Integrating ecosystem services in river basin management plans

Ecosystem services dynamics and their influencing factors: Synergies/tradeoffs interactions and implications, the case of upper Blue Nile basin, Ethiopia

Understanding the relationships among ecosystem services (ESs) and their interactions with influencing factors is essential for spatially targeted ecosystem governance. However, classifying the spatial distribution of these diverse interactions still needs improvement. Furthermore, existing studies have insufficiently addressed the specific impacts of bidirectional land cover transitions on ESs. Taking the upper Blue Nile basin as a study area, we estimated the spatiotemporal distribution of annual water yield (AWY), carbon storage (CS), habitat quality (HQ), and soil retention (SR) from 2000 to 2020, using InVEST models and associated formulas. Changes in ESs per inward-outward land cover transition were quantified based on the Cross-Tabulation Matrix. An improved pairwise method was employed to assess the spatially diverse interactions between ESs pairs and their relationship with influencing factors. The statistical significance of influencing factors was evaluated using partial least square regression. The findings indicated that high HQ values were prevalent in the west, while they were in the east for SR. The central and southern areas experienced higher CS and AWY values. During the study period, variations were observed in the mean values of SR (ranging from 22.89 to 23.88 × 102 t/ha/y), AWY (32.13-42.2 × 102 mm/ha/y), CS (90.5-102.9 × 103gC/ha/y) and HQ (0.62-0.64). Synergies were predominant in AWY-CS, AWY-SR, and CS-SR pairs. HQ revealed more of a no-effect and tradeoff relationship with other ESs. The interactions between ESs and influencing factors were dominated by synergies, followed by tradeoffs and no-effect. The influence of landscape structure (gyrate and landscape shape index) and land surface temperature on all ESs and precipitation on AWY and SR was significant (1.049 ≤ Variable Importance in the Projection ≤ 1.371). Overall, the spatiotemporal dynamics of key ESs and the modeling of their drivers are essential policy information for taking spatially explicit conservation measures. This study will also serve as a valuable methodological reference for future research.

Back to the surface – Daylighting urban streams in a Global North–South comparison

Many urban streams have vanished from the surface as a collateral effect of urban growth. Often, these buried streams have been forgotten, and only street names remind us of their existence. Reasons for stream burial include the gain of space for road or house construction or the use of stream water to transport wastewater. Today, restoration efforts to bring back fully canalized streams to the surface and to restore their stream bed (so-called daylighting) are being increasingly integrated into urban blue-green space planning, recognizing the high ecological and social value of urban streams, especially to support resilience against climate change impacts in cities. In this paper, we briefly revise the impacts of stream burial, present a series of case studies of daylighting from Europe (France, Switzerland, and Germany), and compare them with case studies from Asia (China, India, Taiwan). We found that high real estate prices, limited buffer riparian zone and resistance by the inhabitants were the greatest obstacles to stream daylighting projects. In contrast, economic gains from separating wastewater from rainwater and revival of cultural linkages with water were the strongest drivers to restore these streams. We then present methods on how to identify buried streams as candidates for daylighting and deliver criteria to select the most promising candidates. Acknowledging that each restoration project requires to be adapted to the local biophysical and local setting, we deliver a preliminary decision support system and a guideline for identifying the best candidate streams for daylighting projects, including the arguments in favor of restoration, the caveats, the social processes of decision-making, and perspectives for the integration of stream daylighting into urban climate change mitigation and adaptation concepts, in a Global North-South comparison.

Integrating Ecosystem Services into Planning Practice: Situation, Challenges and Inspirations

Ecosystem services (ES)-related decision-making is important to promote sustainable conservation and urban development. However, there is limited information regarding the use of ES research in a planning context. We explored this gap between ES research and planning practice by evaluating whether and to what extent the ES concept is explicitly used in planning and decision-making processes. This paper selected 101 pieces of target literature, reviewed their research status and characteristics, discussed the motivation and interests, and summarized the research content. In particular, we discussed the contributions that demonstrated the significance of incorporating ES into planning and achieved beneficial results. A series of abstract strategic methods and quantitative methodological approaches were used for subsequent reference research. The ES concept existed earlier than the perception in early-stage planning documents, while its practical application was superficial, with insufficient depth, which was a challenge worthy of attention. To identify the research paradigm in previous planning related to ES, we found that ES analyses for planning were largely theory-inspired, rather than practice-inspired, and used the Schön–Stokes model of the wicked and tame to theorize problems in socio-ecological systems. Our study highlighted that Pasteur’s paradigm may be an essential and useful research style for maintaining and improving ES in socio-ecological practice.

Prioritizing debt conversion opportunities for marine conservation

Incentivized debt conversion is a financing mechanism that can assist countries with a heavy debt burden to bolster their long-term domestic investment in nature conservation. The Nature Conservancy, an international conservation-based nongovernmental organization, is adapting debt conversions to support marine conservation efforts by small island developing states and coastal countries. Prioritizing debt conversion opportunities according to their potential return on investment can increase the impact and effectiveness of this finance mechanism. We developed guidance on how to do so with a decision-support approach that relies on a novel threat-based adaptation of cost-effectiveness analysis. We constructed scenarios by varying parameters of the approach, including enabling conditions, expected benefits, and threat classifications. Incorporating both abatable and unabatable threats affected priorities across planning scenarios. Similarly, differences in scenario construction resulted in unique solution sets for top priorities. We show how environmental organizations, private entities, and investment banks can adopt structured prioritization frameworks for making decisions about conservation finance investments, such as debt conversions. Our guidance can accommodate a suite of social, ecological, and economic considerations, making the approach broadly applicable to other conservation finance mechanisms or investment strategies that seek to establish a transparent process for return-on-investment decision-making.

