and their impacts, diversity of stakeholders, and integration of social, economic, and environmental considerations. IEM provides a science-based structure to develop and organize relevant knowledge and information and apply it to explain, explore, and predict the behavior of environmental systems in response to human and natural sources of stress. During the past several years a number of workshops were held that brought IEM practitioners together to share experiences and discuss future needs and directions. In this paper we organize and present the results of these discussions. IEM is presented as a landscape containing four interdependent elements: applications, science, technology, and community. The elements are described from the perspective of their role in the landscape, current practices, and challenges that must be addressed. Workshop participants envision a global scale IEM community that leverages modern technologies to streamline the movement of science-based knowledge from its sources in research, through its organization into databases and models, to its integration and application for problem solving purposes. Achieving this vision will require that the global community of IEM stakeholders transcend social, and organizational boundaries and pursue greater levels of collaboration. Among the highest priorities for community action are the development of standards for publishing IEM data and models in forms suitable for automated discovery, access, and integration; education of the next generation of environmental stakeholders, with a focus on transdisciplinary research, development, and decision making; and providing a web-based platform for community interactions (e.g., continuous virtual workshops).

DOI

55
Lester S E, Costello C, Halpern B Set al., 2013. Evaluating tradeoffs among ecosystem services to inform marine spatial planning.Marine Policy, 38: 80-89.A central challenge for natural resource management is developing rigorous yet practical approaches for balancing the costs and benefits of diverse human uses of ecosystems. Economic theory has a long history of evaluating tradeoffs in returns from different assets to identify optimal investment strategies. There has been recent progress applying this framework to the delivery of ecosystem services in land use planning. However, despite growing national and international interest in marine spatial planning, there is a lack of parallel frameworks in the marine realm. This paper reviews an ecosystem service tradeoff analysis framework and provides a more comprehensive synthesis for how it can be applied to marine spatial planning and marine ecosystem-based management. A tradeoff analysis approach can reveal inferior management options, demonstrate the benefits of comprehensive planning for multiple, interacting services over managing single services, and identify 'compatible' services that provide win-win management options. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

DOI

56
Li Z H, Deng X Z, Huang J Ket al., 2013. Critical studies on integrating land-use induced effects on climate regulation services into impact assessment for human well-being.Advances in Meteorology, 1-14. doi: 10.1155/2013/831250.

57
Lü Y, Fu B, Feng Xet al., 2012. A policy-driven large scale ecological restoration: Quantifying ecosystem services changes in the Loess Plateau of China.PloS One, 7(2): e31782.

58
MA, 2005a. Ecosystems and Human Well-being. Washington, DC: Island Press.

59
MA, 2005b. Ecosystems and Human Well-being: Current State and Trends. Washington, DC: Island Press.

60
MA, 2005c. Our Human Planet: Summary for Decision-makers. Island Press.

61
Maes J, Paracchini M, Zulian Get al., 2012. Synergies and trade-offs between ecosystem service supply, biodiversity, and habitat conservation status in Europe.Biological Conservation, 155: 1-12.In the European Union (EU) efforts to conserve biodiversity have been consistently directed towards the protection of habitats and species through the designation of protected areas under the Habitats Directive (92/43/ECC). These biodiversity conservation efforts also have the potential to maintain or improve the supply of ecosystem services; however, this potential has been poorly explored across Europe. This paper reports on a spatial assessment of the relationships between biodiversity, ecosystem services, and conservation status of protected habitats at European scale. We mapped at 10 km resolution ten spatial proxies for ecosystem service supply (four provisioning services, five regulating services and one cultural service) and three proxies for biodiversity (Mean Species Abundance, tree species diversity and the relative area of Natura 2000 sites). Indicators for biodiversity and aggregated ecosystem service supply were positively related but this relationship was influenced by the spatial trade-offs among ecosystem services, in particular between crop production and regulating ecosystem services. Using multinomial logistic regression models we demonstrated that habitats in a favourable conservation status provided more biodiversity and had a higher potential to supply, in particular, regulating and cultural ecosystem services than habitats in an unfavourable conservation status. This information is of utmost importance in identifying regions in which measures are likely to result in cost-effective progress towards both new biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services targets adopted by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the EU Biodiversity Strategy to 2020.

