Abstract
Human population growth and resource use, mediated by changes in climate, land use, and water use, increasingly impact biodiversity and ecosystem services provision. However, impacts of these drivers on biodiversity and ecosystem services are rarely analyzed simultaneously and remain largely unknown. An emerging question is how science can improve the understanding of change in biodiversity and ecosystem service delivery and of potential feedback mechanisms of adaptive governance. We analyzed past and future change in drivers in south-central Sweden. We used the analysis to identify main research challenges and outline important research tasks. Since the 19th century, our study area has experienced substantial and interlinked changes; a 1.6°C temperature increase, rapid population growth, urbanization, and massive changes in land use and water use. Considerable future changes are also projected until the mid-21st century. However, little is known about the impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services so far, and this in turn hampers future projections of such effects. Therefore, we urge scientists to explore interdisciplinary approaches designed to investigate change in multiple drivers, underlying mechanisms, and interactions over time, including assessment and analysis of matching-scale data from several disciplines. Such a perspective is needed for science to contribute to adaptive governance by constantly improving the understanding of linked change complexities and their impacts.
Highlights
Human population growth and industrialization of agriculture have been major drivers of Earth system change since the late 18th century, increasing the species extinction rate substantially above the background level (MEA 2005, Steffen et al 2007)
Our analysis shows that Norrström drainage basin (NDB) has experienced major historical changes in climate, human population, and landwater use
We suggest that there has been no comprehensive assessment of past changes in biodiversity and ecosystem service delivery in NDB since the 19th century, extensive changes have occurred in response to a number of interacting drivers
Summary
Human population growth and industrialization of agriculture have been major drivers of Earth system change since the late 18th century, increasing the species extinction rate substantially above the background level (MEA 2005, Steffen et al 2007). With the exception of large-scale national projects for which interdisciplinary assessments are crucial (e.g., Kautsky et al 2013), these governance challenges and the potentially synergistic effects of multiple drivers on biodiversity (Brook et al 2008) are rarely analyzed simultaneously. This lack of integrative studies raises the question of how well the scientific community understands the processes underlying change in biodiversity, ecosystem functions, and ecosystem services (Naeem et al 2012), and whether future projections can be used to inform decision making (Olsson et al 2010). Research tasks showing how interdisciplinary research can enhance our understanding of these linkages and feedback effects of governance
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