Abstract
The Israel - National Ecosystem Assessment (I-NEA) project aims to present a comprehensive picture of the state and trends of Israel's ecosystem services across all ecosystems, by integrating existing data and information collected from a wide range of sources. Although there is a lack of information about the spatial distribution of ecosystem services’ provisioning in Israel, their mapping constitutes an important part of the assessment.In this paper, we present a national-scale mapping of three ecosystem services, each of them implemented using different methods: 1) Genetic resources service, mapped using spatial observations of the Crop Wild Relatives species; 2) potential of pollination service, which is provided by wild bees, mapped using an expert-based habitat model related to land use and land cover; and 3) cultural service of recreation, mapped by analysing the distribution of geotagged digital photographs uploaded to social media resources. The derived maps visualise, for the first time in Israel, the spatially distributed values of the three ecosystem services. Supply hotspots with high values for all three services were identified, as well as spatial differences amongst the ecosystem services. These national-scale maps provide overlooked insights and can be very useful for strategic discussions of stakeholders and decision-makers but should be regarded with caution given existing knowledge gaps and possible inaccuracies due to data scarcity and low resolution.
Highlights
Nationwide assessment and mapping of ecosystem services (ES) are considered as key elements for supporting the maintenance and restoration of ecosystems and their services at the national scale and, are part of several EU initiatives (Maes et al 2016)
The Israel National Ecosystem Assessment (I-NEA) project was designed to increase the general public’s awareness of the multifaceted values of nature and the human dependence on functioning ecosystems and to produce an information base that can assist managers, decision- and policy-makers to incorporate the value of ES and biodiversity into planning processes, land management and policy
We present the process and method used for mapping three ES, representing the three categories of ES – provisioning, regulating and cultural
Summary
Nationwide assessment and mapping of ecosystem services (ES) are considered as key elements for supporting the maintenance and restoration of ecosystems and their services at the national scale and, are part of several EU initiatives (Maes et al 2016). The number of studies that deal with ES in Israel, though rising, is still relatively low, especially those that include mapping, and all of them have been conducted at a local or landscape spatial scale. The Israel National Ecosystem Assessment (I-NEA) project was designed to increase the general public’s awareness of the multifaceted values of nature and the human dependence on functioning ecosystems and to produce an information base that can assist managers, decision- and policy-makers to incorporate the value of ES and biodiversity into planning processes, land management and policy.
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