DOI

62
Maron M, Cockfield G, 2008. Managing trade-offs in landscape restoration and revegetation projects.Ecological Applications, 18(8): 2041-2049.Landscape restoration projects often have multiple and disparate conservation, resource enhancement, and sometimes economic objectives, since projects that seek to meet more than one objective tend to be viewed more positively by funding agencies and the community. The degree to which there are trade-offs among desired objectives is an important variable for decision makers, yet this is rarely explicitly considered. In particular, the existence of ecological thresholds has important implications for decision-making at both the project level and the regional level. We develop a model of the possibilities and choices for an agency seeking to achieve two environmental objectives in a region through revegetation of a number of sites. A graphical model of the production possibilities sets for a single revegetation project is developed, and different trade-off relationships are discussed and illustrated. Then the model is used to demonstrate the possibilities for managing all such projects within a region. We show that, where there are thresholds in the trade-off relationship between two objectives, specialization (single- or dominant-objective projects) should be considered. This is illustrated using a case study in which revegetation is used to meet avian biodiversity and salinity mitigation objectives. We conclude that where there are sufficient scientific data, explicit consideration of different types of trade-offs can assist in making decisions about the most efficient mix and type of projects to better achieve a range of objectives within a region.

DOI PMID

63
Martín-López B, Iniesta-Arandia I, García-Llorente Met al., 2012. Uncovering ecosystem service bundles through social preferences.PloS One, 7(6): e38970.Ecosystem service assessments have increasingly been used to support environmental management policies, mainly based on biophysical and economic indicators. However, few studies have coped with the social-cultural dimension of ecosystem services, despite being considered a research priority. We examined how ecosystem service bundles and trade-offs emerge from diverging social preferences toward ecosystem services delivered by various types of ecosystems in Spain. We conducted 3,379 direct face-to-face questionnaires in eight different case study sites from 2007 to 2011. Overall, 90.5% of the sampled population recognized the ecosystem's capacity to deliver services. Formal studies, environmental behavior, and gender variables influenced the probability of people recognizing the ecosystem's capacity to provide services. The ecosystem services most frequently perceived by people were regulating services; of those, air purification held the greatest importance. However, statistical analysis showed that socio-cultural factors and the conservation management strategy of ecosystems (i.e., National Park, Natural Park, or a non-protected area) have an effect on social preferences toward ecosystem services. Ecosystem service trade-offs and bundles were identified by analyzing social preferences through multivariate analysis (redundancy analysis and hierarchical cluster analysis). We found a clear trade-off among provisioning services (and recreational hunting) versus regulating services and almost all cultural services. We identified three ecosystem service bundles associated with the conservation management strategy and the rural-urban gradient. We conclude that sociocultural preferences toward ecosystem services can serve as a tool to identify relevant services for people, the factors underlying these social preferences, and emerging ecosystem service bundles and trade-offs.

DOI PMID

64
Maskell L C, Crowe A, Dunbar M Jet al., 2013. Exploring the ecological constraints to multiple ecosystem service delivery and biodiversity.Journal of Applied Ecology, 50(3): 561-571.Understanding and quantifying constraints to multiple ecosystem service delivery and biodiversity is vital for developing management strategies for current and future human well-being. A particular challenge is to reconcile demand for increased food production with provision of other ecosystem services and biodiversity. Using a spatially extensive data base (covering Great Britain) of co-located biophysical measurements (collected in the Countryside Survey), we explore the relationships between ecosystem service indicators and biodiversity across a temperate ecosystem productivity gradient. Each service indicator has an individual response curve demonstrating that simultaneous analysis of multiple ecosystem services is essential for optimal service management. The shape of the response curve can be used to indicate whether land sharing' (provision of multiple services from the same land parcel) or land sparing' (single service prioritization) is the most appropriate option. Soil carbon storage and above-ground net primary production indicators were found to define opposing ends of a primary gradient in service provision. Biodiversity and water quality indicators were highest at intermediate levels of both factors, consistent with a unimodal relationship along a productivity gradient. Positive relationships occurred between multiple components of biodiversity, measured as taxon richness of all plants, bee and butterfly nectar plants, soil invertebrates and freshwater macroinvertebrates, indicating potential for management measures directed at one aspect of biodiversity to deliver wider ecosystem biodiversity. We demonstrate that in temperate, human-dominated landscapes, ecosystem services are highly constrained by a fundamental productivity gradient. There are immediate trade-offs between productivity and soil carbon storage but potential synergies with services with different shaped relationships to production. Synthesis and applications. Using techniques such as response curves to analyse multiple service interactions can inform the development of Spatial Decision Support tools and landscape-scale ecosystem service management options. At intermediate productivity, land-sharing' would optimize multiple services, however, to deliver significant soil carbon storage land-sparing' is required, that is, resources focused in low productivity areas with high carbon to maximize investment return. This study emphasizes that targets for services per unit area need to be set within the context of the national gradients reported here to ensure best use of limited resources.

