Implementation of the ecosystem service concept in water management – Challenges and ways forward

Best Practices for Monitoring and Assessing the Ecological Response to River Restoration

Nature-based solutions are widely advocated for freshwater ecosystem conservation and restoration. As increasing amounts of river restoration are undertaken, the need to understand the ecological response to different measures and where measures are best applied becomes more pressing. It is essential that appraisal methods follow a sound scientific approach. Here, experienced restoration appraisal experts review current best practice and academic knowledge to make recommendations and provide guidance that will enable practitioners to gather and analyse meaningful data, using scientific rigor to appraise restoration success. What should be monitored depends on the river type and the type and scale of intervention. By understanding how habitats are likely to change we can anticipate what species, life stages, and communities are likely to be affected. Monitoring should therefore be integrated and include both environmental/habitat and biota assessments. A robust scientific approach to monitoring and appraisal is resource intensive. We recommend that appraisal efforts be directed to where they will provide the greatest evidence, including ‘flagship’ restoration schemes for detailed long-term monitoring. Such an approach will provide the evidence needed to understand which restoration measures work where and ensure that they can be applied with confidence elsewhere.

How Do Spatial Patterns Impact Regulation of Water-Related Ecosystem Services? Insights from a New Town Development in the Yangtze River Delta, China

Scientists have made efforts to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of ecosystem service valuation and mapping; yet little actual implementation of new ecosystem service knowledge has been delivered in practice. We explored this gap by developing a spatially explicit and semi-qualitative evaluation approach to clarify how the spatial patterns of new town developments impact three types of water-related regulating ecosystem services, namely water flow regulation, flooding mitigation, and water quality regulation. Based on peer-reviewed publications, we identified key indicators with spatial characteristics that practitioners care about and have control of. We investigated the case of Lingang, a satellite city of Shanghai in the Yangtze River Delta, and found that (1) 85.30% of the pre-urban East Lingang with native marshlands performed better holistically while 93.06% of the post-urban East Lingang using the man-made lakeside model performed poorly; (2) 82.47% of the double grids model at West Lingang performed poorly in pre-urban time, while some major waterways were improved by the Hydrological Planning; and (3) a major weakness in the planning process was the ignorance in conserving pre-urban ecological resources, preventing the provision of ecosystem services. Finally, four urban design principles of both large-scale land use considerations and finer-scale design implications were proposed.

Estimation of benefits from the actual use of inland water ecosystem services in the Slovak Republic

The primary aim of the article is to obtain an overview of benefits from the actual use of inland water ecosystem services (ESSs) in Slovakia. The evaluation, which includes both surface water and groundwater, is primarily focused on demand side. Methods for assessing the benefits of the most prevalent ESSs, designated by Common International Classification of Ecosystem Services (CICES classification) v. 4.3, are described and discussed. The evaluation is performed at the level of 10 sub-basins to which available data are allocated. In the absence of necessary data or the impossibility of allocating them to sub-basins, the benefit from the use of some ESSs is estimated at the level of whole Slovak territory. The use of ESSs valuation in practice, especially with regard to water protection of surface water and groundwater, is discussed. The evaluation of benefits from ESSs of inland waters in Slovakia so far does not allow direct use of obtained results for proposal of measures within river basin management plans as suggested by several authors. Main reason is the input data availability and quality. At the present time, the significance of the ESSs evaluation may rather lie in the awareness of the value that human society gains from the use of inland waters. It becomes more evident that increase in environmental awareness alone is not sufficient in terms of the protection of ecosystems and their services. To achieve unambiguous and lasting improvement in this area, it is necessary to address the deeper causes, closely related to human thinking and behaviour.