Estuaries are subject to disturbance by land‐based sediment and nutrient inputs, resulting in changes to the ecosystems and the functions and services that they support. Spatial mapping tools that identify how functional hotspots in the estuary may shift in location and intensity under different disturbance scenarios highlight to managers the trajectory of change and the value of active management and restoration, but to date these tools are only available in the most intensively researched ecosystems. Using empirical data derived from long‐term monitoring and multi‐habitat field experiments we developed future scenarios representing different impacts of environmental degradation on estuarine ecosystem functions that are important for supporting ecosystem services. We used the spatial prioritization software Zonation in a novel fashion to assess effects of different disturbance scenarios on critical soft‐sediment ecosystem processes (nutrient fluxes and sediment erodibility measures) that are influenced by macrofaunal communities and local environment conditions. We compared estimates of current conditions with three scenarios linked to changes in land‐use and resulting downstream impacts on estuarine ecosystems to determine how disturbance influences the distribution of high value areas for ecosystem function. Scenarios investigated the implications of habitat degradation associated with sediment deposition and declines in large sediment‐dwelling animal abundance whose behavior has important influences on ecosystem function. Our analyses demonstrate decreases in the majority of ecosystem processes under scenarios associated with disturbances. These results suggest that it is important to restore biodiversity and ecosystem function and that the application of Zonation in this context offers a simple, rapid and cost‐effective way of identifying priority actions and locations for restoration, and how these shift due to multiple impacts.

中文翻译：

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调查未来情况下河口生态系统功能的变化。

河口受到陆地沉积物和养分投入的干扰，导致生态系统及其支持的功能和服务的变化。识别出河口功能性热点在不同扰动情况下如何在位置和强度上发生变化的空间映射工具向管理人员强调变化的轨迹以及主动管理和恢复的价值，但迄今为止，这些工具仅在研究最深入的情况下可用生态系统。利用从长期监测和多栖息地野外实验获得的经验数据，我们开发了未来情景，这些情景代表了环境退化对河口生态系统功能的不同影响，这对于支持生态系统服务很重要。我们以新颖的方式使用了空间优先化软件Zonation来评估不同干扰情景对受到大型动物群落和当地环境条件影响的关键软沉积生态系统过程（营养通量和沉积物可侵蚀性措施）的影响。我们将当前状况的估计值与三种与土地利用变化以及对河口生态系统的下游影响相关的情景进行了比较，以确定干扰如何影响高价值区域对生态系统功能的分布。情景研究了与沉积物沉积有关的栖息地退化的影响以及大型沉积物栖居动物的数量下降的行为，其行为对生态系统功能具有重要影响。我们的分析表明，在与干扰有关的情况下，大多数生态系统过程都在减少。这些结果表明，恢复生物多样性和生态系统功能非常重要，在这种情况下应用分区可以提供一种简单，快速且经济高效的方式来确定优先行动和恢复地点，以及这些行动如何因多种影响而变化。