DOI

65
Mason N W, Ausseil A-G E, Dymond J Ret al., 2012. Will use of non-biodiversity objectives to select areas for ecological restoration always compromise biodiversity gains?Biological Conservation, 155: 157-168.Ecological restoration is crucial for increasing biodiversity in highly modified landscapes, but non-biodiversity objectives, such as environmental impact reduction, are increasingly being used to set restoration priorities. While there is some evidence that a non-biodiversity focus in the spatial configuration of conservation networks could severely compromise biodiversity gains there is no work examining whether this is also true for the spatial allocation of restoration effort. We sought to identify scenarios where large trade-offs between biodiversity and non-biodiversity objectives in the spatial allocation of restoration effort are likely to occur, in an attempt to assess whether such trade-offs will be a general problem for prioritising restoration effort. To this end we examined trade-offs between biodiversity and environmental impact reduction when allocating afforestation effort in a highly modified catchment in New Zealand. We then used simulations on artificial data to derive general predictions about when large trade-offs are most likely to occur. We found significant trade-offs between gains in biodiversity and reduction of three environmental impacts leaching, greenhouse gas emissions and n the spatial allocation of restoration effort. The biggest trade-offs were between biodiversity gain and reduction, which both had right-skewed distributions (i.e. many small and few large values) and were weakly negatively correlated. The simulations showed that trade-offs will be greatest for strongly right skewed variables that are negatively correlated with competing variables. However, simulations also demonstrated that strongly right skewed variables experience large trade-offs even in the absence of negative correlations with competing variables. Biodiversity gain through ecological restoration is likely to be strongly right skewed, with restoration in specific types of environment or habitat giving extremely high gains in representativeness. Consequently, there may be a general tendency for a non-biodiversity-focus in restoration planning to greatly compromise biodiversity gain.

DOI

66
Mastrangelo M E, Laterra P, 2015. From biophysical to social-ecological trade-offs: Integrating biodiversity conservation and agricultural production in the Argentine Dry Chaco.Ecology and Society, 20(1): 20.

67
McShane T O, Hirsch P D, Trung T Cet al., 2011. Hard choices: Making trade-offs between biodiversity conservation and human well-being.Biological Conservation, 144(3): 966-972.Win-win solutions that both conserve biodiversity and promote human well-being are difficult to realize. Trade-offs and the hard choices they entail are the norm. Since 2008, the Advancing Conservation in a Social Context (ACSC) research initiative has been investigating the complex trade-offs that exist between human well-being and biodiversity conservation goals, and between conservation and other economic, political and social agendas across multiple scales. Resolving trade-offs is difficult because social problems - of which conservation is one - can be perceived and understood in a variety of disparate ways, influenced (in part at least) by how people are raised and educated, their life experiences, and the options they have faced. Pre-existing assumptions about the "right" approach to conservation often obscure important differences in both power and understanding, and can limit the success of policy and programmatic interventions. The new conservation debate challenges conservationists to be explicit about losses, costs, and hard choices so they can be openly discussed and honestly negotiated. Not to do so can lead to unrealized expectations, and ultimately to unresolved conflict. This paper explores the background and limitations of win-win approaches to conservation and human well-being, discusses the prospect of approaching conservation challenges in terms of trade-offs and hard choices, and presents a set of guiding principles that can serve to orient strategic analysis and communication regarding trade-offs. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

DOI

68
MEA, 2005. Ecosystems and Human Well-being: Scenarios: Findings of the Scenarios Working Group. Island Press.

69
Medcalf K, Small N, Finch Cet al., 2014. JNCC Report No: 514. Further Development of a Spatial Framework for Mapping Ecosystem Services.

70
Mouchet M A, Lamarque P, Martín-López Bet al., 2014. An interdisciplinary methodological guide for quantifying associations between ecosystem services.Global Environmental Change, 28: 298-308.The proposed interdisciplinary methodological approach takes one step toward embracing such complexity of socio-ecological systems as it considers ecosystem services delivery (supply–supply), stakeholders’ needs (demand–demand), and on how stakeholders can benefit from the ecosystem services delivery (supply–demand). We illustrate how such a diverse spectrum of methods may apply for land management.

