Residents' views on landscape and ecosystem services during a wind farm proposal in an island protected area

Industrial wind farms are being developed within many protected areas, such as in EU Natura 2000 sites; this includes proposals on small Mediterranean islands, such as Samothraki in Greece. Scarce wild land areas on islands may be particularly vulnerable to landscape-scale degradation; this may have serious negative societal impacts. Samothraki's resident perceptions were surveyed in the wake of such a proposal, in June 2018. Of 98 respondents, 48% reported they were against the wind farm plan, while 22% did not take sides. We compare for-and-against sub-group perceptions of the proposed wind farm with potential impacts on the landscape and explore residents' opinions on ecosystem services and environmental pressures and threats. Conflict over the wind farm was prevalent; residents most frequently reported that the proposal threatens aesthetic and landscape qualities. Aesthetic qualities were also the second highest ranked ecosystem services, after freshwater provision. However, other threats, such as livestock overgrazing, top residents' opinion of major environmental problems on the island. The questionnaire survey used provides a scoping assessment, which may assist in identifying "conflict hotspots" for wind farm development. A critical review of wind farm planning in protected areas is presented in light of insights gained from this survey and other relevant studies

Modeling water regulation ecosystem services: A review in the context of ecosystem accounting

Natural Capital Accounting (NCA) has evolved rapidly in recent years through substantial efforts of both international organizations and the scientific community. Water regulation ecosystem services (ES) are key elements of regulating services in ecosystem accounting, with most relevant studies strongly relying on models for ES quantification up to now. In this paper, we provide a review of modeling efforts for water regulation ES based on 148 scientific papers, properly systematized, analyzed and interpreted by using a detailed and structured original template. We examined emerging trends and gaps in model applications and the readiness to integrate them into the NCA and SEEA-EA frameworks. We propose a classification scheme which organizes the 92 different models and modeling approaches identified in the review process into eight model categories so that this scheme can be efficiently used in the water ES assessment of and for further integration into the accounting framework. Among the models, the hydrologic model SWAT and the modeling tool InVEST are by far the most popular. The results of the review revealed differences between the general ES literature and the accounting-related papers. Moreover, our analysis sets the basis for useful recommendations of which model categories are the most appropriate for the water regulation ES, included in the SEEA-EA reference list. Based on the number of relevant papers, the reliability and the confidence level of the recommendations for the use of models have been incorporated in our analysis. We highlight as model category with the highest confidence the ones relative to quantification water flow and flood control service aiming at ES accounting. Models for erosion control ES can only be recommended with a lower confidence, while for water purification the results lack clear evidence for using a particular group of models. Based on the research findings we identified the main research priorities on model integration in the accounting of water regulation ES: 1) further development of guidelines for the use of models in ecosystem accounting; 2) analyses of the spatial aspects of the model towards a clear distinction between ecosystem service supply and use; and 3) development of integrated modeling approaches for water regulation ES accounting. © 2022 The Author(s

Translating land cover/land use classifications to habitat taxonomies for landscape monitoring: A Mediterranean assessment

Periodic monitoring of biodiversity changes at a landscape scale constitutes a key issue for conservation managers. Earth observation (EO) data offer a potential solution, through direct or indirect mapping of species or habitats. Most national and international programs rely on the use of land cover (LC) and/or land use (LU) classification systems. Yet, these are not as clearly relatable to biodiversity in comparison to habitat classifications, and provide less scope for monitoring. While a conversion from LC/LU classification to habitat classification can be of great utility, differences in definitions and criteria have so far limited the establishment of a unified approach for such translation between these two classification systems. Focusing on five Mediterranean NATURA 2000 sites, this paper considers the scope for three of the most commonly used global LC/LU taxonomies—CORINE Land Cover, the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) land cover classification system (LCCS) and the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme to be translated to habitat taxonomies. Through both quantitative and expert knowledge based qualitative analysis of selected taxonomies, FAO-LCCS turns out to be the best candidate to cope with the complexity of habitat description and provides a framework for EO and in situ data integration for habitat mapping, reducing uncertainties and class overlaps and bridging the gap between LC/LU and habitats domains for landscape monitoring—a major issue for conservation. This study also highlights the need to modify the FAO-LCCS hierarchical class description process to permit the addition of attributes based on class-specific expert knowledge to select multi-temporal (seasonal) EO data and improve classification. An application of LC/LU to habitat mapping is provided for a coastal Natura 2000 site with high classification accuracy as a result

