Mapping and assessing soil protection through an integrative ecosystem service framework.

Abstract

Recent studies show that introducing the ecosystem service concept into policy and decisionmaking requires spatially explicit information on the state and trends of ecosystems and their services (Maes et al., 2012). Current spatially explicit approaches are often based on land cover assessments (Burkhard et al., 2009; Nelson et al., 2009), assigning values of ecosystem service provision to each land cover class. This approach fails to make a distinction between the actual service provision and the underlying ecosystem potential to provide a specific service. By focusing on actual ecosystem service provision (e.g. tonnes of soil that are fixated by vegetation) the potential of a given ecosystem or community under alternative management options is ignored (e.g. afforestation on a marginal grassland will increase soil fixation when comparing a grassland to a mature forest). The full potential value that the ecosystem service can provide (in this example to mitigate soil erosion) is therefore not taken into account.