Evangelia G. Drakou

Current Status and Future Prospects for the Assessment of Marine and Coastal Ecosystem Services: A Systematic Review

Background Research on ecosystem services has grown exponentially during the last decade. Most of the studies have focused on assessing and mapping terrestrial ecosystem services highlighting a knowledge gap on marine and coastal ecosystem services (MCES) and an urgent need to assess them. Methodology/Principal Findings We reviewed and summarized existing scientific literature related to MCES with the aim of extracting and classifying indicators used to assess and map them. We found 145 papers that specifically assessed marine and coastal ecosystem services from which we extracted 476 indicators. Food provision, in particular fisheries, was the most extensively analyzed MCES while water purification and coastal protection were the most frequently studied regulating and maintenance services. Also recreation and tourism under the cultural services was relatively well assessed. We highlight knowledge gaps regarding the availability of indicators that measure the capacity, flow or benefit derived from each ecosystem service. The majority of the case studies was found in mangroves and coastal wetlands and was mainly concentrated in Europe and North America. Our systematic review highlighted the need of an improved ecosystem service classification for marine and coastal systems, which is herein proposed with definitions and links to previous classifications. Conclusions/Significance This review summarizes the state of available information related to ecosystem services associated with marine and coastal ecosystems. The cataloging of MCES indicators and the integrated classification of MCES provided in this paper establish a background that can facilitate the planning and integration of future assessments. The final goal is to establish a consistent structure and populate it with information able to support the implementation of biodiversity conservation policies.

Indicators for mapping ecosystem services: a review

Ecosystem services are the benefits that humans derive from ecosystems, such as food provisioning, water regulating and provisioning, soil productivity, and use of natural areas for recreation. The current challenge is to mainstream ecosystem services into policies and practices in order to ensure the continuous provision of these benefits to humans. The European Union has adopted an EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2020 in which the target of safeguarding ecosystem services is explicitly included. One crucial step to account for ecosystem services is the spatial quantification of the service supply. To this end, the development of robust indicators is needed. In this report we give an overview of spatial information used for mapping and modelling ecosystem services according to the scientific literature and evaluate the potential contribution of the JRC in supporting such initiatives at global, continental, and national level. We found a large diversity of indicators used for mapping different ecosystem services. The most common indicators are based on data related to land use/cover, soils, vegetation, and nutrients. Most of these data are available in and outside the JRC to a large extent and at low resolution. The JRC holds 82% of the data types used to map ecosystem services and could support the Member States and other initiatives involved by directly providing spatial information.

Mapping and Assessment of Ecosystems and their Services: Indicators for ecosystem assessments under Action 5 of the EU Biodiversity Strategy to 2020

Environment Europe Direct is a service to help you find answers to your questions about the European Union Summary The second MAES report presents indicators that can be used at European and Member States level to map and assess biodiversity, ecosystem condition and ecosystem services according to the Common International Classification of Ecosystem Services (CICES v4.3). This work is based on a review of data and indicators available at national and European level and is applying the MAES analytical framework adopted in 2013.

Using Social Media to Measure the Contribution of Red List Species to the Nature-Based Tourism Potential of African Protected Areas.

Cultural ecosystem services are defined by people’s perception of the environment, which make them hard to quantify systematically. Methods to describe cultural benefits from ecosystems typically include resource-demanding survey techniques, which are not suitable to assess cultural ecosystem services for large areas. In this paper we explore a method to quantify cultural benefits through the enjoyment of natured-based tourism, by assessing the potential tourism attractiveness of species for each protected area in Africa using the IUCN’s Red List of Threatened Species. We use the number of pictures of wildlife posted on a photo sharing website as a proxy for charisma, popularity, and ease of observation, as these factors combined are assumed to determine how attractive species are for the global wildlife tourist. Based on photo counts of 2473 African animals and plants, species that seem most attractive to nature-based tourism are the Lion, African Elephant and Leopard. Combining the photo counts with species range data, African protected areas with the highest potential to attract wildlife tourists based on attractive species occurrence were Samburu National Reserve in Kenya, Mukogodo Forest Reserve located just north of Mount Kenya, and Addo Elephant National Park in South-Africa. The proposed method requires only three data sources which are freely accessible and available online, which could make the proposed index tractable for large scale quantitative ecosystem service assessments. The index directly links species presence to the tourism potential of protected areas, making the connection between nature and human benefits explicit, but excludes other important contributing factors for tourism, such as accessibility and safety. This social media based index provides a broad understanding of those species that are popular globally; in many cases these are not the species of highest conservation concern.

Investigating the barriers to adopting a ‘human-in-nature’ view in Greek biodiversity conservation

Recent decades have seen significant steps in the longstanding scientific, philosophical and political debates concerning the relationship between society and nature towards a more ‘human-in-nature’ view in biodiversity conservation. This progress has been reflected in both prominent scientific publications and several policy documents. However, the recent resurgence of ‘protection’ paradigms and the persistence of human practices undermining ecosystem functions on which human existence depends reveal that human and natural systems frequently continue to be treated separately in conservation practice and conventional scientific and policy discourses. Using insights from the field of political ecology and from research on social–ecological systems, and following a grounded theory research approach, we identify the critical barriers to the adoption of a ‘human-in-nature’ view in Greek biodiversity conservation. In particular, the analysis of 63 in-depth interviews with a variety of state and non-state stakeholders acting at several governance levels revealed as main barriers the lack of an integrative perspective on humans and ecosystems, scale mismatches between social and ecological systems, the underestimation of the heterogeneity of social groups, and the understanding of the reliance on the market as the main solution to biodiversity loss. We argue that steps towards ensuring environmental justice as well as socially inclusive and adaptive governance processes should embrace an understanding of both the dynamic nature of ecosystems and the power-laden character of the socio-economic systems involved in biodiversity conservation in order to create the preconditions for the emergence of social–ecological sustainability and ultimately for a ‘human-in-nature’ view.

