Abstract
Safeguarding ecosystem services and biodiversity is critical to achieving sustainable development. To date, ecosystem services quantification has focused on the biophysical supply of services with less emphasis on human beneficiaries (i.e., demand). Only when both occur do ecosystems benefit people, but demand may shift ecosystem service priorities toward human‐dominated landscapes that support less biodiversity. We quantified how accounting for demand affects the efficiency of conservation in capturing both human benefits and biodiversity by comparing conservation priorities identified with and without accounting for demand. We mapped supply and benefit for 3 ecosystem services (flood mitigation, crop pollination, and nature‐based recreation) by adapting existing ecosystem service models to include and exclude factors representing human demand. We then identified conservation priorities for each with the conservation planning program Marxan. Particularly for flood mitigation and crop pollination, supply served as a poor proxy for benefit because demand changed the spatial distribution of ecosystem service provision. Including demand when jointly targeting biodiversity and ecosystem service increased the efficiency of conservation efforts targeting ecosystem services without reducing biodiversity outcomes. Our results highlight the importance of incorporating demand when quantifying ecosystem services for conservation planning.
Highlights
Ecosystem services (ESs) are the direct and indirect contributions of ecosystems to human well-being
We addressed 3 questions: How does incorporating demand shift the spatial distribution of benefits relative to supply? How much benefit is captured by conservation efforts that target supply? How do efforts targeting supply and benefit compare in terms of their biodiversity outcomes?
Demand shifted the spatial distribution of each ES (Fig. 1a), supply and benefit were highly correlated for nature-based recreation (Mantel statistic for crop pollination rs = −0.08, flood mitigation rs = 0.26, nature-based recreation rs = 0.95, p < 2.2 × 10−16 e−16 in all cases) (Fig. 1)
Summary
Ecosystem services (ESs) are the direct and indirect contributions of ecosystems to human well-being. Conservation organizations increasingly target ESs and biodiversity (Ruckelshaus et al 2013; Mace 2014; Guerry et al 2015) under the often implicit assumption that land conservation efforts can simultaneously achieve biodiversity and ES goals. Allocating resources toward ESs may reduce the resources available to conserve biodiversity (McCauley 2006; Luck et al 2012; Reyers et al 2012) given limited conservation budgets. The severity of this trade-off hinges on the spatial overlap of priorities for biodiversity and ESs (Chan et al 2006; Withey et al 2012; Kovacs et al 2013). The metric used to quantify ESs may affect this relationship (Ricketts et al 2016)
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