DOI

71
Naidoo R, Ricketts T H, 2006. Mapping the economic costs and benefits of conservation.PLoS Biology, 4(11): e360.

72
Nelson E, Mendoza G, Regetz Jet al., 2009. Modeling multiple ecosystem services, biodiversity conservation, commodity production, and tradeoffs at landscape scales.Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 7(1): 4-11.Nature provides a wide range of benefits to people. There is increasing consensus about the importance of incorporating these "ecosystem services" into resource management decisions, but quantifying the levels and values of these services has proven difficult. We use a spatially explicit modeling tool, Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs (InVEST), to predict changes in ecos...

DOI

73
Nelson E, Polasky S, Lewis D Jet al., 2008. Efficiency of incentives to jointly increase carbon sequestration and species conservation on a landscape.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(28): 9471-9476.

74
Nguyen T T, Verdoodt A, Van Y Tet al., 2015. Design of a GIS and multi-criteria based land evaluation procedure for sustainable land-use planning at the regional level. Agriculture,Ecosystems & Environment, 200: 1-11.

75
Paterson S, Bryan B A, 2012. Food-carbon trade-offs between agriculture and reforestation land uses under alternate market-based policies.Ecology and Society, 17(3): 21.Understanding the effects of payments on the adoption of reforestation in agricultural areas and the associated food-carbon trade-offs is necessary to inform climate change policy. Economic viability of reforestation under payment per hectare and payment per tonne schemes for carbon sequestration was assessed in a region in southern Australia supporting 6.1 Mha of rain-fed agriculture. The results show that under the median scenario, a carbon price of 27 A$/tCO2-e could make one-third of the study area (nearly 2 Mha) more profitable for reforestation than agriculture, and at 58 A$/tCO2-e all of the study area could become more profitable. The results were sensitive to variation in carbon risk factor, establishment costs, and discount rates. Pareto-optimal land allocation could realize one-third of the potential carbon sequestration from reforestation (16.35 MtCO2-e/yr at a carbon risk factor of 0.8) with a loss of less than one-tenth (107.89 A$M/yr) of the agricultural production. Both payment schemes resulted in efficiencies within 1% of the Pareto-optimum. Understanding food-carbon trade-offs and policy efficiencies can inform carbon policy design.

DOI

76
Pattanayak S K, 2004. Valuing watershed services: Concepts and empirics from Southeast Asia. Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment, 104(1): 171-184.

77
Polasky S, Nelson E, Camm Jet al., 2008. Where to put things? Spatial land management to sustain biodiversity and economic returns.Biological Conservation, 141(6): 1505-1524.Expanding population and economic have led to large-scale conversion of natural habitat to -dominated landscapes with consequent large-scale declines in biodiversity. Conserving biodiversity, while at the same time meeting expanding needs, is an issue of utmost importance. In this paper we develop a spatially explicit landscape-level model for analyzing the biological and economic consequences of alternative land-use patterns. The spatially explicit biological model incorporates habitat preferences, area requirements and dispersal ability between habitat patches for terrestrial vertebrate species to predict the likely number of species that will be sustained on the landscape. The spatially explicit economic model incorporates site characteristics and location to predict economic returns for a variety of potential land uses. We apply the model to search for efficient land-use patterns that maximize biodiversity conservation objectives for given levels of economic returns, and vice versa. We apply the model to the Willamette Basin, Oregon, USA. By thinking carefully about the arrangement of activities, we find land-use patterns that sustain high levels of biodiversity and economic returns. Compared to the 1990 land-use pattern, we show that both biodiversity conservation and the value of economic activity could be increased substantially.

DOI

78
Polasky S, Nelson E, Pennington Det al., 2011. The impact of land-use change on ecosystem services, biodiversity and returns to landowners: A case study in the State of Minnesota.Environmental and Resource Economics, 48(2): 219-242.Land-use change has a significant impact on the world's ecosystems. Changes in the extent and composition of forests, grasslands, wetlands and other ecosystems have large impacts on the provision of ecosystem services, biodiversity conservation and returns to landowners. While the change in private returns to landowners due to land-use change can often be measured, changes in the supply and value of ecosystem services and the provision of biodiversity conservation have been harder to quantify. In this paper we use a spatially explicit integrated modeling tool (InVEST) to quantify the changes in ecosystem services, habitat for biodiversity, and returns to landowners from land-use change in Minnesota from 1992 to 2001. We evaluate the impact of actual land-use change and a suite of alternative land-use change scenarios. We find a lack of concordance in the ranking of baseline and alternative land-use scenarios in terms of generation of private returns to landowners and net social benefits (private returns plus ecosystem service value). Returns to landowners are highest in a scenario with large-scale agricultural expansion. This scenario, however, generated the lowest net social benefits across all scenarios considered because of large losses in stored carbon and negative impacts on water quality. Further, this scenario resulted in the largest decline in habitat quality for general terrestrial biodiversity and forest songbirds. Our results illustrate the importance of taking ecosystem services into account in land-use and land-management decision-making and linking such decisions to incentives that accurately reflect social returns.

