Context

Human activities have led to the degradation of wetlands, impinging on their capacity to deliver essential ecosystem services to society. Wetland restoration now appears an essential strategy, in complement with protection efforts, to maintain the supply of ecosystem services regionally. The limited resources available for restoration call for cost-efficient systematic planning approaches.

Objectives

Here we present a new framework to prioritize protection and restoration interventions in wetlands that considers their cost-efficient complementary roles in maintaining ecosystem service flows to people.

Methods

We identified existent and historic wetlands located within a watershed in southern Quebec (Canada), quantified anthropogenic pressures on all sites to estimate restoration costs, and modeled the supply and demand of four associated ecosystem services (flood attenuation, hunting, groundwater recharge, and aesthetics). Using the systematic planning software Marxan, we then prioritized sites to achieve a range of conservation targets (10 to 60%).

Results

Our analyses show how conservation targets could be reached efficiently using complementary protection and restoration interventions. Despite higher costs, some restoration actions were included in optimized solutions as substitutions for protection actions on pristine sites, covering ~ 50% of conservation networks on an areal basis.

Conclusions

These results highlight the importance of considering the cost–benefit ratios of different conservation interventions (protection vs. restoration), as well as the demand for ecosystem services by society. Furthermore, by looking at both the potential of altered sites to contribute to ecosystem service flow once restored and the complementary roles of restored and pristine sites in achieving targets cost-efficiently, the study provides key analytical tools to assist stakeholders in decision-making.

中文翻译：

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规划湿地保护和恢复以保障生态系统服务流向受益人

语境

人类活动导致湿地退化，影响了它们向社会提供基本生态系统服务的能力。湿地恢复现在似乎是与保护工作相辅相成的重要战略，以维持区域生态系统服务的供应。可用于恢复的有限资源需要具有成本效益的系统规划方法。

目标

在这里，我们提出了一个新框架，优先考虑湿地保护和恢复干预措施，该框架考虑了湿地在维持生态系统服务流向人类方面具有成本效益的互补作用。

方法

我们确定了位于魁北克南部（加拿大）一个流域内现存的和历史悠久的湿地，量化了所有地点的人为压力以估算恢复成本，并对四种相关生态系统服务（洪水衰减、狩猎、地下水补给和美学）的供需进行建模）。使用系统规划软件Marxan，然后我们确定地点的优先级，以实现一系列保护目标（10% 到60%）。

结果

我们的分析显示了如何使用互补的保护和恢复干预有效地实现保护目标。尽管成本较高，但优化解决方案中包含了一些恢复行动，作为原始遗址保护行动的替代，覆盖了约 50% 的保护网络区域。

结论

这些结果强调了考虑不同保护干预措施（保护与恢复）的成本效益比的重要性，以及社会对生态系统服务的需求。此外，通过研究改变地点在恢复后对生态系统服务流做出贡献的潜力以及恢复和原始地点在经济高效地实现目标方面的互补作用，该研究提供了关键的分析工具来帮助利益相关者进行决策。