Habitat type richness associations with environmental variables: a case study in the Greek Natura 2000 aquatic ecosystems

We investigated the potential associations of habitat type richness patterns with a series of environmental variables in 61 protected aquatic ecosystems of the Greek Natura 2000 network. Habitat type classification followed the Natura 2000 classification scheme. Habitat type richness was measured as the number of different habitat types in an area. To overcome a potential area effect in quantifying habitat type richness, we applied the “moving window” technique. The environmental variables were selected to account for some of the major threats to biodiversity, such as fragmentation, habitat loss and climate change. We run GLMs to associate habitat type richness with different combinations of climatic, spatial and topographic variables. Habitat type richness seemed to significantly associate with climatic variables, more than spatial or topographic ones. In particular, for the climatic ones, the importance of precipitation surpassed that of temperature and especially the precipitation of the wettest and driest month had a limiting contribution to richness unlike average climate estimators. Moreover, the landscape’s latitude and longitude and fragmentation were significantly associated to richness. Our findings are in accordance to those observed in recent literature at lower (i.e. species) levels of ecological organization, fact showing that large-scale phenomena (such as climate change) can also be observed at the habitat type level, at least in our case. Thus, following the context of the Habitats Directive (92/43/EEC), that habitat types and not solely species of community interest should be protected and restored, this study serves as a first step towards investigating habitat type richness patterns.

Landscape structure and habitat composition in reservoirs, lakes, and rivers

Abstract We compared reservoirs that were proposed to be included in the Greek Natura 2000 network of protected sites, with natural lakes and rivers from the same network. We analyzed landscape spatial pattern, habitat type composition, and spatial pattern of human activities. We found that the landscapes of reservoirs are distinct from those of rivers and natural lakes. More specifically, the reservoir water bodies were characterized by a more complex shape than the water bodies of rivers and lakes. Furthermore, based upon the landscape spatial pattern of the entire protected area, we could clearly discriminate among the three aquatic ecosystem types. It was also possible to discriminate these ecosystem types based upon the habitat composition of the surrounding landscape. The habitat composition among the different sites showed low similarity. Human presence in all sites was documented, but its spatial pattern was not differentiated among the three aquatic ecosystem types. The results highlight the ambiguous nature of reservoirs; thus, we advocate the need for specific management measures for reservoirs that will accomplish both their intended purpose and the conservation of habitat composition and landscape structure.

Marine and coastal ecosystem services on the science–policy–practice nexus: challenges and opportunities from 11 European case studies

ABSTRACT We compared and contrasted 11 European case studies to identify challenges and opportunities toward the operationalization of marine and coastal ecosystem service (MCES) assessments in Europe. This work is the output of a panel convened by the Marine Working Group of the Ecosystem Services Partnership in September 2016. The MCES assessments were used to (1) address multiple policy objectives simultaneously, (2) interpret EU-wide policies to smaller scales and (3) inform local decision-making. Most of the studies did inform decision makers, but only in a few cases, the outputs were applied or informed decision-making. Significant limitations among the 11 assessments were the absence of shared understanding of the ES concept, data and knowledge gaps, difficulties in accounting for marine social–ecological systems complexity and partial stakeholder involvement. The findings of the expert panel call for continuous involvement of MCES ‘end users’, integrated knowledge on marine social–ecological systems, defining thresholds to MCES use and raising awareness to the general public. Such improvements at the intersection of science, policy and practice are essential starting points toward building a stronger science foundation supporting management of European marine ecosystems. EDITED BY Sebastian Villasante

Editorial: Optimizing the Delivery of Multiple Ecosystem Goods and Services in Agricultural Systems

Department of Ecology, School of Biology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece, 2 Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC), University of Twente, Enschede, Netherlands, 3 Land Resources Unit, Joint Research Centre, Directorate for Sustainable Resources, European Commission, Ispra, Italy, Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, Lund University, Lund, Sweden, Division of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, University of

Unraveling Stakeholders’ Discourses Regarding Sustainable Development and Biodiversity Conservation in Greece

The designation and implementation of adaptive conservation strategies able to respond to changing socio-ecological conditions, requires understanding protected areas as complex, interconnected social-ecological systems able to reconcile human needs with biodiversity conservation (Davidson-Hunt & Berkes, 2003). This consideration leads to perceiving ecosystems involved in biodiversity conservation and the social, political and economic processes and structures behind their management, as interrelated. Sustainable development has been considered, at least the last two decades, as an integrative concept aiming at combining ecological, economic and social issues. However, the concept of sustainable development has received much criticism, whereas the outcomes of successfully combing economic development, social welfare and ecological sustainability can be characterized as quite mixed.