DOI

79
Power A G, 2010. Ecosystem services and agriculture: Tradeoffs and synergies. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 365(1554): 2959-2971.

80
Raudsepp-Hearne C, Peterson G D, Bennett E, 2010. Ecosystem service bundles for analyzing tradeoffs in diverse landscapes.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(11): 5242-5247.

81
Ring I, 2008. Biodiversity governance: Adjusting local costs and global benefits. In: Public and Private in Natural Resource Governance: A False Dichotomy? London, UK: Earthscan.The concept of governance itself is associated with a wider perspective on environmental decision making. 1 Regarding the public side with mostly hierarchical decision making, it is no longer the nationstate alone that is predominantly in charge of setting the framework for

82
Ring I, Hansjürgens B, Elmqvist Tet al., 2010. Challenges in framing the economics of ecosystems and biodiversity: The TEEB initiative.Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 2(1): 15-26.The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) study is a major international initiative to draw attention to the global economic benefits of biodiversity, to highlight the growing costs of biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation and to draw together expertise from the fields of science, economics and policy to enable practical actions moving forward. TEEB seeks to show that economics can be a powerful instrument in biodiversity policy, both by supporting decision processes and by forging discourses between science, economics and governing structures. The legitimate and effective use of economic instruments in biodiversity conservation depends on applying and interpreting them appropriately, taking into account the ecological, economic and political challenges associated with valuing biodiversity and nature's services to society.

DOI

83
Rockström J, Steffen W, Noone Ket al., 2009. A safe operating space for humanity.Nature, 461(7263): 472-475.

84
Rodríguez J, Beard T, Agard J et al., 2005. Interactions among ecosystem services. Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (ed.). Ecosystems and Human Well-being: Scenarios (Vol. II). Washington, DC: Island Press.

85
Rodríguez J P, Beard T D, Bennett E Met al., 2006. Trade-offs across space, time, and ecosystem services.Ecology and Society, 11(1): 28.Ecosystem service (ES) trade-offs arise from management choices made by humans, which can change the type, magnitude, and relative mix of services provided by ecosystems. Trade-offs occur when the provision of one ES is reduced as a consequence of increased use of another ES. In some cases, a trade-off may be an explicit choice; but in others, trade-offs arise without premeditation or even awareness that they are taking place. Trade-offs in ES can be classified along three axes: spatial scale, temporal scale, and reversibility. Spatial scale refers to whether the effects of the trade-off are felt locally or at a distant location. Temporal scale refers to whether the effects take place relatively rapidly or slowly. Reversibility expresses the likelihood that the perturbed ES may return to its original state if the perturbation ceases. Across all four Millennium Ecosystem Assessment scenarios and selected case study examples, trade-off decisions show a preference for provisioning, regulating, or cultural services (in that order). Supporting services are more likely to be “taken for granted.” Cultural ES are almost entirely unquantified in scenario modeling; therefore, the calculated model results do not fully capture losses of these services that occur in the scenarios. The quantitative scenario models primarily capture the services that are perceived by society as more important—provisioning and regulating ecosystem services—and thus do not fully capture trade-offs of cultural and supporting services. Successful management policies will be those that incorporate lessons learned from prior decisions into future management actions. Managers should complement their actions with monitoring programs that, in addition to monitoring the short-term provisions of services, also monitor the long-term evolution of slowly changing variables. Policies can then be developed to take into account ES trade-offs at multiple spatial and temporal scales. Successful strategies will recognize the inherent complexities of ecosystem management and will work to develop policies that minimize the effects of ES trade-offs.

