Using social media to measure the contribution of Red List species to the nature-based tourism potential of African protected areas

Cultural ecosystem services are defined by people’s perception of the environment, which make them hard to quantify systematically. Methods to describe cultural benefits from ecosystems typically include resource-demanding survey techniques, which are not suitable to assess cultural ecosystem services for large areas. In this paper we explore a method to quantify cultural benefits through the enjoyment of natured-based tourism, by assessing the potential tourism attractiveness of species for each protected area in Africa using the IUCN’s Red List of Threatened Species. We use the number of pictures of wildlife posted on a photo sharing website as a proxy for charisma, popularity, and ease of observation, as these factors combined are assumed to determine how attractive species are for the global wildlife tourist. Based on photo counts of 2473 African animals and plants, species that seem most attractive to nature-based tourism are the Lion, African Elephant and Leopard. Combining the photo counts with species range data, African protected areas with the highest potential to attract wildlife tourists based on attractive species occurrence were Samburu National Reserve in Kenya, Mukogodo Forest Reserve located just north of Mount Kenya, and Addo Elephant National Park in South-Africa. The proposed method requires only three data sources which are freely accessible and available online, which could make the proposed index tractable for large scale quantitative ecosystem service assessments. The index directly links species presence to the tourism potential of protected areas, making the connection between nature and human benefits explicit, but excludes other important contributing factors for tourism, such as accessibility and safety. This social media based index provides a broad understanding of those species that are popular globally; in many cases these are not the species of highest conservation concern.JRC.H.5-Land Resources Managemen

The effects of armed conflict on forest cover changes across temporal and spatial scales in the Colombian Amazon

This paper's results show that conflict variables have positive relationships with deforestation in Colombia; yet, they are not among the main variables explaining deforestation

The role of nature's contributions to people in sustaining international trade of agricultural products

Nature's contributions to people (NCP) are essential for the production and trade of agricultural, forestry and fishery commodities. Often, there is a spatial disconnect between consumers and the natural systems where the commodities are produced. Traded agricultural products are therefore dependent on nature and NCP in their region of origin. The dependencies of agricultural products on NCP are, however, insufficiently recognised by consumers and are rarely considered in global environmental governance and trade policies along value chains. Here, we synthesise studies highlighting dependencies of agricultural products on NCP in their origin locations to identify opportunities and challenges in quantifying their contribution in sustaining trade flows. We suggest three methodological steps for quantifying NCP dependencies in international agricultural trade: spatial mapping of NCP supply and demand, linking NCP to agricultural trade flows, and tracing trade flows. Each methodological step requires further development and harmonisation to enable a complete accounting of how international agricultural trade depends on NCP. Given the lack of knowledge and data on how NCP support agricultural trade, social and environmental trade-offs of natural resource management are currently hard to quantify. Quantifying the role of NCP dependencies of traded agricultural products can support their sustainable management, contribute to supply chain accountability and serve as input to sustainable natural resource governance and foster responsibility and equity in supply chains. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.</p

Distilling the role of ecosystem services in the Sustainable Development Goals

Achieving well-being for all, while protecting the environment, is one of the most pressing global challenges of our time, and a central idea in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We believe that integrating ecosystem services, the benefits nature provides to people, into strategies for meeting the SDGs can help achieve this. Many development goals are likely underpinned by the delivery of one or more ecosystem services. Understanding how these services could support multiple development targets will be essential for planning synergistic and cost-effective interventions. Here we present the results of an expert survey on the contributions of 16 ecosystem services to achieving SDG targets linked to environment and human well-being, and review the capacity of modelling tools to evaluate SDG-relevant ecosystem services interactions. Survey respondents judged that individual ecosystem services could make important contributions to achieving 41 targets across 12 SDGs. The provision of food and water, habitat & biodiversity maintenance, and carbon storage & sequestration were perceived to each make contributions to >14 SDG targets, suggesting cross-target interactions are likely, and may present opportunities for synergistic outcomes across multiple SDGs. Existing modelling tools are well-aligned to support SDG-relevant ecosystem service planning. Together, this work identifies entry points and tools to further analyze the role of ecosystem services to support the SDGs

Systems thinking : an approach for understanding 'eco-agri-food systems'

The TEEBAgriFood ‘Scientific and Economic Foundations’ report addresses the core theoretical issues and controversies underpinning the evaluation of the nexus between the agri-food sector, biodiversity and ecosystem services and externalities including human health impacts from agriculture on a global scale. It argues the need for a ‘systems thinking‘ approach, draws out issues related to health, nutrition, equity and livelihoods, presents a Framework for evaluation and describes how it can be applied, and identifies theories and pathways for transformational change

Linking planetary boundaries and ecosystem accounting, with an illustration for the Colombian Orinoco river basin

