Ecoservices and multifunctional landscapes: Balancing the benefits of integrated ES-based water resources, agricultural and forestry production systems

Abstract

Ecosystem services (ES) are a powerful tool in assessing the relationships that people have with their surrounding tangible environment and the more distant intangible global benefits. Ecoservices are often studied in parallel or viewed as linear, and this misunderstanding or ignorance of the complex interaction among ecoservices may lead to poor or inappropriate land and water management decisions. Quantitatively understanding and establishing the risk to the complex functional relationships among ES impacted by the introduction of alternate production systems requires a new pathway to better decision making.Ecoservices are often interrelated in dynamic and complex ways and provide an avenue, if appropriately coupled, to a more balanced land use-land cover (LULC) multifunctional production system. Variable land use intensities and landscape configurations impact differentially on selected ecosystem functions and services. Anthropogenic activities impact this functionality and require an innovative analytical approach to building an integrated multifunctional ES analytical framework (IMESAF); an approach that spans diverse fields of inquiry.An IMESAF would need to incorporate a variety of ecoservices-based best practice production systems that can elucidate balanced land use scenarios to deliver better environmental and productivity outcomes. In addition, this framework requires policy, economic, sustainability, monitoring and evaluation indices to provide guidance on intermediate and long-term effects of an ecoservices-based production and planning system. This paper provides a synthesis of ideas for creating the framework and how it may underpin balanced land use and investment choices.