DOI

86
Ruhl J B, Kraft S, E, Lant C L, 2007. The Law and Policy of Ecosystem Services. Cambridge Univ Press.

87
Ryffel A N, Rid W, Grêt-Regamey A, 2014. Land use trade-offs for flood protection: A choice experiment with visualizations.Ecosystem Services, 10: 111-123.We report three major results: (1) Respondents showed clear but heterogeneous preferences for long-term land use changes. (2) Respondents were willing to trade off extensive agricultural land for flood protection ecosystem services, namely through reforestation and widening of the riverine zone. (3) Choice recommendations by political parties and interest groups did influence individual choice behavior in Discrete Choice Experiments but did not, as expected, decrease implicit benefit estimates.

DOI

88
Sanon S, Hein T, Douven Wet al., 2012. Quantifying ecosystem service trade-offs: The case of an urban floodplain in Vienna, Austria.Journal of Environmental Management, 111: 159-172.Wetland ecosystems provide multiple functions and services for the well-being of . In urban environments, planning and decision making about wetland restoration inevitably involves conflicting objectives, trade-offs, uncertainties and conflicting value judgments. This study applied trade-off and multi criteria decision analysis to analyze and quantify the explicit trade-offs between the stakeholder's objectives related to management options for the restoration of an urban floodplain, the Lobau, in Vienna, Austria. The Lobau has been disconnected from the main channel of the Danube River through flood protection schemes 130 years ago that have reduced the hydraulic exchange processes. Urban expansion has also changed the adjacent areas and led to increased numbers of visitors, which hampers the maximum potential for ecosystem development and exerts additional pressure on the sensitive habitats in the national park area. The study showed that increased hydraulic connectivity would benefit several stakeholders that preferred the ecological development of the floodplain habitats. However, multiple uses including fishery, agriculture and recreation, exploring the maximum potential in line with national park regulations, were also possible under the increased hydraulic connectivity options. The largest trade-offs were quantified to be at 0.50 score between the ecological condition of the aquatic habitats and the drinking production and 0.49 score between the ecological condition of the terrestrial habitats and the drinking production. At this point, the drinking production was traded-off with 0.40 score, while the ecological condition of the aquatic habitats and the ecological condition of the terrestrial habitats were traded off with 0.30 and 0.23 score, respectively. The majority of the stakeholders involved preferred the management options that increased the hydraulic connectivity compared with the current situation which was not preferred by any stakeholders. These findings highlight the need for targeted restoration measures. By that, it is recommended that additional measures to ensure reliable drinking production should be developed, if the higher connectivity options would be implemented. In the next step it is recommended to include cost and flood risk criteria in the decision matrix for more specific developed measures. The research showed that pair-wise trade-off figures provided a useful means to elaborate and quantify the real trade-offs. Finally, the research also showed that the use of multi criteria decision analyses should be based on a participatory approach, in which the process of arriving at the final ranking should be equal or more important than the outcome of the ranking itself.

DOI PMID

89
Seppelt R, Lautenbach S, Volk M, 2013. Identifying trade-offs between ecosystem services, land use, and biodiversity: A plea for combining scenario analysis and optimization on different spatial scales.Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 5(5): 458-463.Research on mitigating land use conflicts is characterized by a variety of projects from the global to various sub-global scales. These projects are aiming at disentangling feedbacks within changing socio-environmental systems to identify strategies for sustainable resource use. Our review shows that any global analysis benefits from systematic synthesis of sub-global research from various scales, while sub-global investigations require embedding in global scenarios. There is an urgent need for improved methods to identify trade-offs at all scales as scenario analysis frequently results in a discrete set of options. We argue that the use of optimization algorithms including Pareto-frontiers combined with scenario analysis can provide efficient options for sustainable land use from global to subglobal scales.

