Abstract

BackgroundThe state of ecosystems influences their services for humans. Therefore, the European Union aims to assess and map ecosystem conditions and ecosystem services at the level of the Union and the Member States to implement maintenance or protection measures, if necessary.This paper examines the relationship between forest ecosystem conditions and ecosystem services at the national level, using Germany as an example. The aim is to create a methodology that allows users to understand and predict how the potential supply of selected ecosystem services might change over time under the influence of climate change and atmospheric nitrogen deposition, and that is reproducible, unlike previous approaches. To this end, the methodology was operationalised in a quantitative and rule-based manner.Methods and resultsThe multitude of forest ecosystem types were grouped into 78 classes according to the degree of similarity of their ecological characteristics that influence the provision of ecosystem services. Thereby, ecoclimatic, soil hydrological and nutrient balance characteristics and 12 potential ecosystem service capacities were taken into account. Three potential ecosystem services were quantified for representatives of the ecosystem type classes. The ecosystem service classification was mapped for all of Germany.ConclusionsThe methodology presented enables a transparent and thus a reproducible classification of current and future ecosystem services

Highlights

  • The state of ecosystems influences their services for humans

  • Since these forest ecosystems are current near-natural ecosystem types, the reference condition information is used to these ecosystem types to derive maximum possible forest performance potentials, just as is done for the near-natural forest ecosystem types

  • The results from the ecosystem type classes as well as the ordination according to ecosystem service potentials can be presented in tabular form

Read more

Summary

Introduction

The state of ecosystems influences their services for humans. the European Union aims to assess and map ecosystem conditions and ecosystem services at the level of the Union and the Member States to implement maintenance or protection measures, if necessary.This paper examines the relationship between forest ecosystem conditions and ecosystem services at the national level, using Germany as an example. The aim is to create a methodology that allows users to understand and predict how the potential supply of selected ecosystem services might change over time under the influence of climate change and atmospheric nitrogen deposition, and that is reproducible, unlike previous approaches. To this end, the methodology was operationalised in a quantitative and rule-based manner. This methodology enables an integrative assessment of changes in ecosystem integrity It was based on an extensive vegetation database, nationally available data from maps and long-term monitoring programmes. This approach supplements existing assessment procedures coping with ecosystem conditions and integrity by more strongly incorporating abiotic environmental factors and their changes as drivers of ecosystem integrity

Methods
Results
Conclusion
Full Text
Published version (Free)

Talk to us

Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have

Schedule a call