Vegetation of Europe: hierarchical floristic classification system of vascular plant, bryophyte, lichen, and algal communities

Vegetation classification consistent with the Braun-Blanquet approach is widely used in Europe for applied vegetation science, conservation planning and land management. During the long history of syntaxonomy, many concepts and names of vegetation units have been proposed, but there has been no single classification system integrating these units. Here we (1) present a comprehensive, hierarchical, syntaxonomic system of alliances, orders and classes of Braun-Blanquet syntaxonomy for vascular plant, bryophyte and lichen, and algal communities of Europe; (2) briefly characterize in ecological and geographic terms accepted syntaxonomic concepts; (3) link available synonyms to these accepted concepts; and (4) provide a list of diagnostic species for all classes. Location: European mainland, Greenland, Arctic archipelagos (including Iceland, Svalbard, Novaya Zemlya), Canary Islands, Madeira, Azores, Caucasus, Cyprus. Methods: We evaluated approximately 10 000 bibliographic sources to create a comprehensive list of previously proposed syntaxonomic units. These units were evaluated by experts for their floristic and ecological distinctness, clarity of geographic distribution and compliance with the nomenclature code. Accepted units were compiled into three systems of classes, orders and alliances (EuroVegChecklist, EVC) for communities dominated by vascular plants (EVC1), bryophytes and lichens (EVC2) and algae (EVC3). Results: EVC1 includes 109 classes, 300 orders and 1108 alliances; EVC2 includes 27 classes, 53 orders and 137 alliances, and EVC3 includes 13 classes, 24 orders and 53 alliances. In total 13 448 taxa were assigned as indicator species to classes of EVC1, 2087 to classes of EVC2 and 368 to classes of EVC3. Accepted syntaxonomic concepts are summarized in a series of appendices, and detailed information on each is accessible through the software tool EuroVegBrowser. Conclusions: This paper features the first comprehensive and critical account of European syntaxa and synthesizes more than 100 yr of classification effort by European phytosociologists. It aims to document and stabilize the concepts and nomenclature of syntaxa for practical uses, such as calibration of habitat classification used by the European Union, standardization of terminology for environmental assessment, management and conservation of nature areas, landscape planning and education. The presented classification systems provide a baseline for future development and revision of European syntaxonomy.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Protection and Management of Species, Habitats, Ecosystems and Landscapes: Current Trends and Global Needs

Human well-being and the prerequisite sustainable environmental management are currently at stake, reaching a bottleneck when trying to cope with (i) the ever-growing world population, (ii) the constantly increasing need for natural resources (and the subsequent overexploitation of species, habitats, ecosystems, and landscapes) and (iii) the documented and on-going impacts of climate change. In developed societies, the concern about environmental protection is set high in the public dialogue, as well as to management and policy agendas. The recently constituted Intergovernmental Science—Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) urges transformative changes for technological, economic, and social factors aiming to tackle both direct and indirect drivers of biodiversity loss. By this, the role of conservation and management practices for the environment is characterized as a crucial and top issue and should deal with (a) promoting best practices from the local to the global level, (b) identifying spatial and temporal knowledge gaps, (c) multidisciplinary aspects for sustainable management practices, (d) identifying and interpreting the role of stakeholders and socio-economic parameters in the decision-making process, and (e) methods and practices to integrate the concept of ecosystem services into natural capital assessment and accounting, conservation and management strategies. Modern literature highlights that land-use change and prioritization, restoration of natural areas, cultural landscape identification and maintenance, should be considered to the top of the scientific and policy agenda, as well as to the epicenter of novel awareness-raising strategies for the environment in the near future

Ecosystem services supply in protected mountains of Greece: setting the baseline for conservation management

The mapping and assessment of ecosystems and their services, an initiative under the EU Biodiversity Strategy to 2020, sets the basis for national ecosystem assessments in EU Member States, including Greece. The highly diverse and heterogeneous Greek landscape provides multiple ecosystem services (ES) and benefits to society. However, the rich knowledge base corresponds to limited research to support a national ecosystem assessment in Greece. In this paper, we apply a rapid method to map ecosystem types and quantify ES supply provided by mountainous protected areas. Using habitat type level data, we created a detailed ecosystem type map that was used as a baseline to assess the supply of provisioning and regulating and maintenance ES. We also applied a site-oriented approach to record and score the ES supply in each protected area. Summing up individual ES supply resulted in a total ES supply map which was used to identify ES hot spot areas within the Greek Natura 2000 mountainous sites. The results: (1) corroborate the hypothesis that protected areas should be treated as high value bio-physical and social-cultural complexes accounting for a significant part of the national capital; (2) highlight data gaps at the national level and limitations of ES mapping methods under such data restrictions; (3) are intended to provide to stakeholders and decision-makers, baseline information for future applied research and conservation management actions.EDITED BY Matthias Schröte

