Ecosystem Vulnerability Review: Proposal of an Interdisciplinary Ecosystem Assessment Approach

Peter Weißhuhn,Hubert Wiggering,Felix Müller

doi:10.1007/s00267-018-1023-8

Abstract

To safeguard the sustainable use of ecosystems and their services, early detection of potentially damaging changes in functional capabilities is needed. To support a proper ecosystem management, the analysis of an ecosystem’s vulnerability provide information on its weaknesses as well as on its capacity to recover after suffering an impact. However, the application of the vulnerability concept to ecosystems is still an emerging topic. After providing background on the vulnerability concept, we summarize existing ecosystem vulnerability research on the basis of a systematic literature review with a special focus on ecosystem type, disciplinary background, and more detailed definition of the ecosystem vulnerability components. Using the Web of ScienceTM Core Collection, we overviewed the literature from 1991 onwards but used the 5 years from 2011 to 2015 for an in-depth analysis, including 129 articles. We found that ecosystem vulnerability analysis has been applied most notably in conservation biology, climate change research, and ecological risk assessments, pinpointing a limited spreading across the environmental sciences. It occurred primarily within marine and freshwater ecosystems. To avoid confusion, we recommend using the unambiguous term ecosystem vulnerability rather than ecological, environmental, population, or community vulnerability. Further, common ground has been identified, on which to define the ecosystem vulnerability components exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity. We propose a framework for ecosystem assessments that coherently connects the concepts of vulnerability, resilience, and adaptability as different ecosystem responses. A short outlook on the possible operationalization of the concept by ecosystem vulnerabilty indices, and a conclusion section complete the review.

Highlights

Ecosystem services sustain and fulfill several demands of human life but rely on ecosystem processes and associated species (Daily 1997)
To support a conceptual analysis, the literature search was designed to focus on scientific articles that explicitly refer to the vulnerability concept, recognizing this would exclude literature on “resilience”, “risk”, “damage”, “degradation”, or “change” that may be related to the discussion on ecosystem vulnerability
The term “community vulnerability” turned out to be unsuitable, as very few related to ecological communities, with the others relating to human communities

Summary

Introduction

Ecosystem services sustain and fulfill several demands of human life but rely on ecosystem processes and associated species (Daily 1997). Riskhazard models emphasize exposure and sensitivity to perturbations and stressors forming the impact of the hazard; and pressure-and-release models emphasize distinctions in risk related to different vulnerabilities of different exposure units, while both underemphasize the system’s ability to cope with the disaster and learning from it (ibid.). This lead to the idea of adaptive capacity, which conceptually could link vulnerability and resilience research, and turned vulnerability assessments to the purpose of identifying feasible adaptation strategies (Engle 2011; Smit and Wandel 2006)

Objectives

Methods

Findings

Conclusion