Abstract
Maintaining and, where possible, improving the ecological status of our water resources are of particular importance for the future. So, one of the main drivers of landscape design must be to protect our waters. In this study, we carried out an evaluation of four hydrologic ecosystem services (HES) in the Zala River catchment area, the largest tributary of Lake Balaton (more than half of the lake’s surface inflow comes from the Zala River), Hungary. The lake has great ecological, economic and social importance to the country. We used the cell-based InVEST model to quantify the spatial distribution of flood control, erosion control and nutrient retention ecosystem services for phosphorus and nitrogen; then, we carried out an aggregated evaluation. Thereby, we localized the hot spots of service delivery and tested the effect of focused land use changes in critical areas of low performance on the examined four HES. Forests proved to have the best aggregated result, while croplands near the stream network performed poorly. The modelled change in land use resulted in significant improvement on nutrient filtration and moderate to minimal but improving change for the other HES in most cases. The applied method is suitable as a supporting tool at the watershed level for decision-makers and landscape designers with the aim of protecting water bodies.
Highlights
A good quality and the right amount of surface water have been crucial for human well-being and life in general ever since (Water Framework Directive 2000)
In 70% of the area, the difference in ET was less than 25% compared to previous calculations
SWY typically overestimated previously calculated ET. This may be because the period we examined covered a longer period, whereas the analysis of Szilagyi and Kovacs (2011) examined a shorter dry period
Summary
A good quality and the right amount of surface water have been crucial for human well-being and life in general ever since (Water Framework Directive 2000). These two aspects: quality and quantity, are determined to a significant degree by the ecosystems surrounding the water bodies (Dingman 2015; Erős et al 2019; Şandric et al 2019). In contrast to aquatic ecosystem services (Martin-Ortega et al 2015), which encompass ecosystem services (ES) related to the aquatic environment that take place within the water body (Brauman 2016), HES are determined by hydrologic processes within the catchment area. By regulating the movement of water, not just surface and subsurface flow of water is slowed down, regulating the accumulation of precipitation (flood regulation or flood control ES), and
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