Economic development has increased pressures on natural resources during the last decades. The concept of planetary boundaries has been developed to propose limits on human activities based on earth processes and ecological thresholds. However, this concept was not developed to downscale planetary boundaries to sub-global level. The absence of boundaries at sub-global levels constrains the use of the concept in environmental governance and natural resource management, because decisions are typically taken at these levels. Decisions at the national level are currently supported, among others, by statistical frameworks in particular the System of National Accounts. However, statistical frameworks were not developed to compile environmental information, hindering environmental decision making. Our study examines if and how ecosystem accounting can be used in combination with the concept of planetary boundaries in guiding human activities at the level of a river basin. We assess the applicability of both frameworks for natural resource management in the Orinoco river basin, based on adaptive management components. Our analysis indicates that differences in the purpose of analysis, information provided, and methods constrain the potential integration of both frameworks. Nevertheless, the way both frameworks conceptualize the social system and the interactions between social and ecological systems can facilitate translating planetary boundaries into indicators considered in ecosystem accounting. The information recorded in national ecosystem accounts can support establishing ecological thresholds and, more fundamentally, to relate ecological thresholds to human impacts on ecosystem condition. Capitalizing on these synergies requires further exchange of experiences between the communities working on ecosystem accounting and planetary boundaries

Assessing the Capacity of Ecosystems to Supply Ecosystem Services Using Remote Sensing and An Ecosystem Accounting Approach

Ecosystems contribute to economic development through the supply of ecosystem services such as food and fresh water. Information on ecosystems and their services is required to support policy making, but this information is not captured in economic statistics. Ecosystem accounting has been developed to integrate ecosystems and ecosystem services into national accounts. Ecosystem accounting includes the compilation of an ecosystem services supply and use account, which reflects actual flows of ecosystem services, and the ecosystem capacity account, which reflects the capacity of ecosystems to sustainably supply ecosystem services. A capacity assessment requires detailed data on ecosystem processes, which are often not available over large scales. In this study, we examined how net primary productivity derived from remote sensing can be used as an indicator to assess changes in the capacity of ecosystems to supply services. We examine the spatial and temporal patterns in this capacity for the Orinoco river basin from 2001 to 2014. Specifically, we analyze the capacity of six types of ecosystems to supply timber, pastures for grazing cattle, oil palm fresh fruit bunches and to sequester carbon. We compared ecosystem capacities with the level of ecosystem service supply to assess a sustainable use of ecosystems. Our study provides insights on how the capacity of ecosystems can be quantified using remote sensing data in the context of ecosystem accounting. Ecosystem capacity indicators indicate ecosystems change and harvesting-regeneration patterns which are important for the design and monitoring of sustainable management regimes for ecosystems.</p

Evaluating the impact of regional development policies on future landscape services

In this paper we analyse the potential impact of an integrated policy package for the Gelderse Vallei region in the Netherlands on seven landscape services (residential use, intensive livestock husbandry, drinking water supply, attractiveness for overnight tourism, habitat provision for rare, endemic and indicator plant species, arable agricultural production, and attractiveness for leisure cycling). The spatially explicit methodology focuses on the changes in landscape properties resulting from the implementation of these policies and its effects on the supply of landscape services and economic values of the landscape services. After the policy implementation the strongest increase in services supply is expected in rural areas while the strongest increase in value is expected to occur in (peri-) urban areas of the study area. In addition, full implementation of the policy package will lead to an increase in multifunctional areas. This study presents one of the first spatially explicit methodologies to quantify and analyse spatial variation in economic value of landscape services in time, and therefore can contribute to well-informed management of landscapes.Ecosystem services Economic valuation Land use changes Multifunctionality Spatial analysis The Netherlands

Ecosystem Services at the Landscape Scale: the Need for Integrative Approaches

During the symposium “Ecosystem Services at the Landscape Scale” from the EU-IALE conference 2009, several challenges for future research on approaches to use the concept of ecosystem services at the landscape scale were identified, focussing on the need for integration. Three main research directions were discussed, (i) the definition of the potentials and limitations of the ecosystem service approach for landscape analysis, (ii) the identification of suitable methods and tools to apply the ecosystem service approach at the landscape scale and (iii) the demand of incorporating ecosystem and landscape services in decision making and management. This paper briefly addresses and discusses some of these topics and puts them into a broader perspective. From this viewpoint it becomes obvious that many high-quality sectoral studies are carried out, e.g. concentrating on specific services or specific linkages within the “ecosystem service cascade” which describes the relation between biophysical characteristics of the landscape, their functions, services, benefits and values for society. In order to provide useful information for decision makers, ecosystem services studies should be supplemented by investigations of the whole systems of interactions between ecological processes and societal valuations