Ecosystem service bundles in global hinterlands

Abstract

In the face of projected increases in globalization and urbanization, there is growing recognition that cities and their hinterlands will play a pivotal role in both creating and addressing the sustainability challenges of the future. Hinterlands, the rural areas that surround cities, are connected to cities as the source of many of the ecosystem services (ES) that are used in urban areas. While much is known about the provision of multiple ES in and around a few well-studied cities, there is a limited amount of consistently measured, global-scale data about the provision of multiple ES in urban areas and their hinterlands. We mapped eight ES globally, and examined how the production of ES varied between the hinterlands (within 200 km) of 768 major city centers (population > 500 000). We found that there are seven archetypes of ES supply bundles in global hinterlands. Hinterlands near wealthy cities are specialists in regulating ES production while the poorest and most populated hinterlands are specialists in food production, with low levels of regulating and cultural ES provision. These hinterlands also experience different synergies and tradeoffs between ES, with interesting implications for landscape management. Global teleconnections have likely also played a role in the ES bundles of hinterlands, since they have allowed cities to exploit remote areas to meet their demand for ES, undermining the traditional supply-demand relationship between each city and its proximal hinterland. These results emphasize the diverse, and sometimes inequitable, ways that urbanization and globalization are influencing ES supply in the planet’s most human-modified landscapes.