Content area
Full Text
About the Authors:
Adrienne Grêt-Regamey
* E-mail: [email protected]
Affiliation: Planning of Landscape and Urban Systems, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Stefano-Franscini-Platz 5, 8093 Zurich, Switzerland
Bettina Weibel
Affiliation: Planning of Landscape and Urban Systems, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Stefano-Franscini-Platz 5, 8093 Zurich, Switzerland
Kenneth J. Bagstad
Affiliation: U.S. Geological Survey, Geosciences and Environmental Change Science Center, P.O. Box 25046, MS 980, Denver, Colorado, 80225, United States of America
Marika Ferrari
Affiliation: Department of Civil, Environmental and Mechanical Engineering, University of Trento, Via Mesiano 77, 38123 Trento, Italy
Davide Geneletti
Affiliation: Department of Civil, Environmental and Mechanical Engineering, University of Trento, Via Mesiano 77, 38123 Trento, Italy
Hermann Klug
Affiliation: Interfaculty Department of Geoinformatics – Z_GIS, University of Salzburg, Schillerstr. 30, 5020 Salzburg, Austria
Uta Schirpke
Affiliations Institute for Alpine Environment, EURAC research, Viale Druso 1, 39100 Bolzano, Italy, Institute of Ecology, University of Innsbruck, Sternwartestr. 15, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria
Ulrike Tappeiner
Affiliations Institute for Alpine Environment, EURAC research, Viale Druso 1, 39100 Bolzano, Italy, Institute of Ecology, University of Innsbruck, Sternwartestr. 15, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria
Introduction
The increasing recognition that unsustainable growth in population, per-capita consumption, and related environmental impacts threatens both ecosystems and the services they provide to people calls for an operationalization of the ecosystem services (ES) concept [1]–[5]. Global, EU, and national policies such as the Convention on Biological Diversity, the EU Biodiversity Strategy, and 2012 U.S. Department of Agriculture-Forest Service Planning Rule (36 CFR 219) require ES quantification, valuation, and mapping to assist decision makers in managing areas supporting high biodiversity and ES provision [6]. Particularly when trade-offs must be made in allocating land or other resources to competing human uses, maps of ES under different scenarios can help identify synergies and trade-offs among the different ES, better supporting decision making that balances long-term protection of ecosystems and their services against short-term economic development goals, e.g. [7]–[10]. Studies mapping the supply of and demand for multiple ES from the global to the sub-national scale are increasingly common [11]–[16], and show that both the diverse approaches to model and map ES and the different scales of ES assessments can yield a wide range of metrics with results that differ at best and are incomparable at worst. If ES mapping...