Abstract
High landscape diversity is assumed to increase the number and level of ecosystem services. However, the interactions between ecosystem service provision, disturbance and landscape composition are poorly understood. Here we present a novel approach to include uncertainty in the optimization of land allocation for improving the provision of multiple ecosystem services. We refer to the rehabilitation of abandoned agricultural lands in Ecuador including two types of both afforestation and pasture rehabilitation, together with a succession option. Our results show that high compositional landscape diversity supports multiple ecosystem services (multifunction effect). This implicitly provides a buffer against uncertainty. Our work shows that active integration of uncertainty is only important when optimizing single or highly correlated ecosystem services and that the multifunction effect on landscape diversity is stronger than the uncertainty effect. This is an important insight to support a land-use planning based on ecosystem services.
Highlights
High landscape diversity is assumed to increase the number and level of ecosystem services
Despite empirical evidence supporting the advantages of high landscape diversity, the mechanisms behind land allocation, the resulting multiple ecosystem services and various dimensions of uncertainty are not yet well understood
Our results show that high landscape compositional diversity is realized when optimization aims to improve levels of multiple ecosystem services, even when ignoring uncertainties
Summary
High landscape diversity is assumed to increase the number and level of ecosystem services. Our results show that high compositional landscape diversity supports multiple ecosystem services (multifunction effect) This implicitly provides a buffer against uncertainty. Our work shows that active integration of uncertainty is only important when optimizing single or highly correlated ecosystem services and that the multifunction effect on landscape diversity is stronger than the uncertainty effect This is an important insight to support a land-use planning based on ecosystem services. Local efforts to rehabilitate or restore abandoned lands often focus only on single, promising land-use/cover types, afforestation, and disregard options for diversification. It has been shown that optimized land allocation can mitigate trade-offs between multiple services[16]
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