Abstract
Freshwater ecosystems contribute to many ecosystem services, many of which are being threatened by human activities such as land use change, river morphological changes, and climate change. Many disciplines have studied the processes underlying freshwater ecosystem functions, ranging from hydrology to ecology, including water quality, and a panoply of models are available to simulate their behaviour. This understanding is useful for the prediction of ecosystem services, but the model outputs must go beyond the production of time-series of biophysical variables, and must facilitate the beneficial use of the information it contains about the ecosystem services it describes. This article analyses the literature of ad hoc approaches that aim at quantifying one or more freshwater ecosystem services. It identifies the strategies adopted to use disciplinary-specific models for the prediction of the services. This review identifies that hydrological, water quality, and ecological models form a valuable knowledge base to predict changes in ecosystem conditions, but challenges remain to make proper and fruitful use of these models. In particular, considerations of temporal and spatial scales could be given more attention in order to provide better justifications for the choice of a particular model over another, including the uncertainty in their predictions.
Highlights
Earth’s ecosystems provide many services to human societies [1], recognised in the concept of ecosystems services described in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment [2] as enhancing “the conservation and sustainable use of ecosystems and their contributions to human well-being”.In many regions of the world, human settlements and activities have converted pristine natural areas for urbanisation and agricultural purposes, resulting in natural habitats fragmentation and biodiversity loss [3,4]
The objective of this review is to describe the current state-of-the-art of ad-hoc modelling approaches for the characterisation of freshwater ecosystem services, while including hydrological approaches for the characterisation of freshwater ecosystem services, while including hydrological considerations
We focus on the modelling of environmental system, as represented freshwater ecosystem service
Summary
Earth’s ecosystems provide many services to human societies [1], recognised in the concept of ecosystems services described in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment [2] as enhancing “the conservation and sustainable use of ecosystems and their contributions to human well-being”. In many regions of the world, human settlements and activities have converted pristine natural areas for urbanisation and agricultural purposes, resulting in natural habitats fragmentation and biodiversity loss [3,4]. These human-induced changes have impacted ecosystems and their potential to provide services [5]. The supporting services found in the adaptive capacity of freshwater ecosystems to mitigate some climate change effects and other future pressures is often overlooked in favour of direct uses of the water resources for consumption or irrigation [15]
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