Abstract
Urbanisation places increasing stress on ecosystem services; however existing methods and data for testing relationships between service delivery and urban landscapes remain imprecise and uncertain. Unknown impacts of scale are among several factors that complicate research. This study models ecosystem services in the urban area comprising the towns of Milton Keynes, Bedford and Luton which together represent a wide range of the urban forms present in the UK. The objectives of this study were to test (1) the sensitivity of ecosystem service model outputs to the spatial resolution of input data, and (2) whether any resultant scale dependency is constant across different ecosystem services and model approaches (e.g. stock- versus flow-based). Carbon storage, sediment erosion, and pollination were modelled with the InVEST framework using input data representative of common coarse (25 m) and fine (5 m) spatial resolutions. Fine scale analysis generated higher estimates of total carbon storage (9.32 vs. 7.17 kg m−2) and much lower potential sediment erosion estimates (6.4 vs. 18.1 Mg km−2 year−1) than analyses conducted at coarser resolutions; however coarse-scale analysis estimated more abundant pollination service provision. Scale sensitivities depend on the type of service being modelled; stock estimates (e.g. carbon storage) are most sensitive to aggregation across scales, dynamic flow models (e.g. sediment erosion) are most sensitive to spatial resolution, and ecological process models involving both stocks and dynamics (e.g. pollination) are sensitive to both. Care must be taken to select model data appropriate to the scale of inquiry.
Highlights
The influence of scale has long been an important topic in ecological research, and it is well-documented that many spatial patterns in ecology are highly scale dependent (e.g. Wiens 1989; Elith and Leathwick 2009; Chave 2013)
Fine scale analysis generated higher estimates of total carbon storage (9.32 vs. 7.17 kg m-2) and much lower potential sediment erosion estimates (6.4 vs. 18.1 Mg km-2 year-1) than analyses conducted at coarser resolutions; coarse-scale analysis estimated more abundant pollination service provision
Scale sensitivities depend on the type of service being modelled; stock estimates are most sensitive to aggregation across scales, dynamic flow models are most sensitive to spatial resolution, and ecological process models involving both stocks and dynamics are sensitive to both
Summary
The influence of scale has long been an important topic in ecological research, and it is well-documented that many spatial patterns in ecology are highly scale dependent (e.g. Wiens 1989; Elith and Leathwick 2009; Chave 2013). Konarska et al 2002; Andersson et al 2015; Holt et al 2015) In both the measurement and modelling of such services, tradeoffs between accuracy and feasibility exist when selecting a scale of inquiry, and finding an optimal balance depends on research goals and decisionmaking contexts (Schroter et al 2015). (2) possessing information about the composition of the environment at the appropriate scale and resolution. The first of these primarily concerns our understanding of the key processes that underpin services, and how these work in different ecosystems, i.e. the mechanisms used in the modelling process. The second, the scale and classification of data on the environment, concerns the nature of input data, and is our focus here
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
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