The Landscape Ecology of Rivers: from Patch-Based to Spatial Network Analyses

Purpose of Review

We synthesize recent methodological and conceptual advances in the field of riverscape ecology, emphasizing areas of synergy with current research in landscape ecology.

Recent Findings

Recent advances in riverscape ecology highlight the need for spatially explicit examinations of how network structure influences ecological pattern and process, instead of the simple linear (upstream-downstream) view. Developments in GIS, remote sensing, and computer technologies already offer powerful tools for the application of patch- and gradient-based models for characterizing abiotic and biotic heterogeneity across a range of spatial and temporal scales. Along with graph-based analyses and spatial statistical stream network models (i.e., geostatistical modelling), these approaches offer improved capabilities for quantifying spatial and temporal heterogeneity and connectivity relationships, thereby allowing for rigorous and high-resolution analyses of pattern, process, and scale relationships.

Summary

Spatially explicit network approaches are able to quantify and predict biogeochemical, hydromorphological, and ecological patterns and processes more precisely than models based on longitudinal or lateral riverine gradients alone. Currently, local habitat characteristics appear to be more important than spatial effects in determining population and community dynamics, but this conclusion may change with direct quantification of the movement of materials, energy, and organisms along channels and across ecosystem boundaries—a key to improving riverscape ecology. Coupling spatially explicit riverscape models with optimization approaches will improve land protection and water management efforts, and help to resolve the land sharing vs. land sparing debate.

Including aesthetic and recreational values in cost-effectiveness analyses of land use change based nitrogen abatement measures in Denmark

In recent years there has been an increased focus on including aspects such as greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity in cost-effectiveness analyses of nitrogen (N) abatement measures. Side-effects such as aesthetic and recreational benefits generated by the land use changes implied by some N abatement measures, such as afforestation and constructed wetlands, are included in ecosystem service approaches, but seldom explicitly in cost-effectiveness analyses. While several studies have estimated these values for e.g. forests and wetlands, per se, few have studied how these effects are valued by the general population when generated through the implementation of land use changes driven by measures aimed at reducing the loss of nitrogen from agriculture. The land use changes implied by the N abatement measures have different characteristics to that of the evaluations of forests for recreation or larger wetlands created or maintained for biodiversity, mainly because the area affected varies considerably in size and shape. In this paper, we estimate the welfare economic impacts of some of the potential side-effects, such as recreational and aesthetic effects, of three N abatement measures related to agricultural land use change: afforestation, constructed wetlands or energy crops. We incorporate the value of these side-effects in a standard cost-effectiveness analysis and discuss the policy implications. This allows us to evaluate to what extent the inclusion of these side-effects change the ranking of the measures and the cost levels used. We thereby provide a more holistic approach to the cost-effectiveness analysis of land use change based N abatement measures, and discuss the challenges relating to the spatial aspects that arise when accounting for the value of the analyzed side-effects. The analysis shows that public access to the area largely determine whether the selected measures are perceived as positive or negative. The impact of the analyzed side-effects on the cost-effectiveness analysis critically depends on the size of the affected population, as the value of the side-effects are measured per household.

Water Framework Directive programmes of measures: Lessons from the 1st planning cycle of a catchment in England

The European Union's Water Framework Directive (WFD) required Member States to establish programmes of measures to achieve good water status formally by 2015, but on postponing the deadline by two six-year periods, by 2027 at the latest. With many Member States facing problems with developing such measures in the first planning cycle, and limited change in ecological status since the first river basin management plans were reported, we look at the implementation of the Directive in England, where only 17% of the surface water bodies were found at good status in 2015, a reduction of 4% since 2009. Using as a case study the Broadland Rivers catchment, we examine the measures taken for Cycle 1 and changes in the classifications of water body status, to investigate whether the way the measures were developed could have limited their potential to deliver WFD objectives. While the WFD was adopted to succeed and replace management practices targeting individually non-compliant element, findings indicate that little had changed in the way measures were developed. Although considerable progress has been made on the implementation of these measures, the limited progress in improving classifications demonstrates the limits of this approach and further makes the case for what the WFD was introduced for: the harmonised transposition of the Integrated River Basin Management paradigm, as the key for delivering good ecological status.

Placing ecosystem services at the heart of urban water systems management

Current approaches have failed to deliver a truly integrated management of the different elements of the urban water system, such as freshwater ecosystems, drinking water treatment plants, distribution networks, sewer systems and wastewater treatment plants. Because the different parts of urban water have not been well integrated, poor decisions have been made for society in general, leading to the misuse of water resources, the degradation of freshwater ecosystems and increased overall treatment costs. Some attempts to solve environmental issues have adopted the ecosystem services concept in a more integrated approach, however this has rarely strayed far away from pure policy, and has made little impact in on-the-ground operational matters. Here, we present an improved decision-making framework to integrate the management of urban water systems. This framework uses the ecosystem service concept in a practical way to make a better use of both financial and water resources, while continuing to preserve the environment.