Historical dynamics of ecosystem services and land management policies in Switzerland

Abstract

Ecosystem services (ES) are dynamic over space and time. Understanding and quantifying spatio-temporal trade-offs and synergies among multiples ES, as well identifying the drivers of change provides an opportunity to make the link between ecosystems, policy and land management. We present an approach to understand the historical dynamics of ES and to analyze the regional diversity in ES changes in Switzerland. A spatio-temporal approach was used to examine changes of nine ES and their relationships from 1986 to 2015 across the twenty-six Swiss cantons. We found that ES supply was dependent on the spatial and temporal distribution of interacting factors. The relationships between ES shifted through time, and the correlation between the supply of ES and the distance between cantons was significant but remained almost constant through time. Each canton is providing a specific bundle (a set of positively correlated ES), dominated by just a few services. Trajectories in ES supply were related to changes in population density and the surface area of organic farming, reflecting trajectories in national strategies of land use planning and agriculture, respectively. Cantons with the lowest supply of ES had the highest population density, while the cantons with the greatest abundance of cultural ES had the lowest population density, which suggests that the densification trend in Switzerland could yield negative externalities. The promotion of organic farming and moderate population density was suitable to ensure sustainable supply of provisioning and regulating ES, but not cultural ES. We provide clear evidence of the dynamic nature of ES through time. Analyses of the relationships between the drivers and ES supply allows identifying the potential limits of national policies and new forms of land use planning based the ecosystem multifunctionality of territories.