Scenarios reveal pathways to sustain future ecosystem services in an agricultural landscape.

Sustaining food production, water quality, soil retention, flood, and climate regulation in agricultural landscapes is a pressing global challenge given accelerating environmental changes. Scenarios are stories about plausible futures, and scenarios can be integrated with biophysical simulation models to explore quantitatively how the future might unfold. However, few studies have incorporated a wide range of drivers (e.g., climate, land-use, management, population, human diet) in spatially explicit, process-based models to investigate spatial-temporal dynamics and relationships of a portfolio of ecosystem services. Here, we simulated nine ecosystem services (three provisioning and six regulating services) at 220 × 220 m from 2010 to 2070 under four contrasting scenarios in the 1,345-km2 Yahara Watershed (Wisconsin, USA) using Agro-IBIS, a dynamic model of terrestrial ecosystem processes, biogeochemistry, water, and energy balance. We asked (1) How does ecosystem service supply vary among alternative future scenarios? (2) Where on the landscape is the provision of ecosystem services most susceptible to future social-ecological changes? (3) Among alternative future scenarios, are relationships (i.e., trade-offs, synergies) among food production, water, and biogeochemical services consistent over time? Our results showed that food production varied substantially with future land-use choices and management, and its trade-offs with water quality and soil retention persisted under most scenarios. However, pathways to mitigate or even reverse such trade-offs through technological advances and sustainable agricultural practices were apparent. Consistent relationships among regulating services were identified across scenarios (e.g., trade-offs of freshwater supply vs. flood and climate regulation, and synergies among water quality, soil retention, and climate regulation), suggesting opportunities and challenges to sustaining these services. In particular, proactive land-use changes and management may buffer water quality against undesirable future climate changes, but changing climate may overwhelm management efforts to sustain freshwater supply and flood regulation. Spatially, changes in ecosystem services were heterogeneous across the landscape, underscoring the power of local actions and fine-scale management. Our research highlights the value of embracing spatial and temporal perspectives in managing ecosystem services and their complex interactions, and provides a system-level understanding for achieving sustainability of the food-water-climate nexus in agricultural landscapes.

Qiu J ，Carpenter SR ，Booth EG ，Motew M ，Zipper SC ，Kucharik CJ ，Chen X ，Loheide SP 2nd ，Seifert J ，Turner MG ... -  《ECOLOGICAL APPLICATIONS》

Temporal variation and spatial scale dependency of the trade-offs and synergies among multiple ecosystem services in the Taihu Lake Basin of China.

Grasping the temporal-spatial characteristics of interactions and spatial scales of multiple ecosystem services is the foundation for sustainable ecosystem management. Eight ecosystem services, including crop production, freshwater supply, aquatic production, net primary production, soil conservation, water retention, flood regulation, and forest recreation were measured at the 1-km2 pixel scale in the Taihu Lake Basin (TLB) of China from 1990 to 2010. Furthermore, we quantified the trade-offs and synergies of services at different periods of urbanization and across the 1-km2 pixel scale and the county scale. We aim to find which ecosystem services interactions temporally vary and depend on spatial scale. Our results found that: 1). Tremendous amount of cultivated lands were converted to construction land, and rapidly shrank from 1990 to 2010. 2). Determined by land use, different ecosystem services had spatial heterogeneity of their strength. Ecosystem services hot spots experienced an increasing trend while cold spots showed a trend of decreasing first and then increasing from 1990 to 2010. 3). Trade-offs between provisioning services and regulating services at the 1-km2 pixel scale changed over time. There was a new synergy between freshwater supply and aquatic production at the 1-km2 pixel scale in 2010 with the human demand. 4). From 1990 to 2010, the changes of provisioning services led to trade-offs among provisioning services, regulating services and cultural services at two scales. Taking temporal variation and scale dependence into account, this research is helpful to the delineation of "Ecological Conservation Redline" and implement the project of "Grain for Green". We also provide suggestions for maintaining ecosystem services with economic growth in China's Yangtze River Economic Belt for land use policies and decision making.

Qiao X ，Gu Y ，Zou C ，Xu D ，Wang L ，Ye X ，Yang Y ，Huang X ... -  《-》

Simulating the Impact of Future Climate Change and Ecological Restoration on Trade-Offs and Synergies of Ecosystem Services in Two Ecological Shelters and Three Belts in China.

Wang LJ ，Ma S ，Qiao YP ，Zhang JC ... -  《-》

Impact and mitigation of global change on freshwater-related ecosystem services in Southern Europe.

Global change is severely impacting the biosphere that, through ecosystem services, sustains human well-being. Such impacts are expected to increase unless mitigation management actions are implemented. Despite the call from the scientific and political arenas for their implementation, few studies assess the effectiveness of actions on freshwater-related services. Here, by modeling water provisioning, water purification and erosion control under current and future conditions, we assess future trends of service provision with and without mitigation policies. In particular, two different storylines combine multiple climate, land use/land cover and agricultural management scenarios, and represent a pro-efficiency business as usual (myopic storyline) and a future that considers social and environmental sustainability (sustainable storyline). The mentioned services are modeled for the horizon 2050 and in three South European river basins: Ebro, Adige and Sava, which encompass the wide socio-environmental diversity of the region. Our results indicate that Mediterranean basins (Ebro) are extremely vulnerable to global change respect Alpine (Adige) or Continental (Sava) basins, as the Ebro might experience a decrease in water availability up to 40%, whereas the decrease is of only 2-4% in the Adige or negligible in the Sava. However, Mediterranean basins are also more sensitive to the implementation of mitigation actions, which would compensate the drop in water provisioning. Results also indicate that the regulating services of water purification and erosion control will gain more relevance in the future, as both services increased between 4 and 20% in both global change scenarios as a result of the expansion of agricultural and urban areas. Overall, the impact of global change is diverse among services and across river basins in Southern Europe, with the Mediterranean basins as the most vulnerable and the Continental as the least. The implementation of mitigation actions can compensate the impact and therefore deserves full political attention.

Jorda-Capdevila D ，Gampe D ，Huber García V ，Ludwig R ，Sabater S ，Vergoñós L ，Acuña V ... -  《-》

Spatio-Temporal Characteristics of Trade-Offs and Synergies in Ecosystem Services at Watershed and Landscape Scales: A Case Analysis of the Yellow River Basin (Henan Section).

Niu H ，Liu M ，Xiao D ，Zhao X ，An R ，Fan L ... -  《-》