DOI

90
Sheng W P, Ren S J, Yu G Ret al., 2011. Patterns and driving factors of WUE and NUE in natural forest ecosystems along the North-South Transect of Eastern China.Journal of Geographical Sciences, 21(4): 651-665.From July 2008 to August 2008, 72 leaf samples from 22 species and 81 soil samples in the nine natural forest ecosystems were collected, from north to south along the North-South Transect of Eastern China (NSTEC). Based on these samples, we studied the geographical distribution patterns of vegetable water use efficiency (WUE) and nitrogen use efficiency (NUE), and analyzed their relationship with environmental factors. The vegetable WUE and NUE were calculated through the measurement of foliar delta C-13 and C/N of predominant species, respectively. The results showed: (1) vegetable WUE, ranging from 2.13 to 28.67 mg C g(-1) H2O, increased linearly from south to north in the representative forest ecosystems along the NSTEC, while vegetable NUE showed an opposite trend, increasing from north to south, ranging from 12.92 to 29.60 g C g(-1) N. (2) Vegetable WUE and NUE were dominantly driven by climate and significantly affected by soil nutrient factors. Based on multiple stepwise regression analysis, mean annual temperature, soil phosphorus concentration, and soil nitrogen concentration were responding for 75.5% of the variations of WUE (p<0.001). While, mean annual precipitation and soil phosphorus concentration could explain 65.7% of the change in vegetable NUE (p<0.001). Moreover, vegetable WUE and NUE would also be seriously influenced by atmospheric nitrogen deposition in nitrogen saturated ecosystems. (3) There was a significant trade-off relationship between vegetable WUE and NUE in the typical forest ecosystems along the NSTEC (p<0.001), indicating a balanced strategy for vegetation in resource utilization in natural forest ecosystems along the NSTEC. This study suggests that global change would impact the resource use efficiency of forest ecosystems. However, vegetation could adapt to those changes by increasing the use efficiency of shortage resource while decreasing the relatively ample one. But extreme impacts, such as heavy nitrogen deposition, would break this trade-off mechanism and give a dramatic disturbance to the ecosystem biogeochemical cycle.

DOI

91
Silvestri S, Kershaw F, 2010. Framing the flow: Innovative approaches to understand, protect and value ecosystem services across linked habitats. United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).This report presents a framework for understanding the connection between a variety of marine ecosystems such as mangroves, seagrasses, and coral reefs, across several contexts with policy recommendations for land use and management.

92
Swallow B M, Sang J K, Nyabenge Met al., 2009. Tradeoffs, synergies and traps among ecosystem services in the Lake Victoria basin of East Africa.Environmental Science & Policy, 12(4): 504-519.The results illustrate considerable year-to-year variation in land use, agricultural production and sediment yield in the two basins. While overall production appears to be relatively stable at the basin level, there have been shifts in the geographic locus of production toward the upper parts of both basins. A spatial overlay of production and sediment yield indicates that different parts of the basins exhibit tradeoffs, synergies and traps. Results from this study have multiple uses in rural planning, agricultural investment, and watershed management. The results also suggest that the poverty traps conceptual framework may help to enrich the interpretative content of the MA approach.

DOI

93
Tallis H, Kareiva P, Marvier Met al., 2008. An ecosystem services framework to support both practical conservation and economic development.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(28): 9457-9464.

94
Tallis H, Ricketts T, Guerry Aet al., 2011. InVEST 2.1 beta User’s Guide. The Natural Capital Project. Stanford.

95
Tansley A G, 1935. The use and abuse of vegetational concepts and terms.Ecology, 16(3): 284-307.See full-text article at JSTOR

DOI

96
TEEB, 2010. In: Kumar P (ed.). The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity: Ecological and Economic Foundations. London: Earthscan.

97
Tietenberg T, 1988. Environmental and Natural Resources. Economics.

98
Tilman D, Cassman K G, Matson P Aet al., 2002. Agricultural sustainability and intensive production practices.Nature, 418(6898): 671-677.Nature is the international weekly journal of science: a magazine style journal that publishes full-length research papers in all disciplines of science, as well as News and Views, reviews, news, features, commentaries, web focuses and more, covering all branches of science and how science impacts upon all aspects of society and life.

DOI PMID

99
UKNEA, 2011. The United Kingdom National Ecosystem Assessment: Technical Report. Cambridge, UK: UNEP-WCMC.

100
van den Belt M, Bowen T, Slee Ket al., 2013. Flood protection: Highlighting an investment trap between built and natural capital.JAWRA Journal of the American Water Resources Association, 49(3): 681-692.Abstract We present a simulation model developed to communicate a potential investment trap associated with using man-made river engineering to protect built infrastructure. A small system dynamics model in STELLA鈩 was constructed following a collaborative model-building process to increase understanding among stakeholders of the role natural capital plays in wealth creation. We set out to explore the dynamic relationship between investing tax revenue in natural capital (specifically forested headwaters and low land wetlands) rather than built capital (specifically stopbanks) for flood protection in the Manawat奴 watershed, New Zealand. Significant investment is currently required to maintain and enhance river engineering infrastructure and keep pace with changes in the river's geomorphology. Viewed from a systems perspective, we suggest diversion of a proportion of existing funding into restoration of forested headwaters on steep slopes and restoration of functioning wetlands on floodplains could in the longer term provide an effective approach to flood protection. Co-benefits of increased natural capital include the ecosystem services nutrient cycling, sediment capture, water purification, biodiversity, pollination, and cultural and recreational values. Overcoming an investment trap requires a longer term perspective. This simple model consisting of two feedback loops and two delays aims to contribute to an ongoing stakeholder dialogue concerning the Manawat奴 River watershed in New Zealand.