Ecosystem services supply in protected mountains of Greece: setting the baseline for conservation management

The mapping and assessment of ecosystems and their services, an initiative under the EU Biodiversity Strategy to 2020, sets the basis for national ecosystem assessments in EU Member States, including Greece. The highly diverse and heterogeneous Greek landscape provides multiple ecosystem services (ES) and benefits to society. However, the rich knowledge base corresponds to limited research to support a national ecosystem assessment in Greece. In this paper, we apply a rapid method to map ecosystem types and quantify ES supply provided by mountainous protected areas. Using habitat type level data, we created a detailed ecosystem type map that was used as a baseline to assess the supply of provisioning and regulating and maintenance ES. We also applied a site-oriented approach to record and score the ES supply in each protected area. Summing up individual ES supply resulted in a total ES supply map which was used to identify ES hot spot areas within the Greek Natura 2000 mountainous sites. The results: a) corroborate the hypothesis that protected areas should be treated as high value bio-physical and social-cultural complexes accounting for a significant part of the national capital; b) highlight data gaps at the national level and limitations of ES mapping methods under such data restrictions; c) are intended to provide to stakeholders and decision makers, baseline information for future applied research and conservation management actions.JRC.D.3-Land Resource

Climate-Change Impacts on the Southernmost Mediterranean Arctic-Alpine Plant Populations

Human-induced climate- and land-use change have been affecting biogeographical and biodiversity patterns for the past two centuries all over the globe, resulting in increased extinction and biotic homogenization rates. High mountain ecosystems are more sensitive to these changes, which have led to physiological and phenological shifts, as well as to ecosystem processes’ deformation. Glacial relicts, such as arctic-alpine taxa, are sensitive indicators of the effects of global warming and their rear-edge populations could include warm-adapted genotypes that might prove—conservation-wise—useful in an era of unprecedented climate regimes. Despite the ongoing thermophilization in European and Mediterranean summits, it still remains unknown how past and future climate-change might affect the distributional patterns of the glacial relict, arctic-alpine taxa occurring in Greece, their European southernmost distributional limit. Using species distribution models, we investigated the impacts of past and future climate changes on the arctic-alpine taxa occurring in Greece and identified the areas comprising arctic-alpine biodiversity hotspots in Greece. Most of these species will be faced with severe range reductions in the near future, despite their innate resilience to a multitude of threats, while the species richness hotspots will experience both altitudinal and latitudinal shifts. Being long-lived perennials means that there might be an extinction-debt present in these taxa, and a prolonged stability phase could be masking the deleterious effects of climate change on them. Several ex situ conservation measures (e.g., seed collection, population augmentation) should be taken to preserve the southernmost populations of these rare arctic-alpine taxa and a better understanding of their population genetics is urgently needed

Extinction Risk Assessment of the Greek Endemic Flora

Human-induced biodiversity decline has been on the rise for the past 250 years, due to various causes. What is equally troubling, is that we are unaware which plants are threatened and where they occur. Thus, we are far from reaching Aichi Biodiversity Target 2, i.e., assessing the extinction risk of most species. To that end, based on an extensive occurrence dataset, we performed an extinction risk assessment according to the IUCN Criteria A and B for all the endemic plant taxa occurring in Greece, one of the most biodiverse countries in Europe, in a phylogenetically-informed framework and identified the areas needing conservation prioritization. Several of the Greek endemics are threatened with extinction and fourteen endemics need to be prioritized, as they are evolutionary distinct and globally endangered. Mt. Gramos is identified as the most important conservation hotspot in Greece. However, a significant portion of the identified conservation hotspots is not included in any designated Greek protected area, meaning that the Greek protected areas network might need to be at least partially redesigned. In the Anthropocene era, where climate and land-use change are projected to alter biodiversity patterns and may force many species to extinction, our assessment provides the baseline for future conservation research, ecosystem services maintenance, and might prove crucial for the timely, systematic and effective aversion of plant extinctions in Greece