Investigating tradeoffs between supply, use and demand of ecosystem services and their effective drivers for sustainable environmental management

Highlights

• Ecosystems have a huge impact on social systems through providing diverse services.

• A framework was provide to address all the relationships of ecosystem services.

• There was a strong synergy between supply, demand and use of ecosystem services.

• Biophysical factors were the most important factors driving synergies.

• Cultural services were highly related to health index of social well-being.

Abstract

Ecosystems have a huge impact on social systems through providing diverse services. Sustainable management of social and ecological systems requires the quantification of spatial relationships between the supply, demand, and use of these ecosystem services. The main purpose of this paper was to provide a framework addressing all the complicated relationships of ecosystem services between ecological and social systems. Sustainable management cannot be achieved without considering these complex relationships. To simplify these complexities, management priorities must be identified. In this study, spatial changes of supply, use, and demand of ecosystem services and their main drivers were investigated. A Public Participation Geographic Information System was used to map the supply, demand and use of 19 ecosystem services in semiarid landscapes of Iran. Multi Criteria Decision Making methods were also used to link ecosystem services to social well-being. The main drivers of tradeoffs between supply, use, and demand of ecosystem services were determined using General Linear Method. The results showed that there was a synergy between supply, demand and use of ecosystem services in highlands. The deficit zones of ecosystem services were concentrated in lowlands. Provisioning services were the most important services for social well-being. The framework presented in this paper revealed all the complex relationships that the environmental management is faced with in ecosystem and social systems. Simplifying integrated relationships in both ecosystems (supply) and social systems (demand and use) helps sustainable management of ecosystems under environmental and social changes.

Introduction

Natural environments have a huge impact on human well-being by providing diverse services (Wei et al., 2017; Shen et al., 2019). In order to promote the sustainable management of ecosystem services, understanding the potential of different landscapes for multiple services and their matching with people's needs is required to improve on the sustainable use of ecosystems (de Groot et al., 2010).

The potential of the different landscapes for supplying multiple ecosystem services may be the result of biophysical factors or anthropogenic actives (EW Linders et al., 2020), which cause each landscape to need a certain management (conservation or restoration) to meet people’ demands (Chen et al., 2019). Therefore, lands are classified to the three categories including deficit, stable, and surplus areas of ecosystem services (Boithias et al., 2014; Chen et al., 2019). Geographic information systems (GIS) are widely used to assess ecosystem services and their relationships (Castro et al., 2014).

GIS based tradeoff analysis is a good way to uncover the spatial relationships between supply, use and demand of ecosystem services (Kirchner et al., 2015). Wherever there is a tradeoff relationship, the supply of ecosystem services is less than their demand and a distinct form of win-lose situation may occur (Howe et al., 2014). However, lose situations can be avoided through managing ecosystems in a way that move towards a synergy or win-win situation. Supply of ecosystem services depends on the interactions between ecosystems and social systems (Alcamo et al., 2005). Identifying the main biophysical and social drivers of tradeoffs provides good information to mitigate deficit situation between supply and demand of ecosystem services (Howe et al., 2014).

Mapping ecosystem services is an efficient way to link supply of ecosystem services to their use and demand (Crossman et al., 2013). Public participation geographic information systems (PPGIS) is an easy-to-use approach that combines general values in decision-making processes using GIS (Brown and Fagerholm, 2015). PPGIS makes it possible to explore a wider range of services that participants know or consume (García-Nieto et al., 2019). Provisioning and cultural services were mapped more than supporting and regulating services (Brown and Fagerholm, 2015).

Although the supply-demand relationships were spatially studied (e.g. Wang et al., 2019), there is a paucity of information regarding both use and demand of ecosystem services at the same time (EW Linders et al., 2020). Actual use indicates the amount of services consumed and their contribution to social well-being (Rasmussen et al., 2016). Well-being is defined by Diener and Seligman (2004) as “Peoples' positive evaluations of their lives include positive emotion, engagement, satisfaction, and meaning”. Demand reflects people's preferences to benefit from services (Balzan et al., 2018). Supply-demand mismatch indicates areas where degradation may occur in the future.

The loss of ecosystem services has put social-ecological systems under increasing pressure all around the world (Dregne, 2002), but there is little evidence that ecosystem service data has been used for environmental management (Brown and Fagerholm, 2015). It is needed to identify the deficit areas of ecosystem services and manage them towards sustainability. Therefore, this study was done to provide a new integrated measurement framework combining the spatial distribution of ecosystem services and their complex relationships, which can be used to apply the concept of ecosystem services in the sustainable environmental management. The objectives of this study are to (1) assess the spatial distribution of supply, use and potential demand of ecosystem services using PPGIS, (2) investigate the spatial synergies and tradeoffs between supply, demand and use of ecosystem services, (3) investigate the importance of social well-being indices and weights of ecosystem services in social well-being, and (4) investigate the most important drivers of tradeoff between supply and demand of ecosystem services.