Abstract
The science of ecosystem service (ES) mapping has become increasingly sophisticated over the past 20 years, and examples of successfully integrating ES into management decisions at national and sub-national scales have begun to emerge. However, increasing model sophistication and accuracy—and therefore complexity—may trade-off with ease of use and applicability to real-world decision-making contexts, so it is vital to incorporate the lessons learned from implementation efforts into new model development. Using successful implementation efforts for guidance, we developed an integrated ES modelling system to quantify several ecosystem services: forest timber production and carbon storage, water purification, pollination, and biodiversity. The system is designed to facilitate uptake of ES information into land-use decisions through three principal considerations: (1) using relatively straightforward models that can be readily deployed and interpreted without specialized expertise; (2) using an agent-based modelling framework to enable the incorporation of human decision-making directly within the model; and (3) integration among all ES models to simultaneously demonstrate the effects of a single land-use decision on multiple ES. We present an implementation of the model for a major watershed in Alberta, Canada, and highlight the system’s capabilities to assess a suite of ES under future management decisions, including forestry activities under two alternative timber harvest strategies, and through a scenario modelling analysis exploring different intensities of hypothetical agricultural expansion. By using a modular approach, the modelling system can be readily expanded to evaluate additional ecosystem services or management questions of interest in order to guide land-use decisions to achieve socioeconomic and environmental objectives.
Highlights
Ecosystem services (ES) are the benefits derived from natural systems that contribute to human well-being (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005)
While forest sector statistics are not available for specific watershed regions, a 1-year simulation for the year 2010 across the entire province estimated timber revenues of $3.32B (Table B in Supplemental Information 1), representing 91% of the recorded total provincial revenues for wood and pulp products of $3.65B for that year (Statistics Canada, 2015b); given that the model only captures the 85% of timber harvested within Alberta (i.e., Forest Management Agreements (FMA)-based harvest, including Timber Quotas within FMA areas), the model output aligns reasonably well with the observed forestry revenue from that year
We present an implementation of an ES modelling suite for a region in Alberta, Canada, but the majority of underlying modelling processes are generalizable to other jurisdictions if the appropriate data and GIS layers are available
Summary
Ecosystem services (ES) are the benefits derived from natural systems that contribute to human well-being (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005). The practice of ES assessment has advanced rapidly in recent years, with methods of quantification progressing from early efforts to estimate the total value of ecosystem services across entire regions using estimates of value for different landcover types (‘‘benefits transfer’’) (Costanza et al, 1997) to detailed models that capture the actual flow of services from ecosystems to people by explicitly linking ecological production functions to human users (Kareiva et al, 2011; Bagstad et al, 2013a) These mechanistic pathways range from straightforward, spatially uncoupled relationships such as the benefits of carbon sequestration for climate change mitigation, to the close spatial proximity required for insect pollinators to benefit crops, to directional flows such as wetlands that capture flood waters before they reach a developed area (Costanza, 2008). Simple models are likely to be visualized and communicated, and more amenable to the iterative science-policy processes most likely to yield on-the-ground results (Ruckelshaus et al, 2013)
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