Redefining Landscape Structure for Ecosystem Services

Abstract

Our understanding of the effects of landscape structure on ecosystem services (ES) remains at a very early stage, despite a large body of literature on the effects of the composition and configuration of natural land cover on some ES. Here, I argue that a comprehensive understanding of the effects of landscape structure on ES requires us to reconsider what constitutes landscape structure for ES. Such reconsideration requires us to re-visit John Wiens’ idea that for biodiversity, a landscape and its structure are organism- and question- dependent and apply this idea to ES by redefining landscape structure for ES to include not only land cover, but also other social and biophysical drivers of ES. The underlying reason for this is that ES are products of coupled socio-ecological systems and therefore do not only depend on ecological processes and/or distributions of key species, but also on social and biophysical variables. As a result, for many ES, relevant landscape structure will not only include features traditionally considered by ecologists, such as natural land cover, but also the amount and configuration of social variables, such as land management systems and distributions of wealth and human populations. Obtaining a general understanding of how landscape structure affects ES is vital if we are to manage landscapes effectively to ensure sustainable supplies of ES now and into the future.