Browsing by Author "Bennett, Elena M."

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Anthropogenic Drivers of Ecosystem Change: An Overview
(2006) Nelson, Gerald C.; Bennett, Elena M.; Berhe, Asmeret A.; Cassman, Kenneth
"This paper provides an overview of what the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) calls 'indirect and direct drivers' of change in ecosystem services at a global level. The MA definition of a driver is any natural or human-induced factor that directly or indirectly causes a change in an ecosystem. A direct driver unequivocally influences ecosystem processes. An indirect driver operates more diffusely by altering one or more direct drivers. Global driving forces are categorized as demographic, economic, sociopolitical, cultural and religious, scientific and technological, and physical and biological. Drivers in all categories other than physical and biological are considered indirect. Important direct drivers include changes in climate, plant nutrient use, land conversion, and diseases and invasive species. This paper does not discuss natural drivers such as climate variability, extreme weather events, or volcanic eruptions."
Assessing Future Ecosystem Services: A Case Study of the Northern Highlands Lake District, Wisconsin
(2003) Peterson, Garry D.; Beard, T. Douglas; Beisner, Beatrix E.; Bennett, Elena M.; Carpenter, Stephen; Cumming, Graeme S.; Dent, C. Lisa; Havlicek, Tanya D.
"The Northern Highlands Lake District of Wisconsin is in transition from a sparsely settled region to a more densely populated one. Expected changes offer benefits to northern Wisconsin residents but also threaten to degrade the ecological services they rely on. Because the future of this region is uncertain, it is difficult to make decisions that will avoid potential risks and take advantage of potential opportunities. We adopt a scenario planning approach to cope with this problem of prediction. We use an ecological assessment framework developed by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment to determine key social and ecological driving forces in the Northern Highlands Lake District. From these, we describe three alternative scenarios to the year 2025 in which the projected use of ecological services is substantially different. The work reported in this paper demonstrates how scenarios can be developed for a region and provides a starting point for a participatory discussion of alternative futures for northern Wisconsin. Although the future is unknowable, we hope that the assessment process begun in this paper will help the people of the Northern Highlands Lake District choose the future path of their region."
Interactions Among Ecosystem Services Across Land Uses in a Floodplain Agroecosystem
(2014) Felipe-Lucia, María R.; Comín, Francisco A.; Bennett, Elena M.
"Managing human-dominated landscapes such as agroecosystems is one of the main challenges facing society today. Decisions about land-use management in agroecosystems involve spatial and temporal trade-offs. The key scales at which these trades-offs occur are poorly understood for most systems, and quantitative assessments of the services provided by agroecosystems under different combinations of land uses are rare. To fill these knowledge gaps, we measured 12 ecosystem services (ES), including climate regulation, gas regulation, soil stability, nutrient regulation, habitat quality, raw material production, food production, fishing, sports, recreation, education, and social relationships, in seven common land-use types at three spatial scales, i.e., patch, municipality, and landscape, in a riparian floodplain in Spain. We identified the provision of each ES in each land-use type either by direct measurement or from public databases. We analyzed the interactions, i.e., trade-offs and synergies, among ES across land uses and spatial scales and estimated ES provision in several land-use change scenarios. Our results illustrated that each land-use type provides unique bundles of ES and that the spatial scale at which measurements were taken affected the mixture of services. For instance, a land-use type with low provision of services per hectare but with an extensive area can supply more services to the overall landscape than a land-use type supplying higher values of services per hectare but with a smaller extent. Hence, riparian forest supplied the most service of any land-use type at the patch scale, but dry cereal croplands provided the most services across the municipality and landscape because of their large area. We found that most ES should be managed primarily at the patch scale, but food production, fishing, and social relationships were more relevant to manage at the municipality scale. There was great variability in ES interactions across scales with different causes of trade-offs at each scale. We identified more significant synergies among ES than trade-offs. Trade-offs were originated because some services were mutually incompatible within a given land use, whereas the provision of others depended on land-management decisions within a land-use type. Thus, we propose a classification of ES interactions that incorporates societal values as drivers of management decisions along with biophysical factors as likely causes of ES trade-offs and conclude with practical suggestions to reduce trade-offs and to enhance the supply of multiple ES to society."
Scenarios for Ecosystem Services: An Overview
(2006) Carpenter, Stephen; Bennett, Elena M.; Peterson, Garry D.
"The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) scenarios address changes in ecosystem services and their implications for human well-being. Ecological changes pose special challenges for long-term thinking, because of the possibility of regime shifts that occur rapidly yet alter the availability of ecosystem services for generations. Moreover, ecological feedbacks can intensify human modification of ecosystems, creating a spiral of poverty and ecosystem degradation. Such complex dynamics were evaluated by a mixture of qualitative and quantitative analyses in the MA scenarios. Collectively, the scenarios explore problems such as the connections of poverty reduction and ecosystem services, and trade-offs among ecosystem services. Several promising approaches are considered by the scenarios, including uses of biodiversity to build resilience of ecosystem services, actively adaptive management, and green technology. Although the scenarios do not prescribe an optimal path, they illuminate the consequences of different policies toward ecosystem services."
Trade-Offs Across Space, Time, and Ecosystem Services
(2006) Rodriguez, Jon Paul; Beard, T. Douglas; Bennett, Elena M.; Cumming, Graeme S.; Cork, Steven J.; Agard, John; Dobson, Andrew P.; Peterson, Garry D.
"Ecosystem service (ES) trade-offs arise from management choices made by humans, which can change the type, magnitude, and relative mix of services provided by ecosystems. Trade-offs occur when the provision of one ES is reduced as a consequence of increased use of another ES. In some cases,a trade-off may be an explicit choice; but in others, trade-offs arise without premeditation or even awareness that they are taking place. Trade-offs in ES can be classified along three axes: spatial scale, temporal scale, and reversibility. Spatial scale refers to whether the effects of the trade-off are felt locally or at a distant location. Temporal scale refers to whether the effects take place relatively rapidly or slowly. Reversibility expresses the likelihood that the perturbed ES may return to its original state if the perturbation ceases. Across all four Millennium Ecosystem Assessment scenarios and selected case study examples, trade-off decisions show a preference for provisioning, regulating, or cultural services (in that order). Supporting services are more likely to be 'taken for granted.' Cultural ES are almost entirely unquantified in scenario modeling; therefore, the calculated model results do not fully capture losses of these services that occur in the scenarios. The quantitative scenario models primarily capture the services that are perceived by society as more important-provisioning and regulating ecosystem services-and thus do not fully capture trade-offs of cultural and supporting services. Successful management policies will be those that incorporate lessons learned from prior decisions into future management actions. Managers should complement their actions with monitoring programs that, in addition to monitoring the short-term provisions of services, also monitor the long-term evolution of slowly changing variables. Policies can then be developed to take into account ES trade-offs at multiple spatial and temporal scales. Successful strategies will recognize the inherent complexities of ecosystem management and will work to develop policies that minimize the effects of ES trade-offs."