A short history of the ecosystem services concept

Mapping ecosystem services delivers essential insights into the spatial characteristics of various goods’ and services’ flows from nature to human society. It has become a central topic of science, policy, business and society – all belonging on functioning ecosystems. This textbook summarises the current state-of-the-art of ecosystem services mapping, related theory and methods, different ecosystem service quantification and modelling approaches as well as practical applications. The book is produced by various international experts in the field, in a professional but understandable format to be used by stakeholders, students, teachers, practitioners and scientists involved or interested in ecosystem services mapping. Benjamin Burkhard is a professor for physical geography at Leibniz Universität Hannover, Germany. He is doing research and teaching in geography and landscape ecology and has been involved in ecosystem services mapping since many years. Joachim Maes is a researcher at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre in Ispra, Italy. He is engaged in the scientific support of EU biodiversity policy and develops maps of ecosystem services at European scale

Agricultural biomass as provisioning ecosystem service: quantification of energy flows

Agro-ecosystems supply provisioning, regulating and cultural services to human society. This study focuses on the agro-ecosystem provisioning services regarding the production of agricultural biomass. These services strongly respond to the socio-economic demands of human beings, and are characterised by an injection of energy in the ecosystems production cycle which is often exceeding the ecological capacity of the ecosystem, i.e. the overall ability of the ecosystem to produce goods and services linked to its bio-physical structure and processes that take place during the agricultural production. Agricultural production is identified as ecosystem service in widely recognised ecosystem service frameworks, but currently there is no clear agreement within the scientific and policy communities on how the ecological-socio-economic flow linked to this provisioning service should be assessed, beyond a mere accounting of yields. This study attempts to provide a new insight to this issue by proposing an approach based on the energy budget, which takes into consideration the energy needed by the ecosystem to supply the service. The approach is based on the concepts of Energy Return on Investment (EROI) and Net Energy Balance (NEB), and considers different bio-physical structures and processes of agro-ecosystems. The work is structured in three parts: the first aims at estimating inputs (machinery, seeds, fertilizers, irrigation, labour) in energy terms; the second at estimating biomass output in energy terms; the third to compare actual agricultural production with three reference scenarios encompassing a range of human input (no input – low input – high input scenarios). Results show that in general terms cereal and grassland systems have the largest energy gains (both in terms of EROI and NEB). Such systems are characterised by a lower economic value of their output compared to other producing systems such as fruits, which have lower energy gains but a higher embodied energy, which is recognized in the market as valuable. Comparison of actual production systems with the high input scenario confirms that current production in Europe is already highly intensive, and that increasing the energy input would not improve the efficiency of the conversion of such additional energy into biomass. Overall, the proposed approach seems a useful tool to identify which are the factors in the agricultural production process that could be modified to improve the energy efficiency in agricultural systems and the sustainability of their production. This study can be considered as a first step in the assessment of the total energy balance of the agro-ecosystem. In fact it deals with the quantification of energy regarding human inputs and the corresponding output and further analysis should address crucial issues such as the quality of the energy and the embodied energy in the plant production, which will help to understand the full complexity of the agro-ecosystemJRC.H.4-Monitoring Agricultural Resource

Social Perceptions of Forest Ecosystem Services in the Democratic Republic of Congo

The forests of the Albertine Rift are known for their high biodiversity and the important ecosystem services they provide to millions of inhabitants. However, their conservation and the maintenance of ecosystem service delivery is a challenge, particularly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Our research investigates how livelihood strategy and ethnicity affects local perceptions of forest ecosystem services. We collected data through 25 focus-group discussions in villages from distinct ethnic groups, including farmers (Tembo, Shi, and Nyindu) and hunter-gatherers (Twa). Twa identify more food-provisioning services and rank bush meat and honey as the most important. They also show stronger place attachment to the forest than the farmers, who value other ecosystem services, but all rank microclimate regulation as the most important. Our findings help assess ecosystem services trade-offs, highlight the important impacts of restricted access to forests resources for Twa, and point to the need for developing alternative livelihood strategies for these communities

TEEB emerging at the country level : Challenges and opportunities

Since the presentation of its international reports at the 2010 Convention on Biological Diversity Conference of Parties, TEEB (The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity)-an international multi-stakeholder initiative-has been taken up in a number of countries to initiate TEEB Country Studies (TCSs). Their common aim is to take stock of natural capital, to reveal its social and economic values and to provide a basis for policy making that fosters sustainable use of ecosystem services. Depending on national circumstances and needs, TCSs differ substantially in terms of scope, ecosystem services, stakeholder involvement, sectors and policies considered etc. Key challenges faced in implementation include policy relevance, and a number of technical, methodological and conceptual issues. Integrating TEEB into existing and emerging national to local development strategies can provide substantial synergies, and linking TCSs with international or regional ecosystem initiatives and policies may add further value to advance methodological and policy issues related to ecosystems and biodiversity. Factors and interactions are depicted in a framework for TEEB implementation at country level. With a view at its pathway, we conclude that TEEB developed from an international study to a demand driven process which supports policy development and implementation at various levels

ALTER-Net, a long-term biodiversity, ecosystem and awareness research network - Year 8

Van Dijk, J., Ulvund, K., Braat, L., Sier, A., Mirtl, M., Watt, A., Peltola, T. and Delbaere, B. 2012. ALTER-Net, a long-term biodiversity, ecosystem and awareness research network - Year 8 - NINA Report 815, 36 pp. The year 2011 was used to restructure and organize our work towards ALTER-Net after April 2012, when external funding for holding the secretariat will end. Early 2011 Council elected a new chairman for Council – Eeva Furman (SYKE) and a new chairman for the Management Board – Leon Braat (Alterra). During 2011 it became clear that all partner institutes were willing to continue with ALTER-Net in the future, that the secretariat work would be outsourced to different institutes with a rotating system for especially the financial administration as to increase institutional participation. ALTER-Net welcomed two new partner institutes to our consortium (VU-IVM and IGB). With the new structure ALTER-Net is currently scheduled to run until April 2014. During April 2011 – March 2012 the eight year of ALTER-Net our website was changed and moved to a new provider and we repeated our second Multi-Site Experiment on decomposition using 15 monitoring sites managed by 12 ALTER-Net partner institutes and 3 non ALTER-Net partner institutes. In addition ALTER-Net organized a Long-Term Social Ecological Research Workshop at SYKE in Helsinki and was actively involved in the two currently running EU projects on the Science-Policy interface, i.e. KNEU and SPIRAL. We also organized our yearly ALTER-Net summer school again. These processes help ALTER-Net to reach its objective to promote a better integrated and stronger European biodiversity research capacity. The result will be the establishment of a lasting infrastructure for integrated ecosystem research, combining ecological and socioeconomic approaches, and with greater emphasis on communication with relevant audiences.publishedVersio