DOI

101
Van Huylenbroeck G, 1997. Multicriteria tools for the trade-off analysis in rural planning between economic and environmental objectives.Applied Mathematics and Computation, 83(2): 261-280.article{182811, author = {VANHUYLENBROECK, G}, issn = {0096-3003}, journal = {APPLIED MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTATION}, language = {eng}, number = {2-3}, pages = {261--280}, title = {Multicriteria tools for the trade-off analysis in rural planning between economic and environmental objectives.}, volume = {83}, year = {1997}, }

DOI

102
Varian H R, Repcheck J, 2010. Intermediate Microeconomics: A Modern Approach. New York: WW Norton.

103
Vollmer D, Pribadi D O, Remondi Fet al., 2015. Prioritizing ecosystem services in rapidly urbanizing river basins: A spatial multi-criteria analytic approach.Sustainable Cities and Society, 20: 237-252.

DOI

104
Wang Z, Mao D, Li Let al., 2015. Quantifying changes in multiple ecosystem services during 1992-2012 in the Sanjiang Plain of China.Science of the Total Environment, 514: 119-130.Abstract Rapid and periodic assessment of the impact of land cover changes on ecosystem services at regional levels is essential to understanding services and sustainability of ecosystems. This study focused on quantifying and assessing changes of multiple ecosystem services in the Sanjiang Plain of China as a result of land cover changes over the period of 1992-2012. This region is important for its large area of natural wetlands and intensive agriculture. The ecosystem services that were assessed for this region included its regulating services (water yield and ecosystem carbon stocks), supporting services (suitable waterbird habitats), and provisioning services (food production), and the approach to the assessment was composed of the surface energy balance algorithms for land (SEBAL), soil survey re-sampling method and an empirical waterbird habitat suitability model. This large scale and integrated investigation represents the first systematic evaluation on the status of ecosystem carbon stocks in the Sanjiang Plain in addition to the development of an effective model for analysis of waterbird habitat suitability with the use of both remote sensing and geographic information systems (GIS). More importantly, the result from this study has confirmed trade-offs between ecosystem services and negative consequences to environment in this region. The trade-offs were typically manifested by increased water yield and significantly grown food production, which is in contrast with significant losses in ecosystem carbon stocks (-14%) and suitable waterbird habitats (-23%) mainly due to the conversion of land cover from wetland to farmland. This finding implies that land use planning and policy making for this economically important region should take ecosystem service losses into account in order to preserve its natural ecosystems in the best interest of society. Copyright 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

DOI PMID

105
Wendland K J, Honzák M, Portela Ret al., 2010. Targeting and implementing payments for ecosystem services: Opportunities for bundling biodiversity conservation with carbon and water services in Madagascar.Ecological Economics, 69(11): 2093-2107.

106
Willemen L, Veldkamp A, Verburg Pet al., 2012. A multi-scale modelling approach for analysing landscape service dynamics.Journal of Environmental Management, 100: 86-95.Shifting societal needs drive and shape landscapes and the provision of their services. This paper presents a modelling approach to visualize the regional spatial and temporal dynamics in landscape service supply as a function of changing landscapes and societal demand. This changing demand can result from different policy targets. In this paper we conceptualise the system in which these dynamics take place by explicitly addressing (i) the multifunctional character of a landscape, (ii) the different spatial levels at which interactions between landscape service supply, demand, and land management occur, and (iii) trade-offs in service supply as a result of land management actions. Next, we translate the resulting conceptual framework into an operational model. As a demonstration, this model is applied to simulate changes in landscape service supply driven by regional policies in a rural region of the Netherlands. This application demonstrates potential trade-offs, which emerge in a spatially explicit way in the region over time. It illustrates the potential relevance of modelling landscape service dynamics for environmental management and decision making.

DOI PMID

107
Yahdjian L, Sala O E, Havstad K M, 2015. Rangeland ecosystem services: Shifting focus from supply to reconciling supply and demand.Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 13(1): 44-51.ABSTRACT

DOI

Options
Outlines

/

〈 〉