Refining the Tiered Approach for Mapping and Assessing Ecosystem Services at the Local Scale: A Case Study in a Rural Landscape in Northern Germany

Marie Perennes, C. Sylvie Campagne, Felix Müller, Philip Roche and Benjamin Burkhard
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Marie Perennes: Institute of Physical Geography and Landscape Ecology, Leibniz University Hannover, Schneiderberg 50, 30167 Hannover, Germany
C. Sylvie Campagne: Institute of Physical Geography and Landscape Ecology, Leibniz University Hannover, Schneiderberg 50, 30167 Hannover, Germany
Felix Müller: Institute for Natural Resource Conservation, Department of Ecosystem Management, Christian Albrechts University Kiel, Olshausenstraße 40, 24098 Kiel, Germany
Philip Roche: UMR RECOVER, INRAe, AMU, 3275 Route de Cézanne, 13182 Aix-en-Provence, France
Benjamin Burkhard: Institute of Physical Geography and Landscape Ecology, Leibniz University Hannover, Schneiderberg 50, 30167 Hannover, Germany

Land, 2020, vol. 9, issue 10, 1-23

Abstract: Spatially explicit assessments of ecosystem services (ES) potentials are a key component in supporting a sustainable land use management. The ES matrix method is a commonly used approach as it allows for a comparably fast, comprehensible and accessible ES assessment. As it is often based on land use/land cover data (LULC) with no spatial variability, a main critique is that the results fail to assess spatial variability at landscape levels, which limits the reliability of the outputs for spatial planning applications. By using the case study area of Bornhöved in northern Germany, we analyzed three assessment methods that combine expert judgments, LULC data with different resolutions and ecosystem condition indicators, in order to find the required resolution and data for ES assessment and mapping at a local scale. To quantify map discrepancies, we used the structural similarity index (SSIM) and analyzed the differences in local mean, variance and covariance between the maps. We found that using different spatial resolutions led to a relatively small difference in the outcomes, in which regulation and maintenance services are more affected than the other services categories. For most regulation, maintenance and cultural ES, our results indicate that assessments based only on LULC proxies are not suitable for a local quantitative assessment of ES, as they cannot sufficiently cover the spatial heterogeneity of ES capacities that arise from different ecosystem conditions.

Keywords: ES matrix assessment; ecosystem condition indicators; statistical map comparison (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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