Provisioning ecosystem services supply and demand: the role of landscape management to reinforce supply and promote synergies with other ecosystem services

Abstract

Currently, trade enables regions to have a higher provisioning ecosystem services (ES) demand than that provided by ecosystems in the same region. This practice leads to a supply and demand provisioning ES scale mismatch, which may affect the provision of other ES. To address such an issue from the sub-national scale, an ES approach implementation step to provide realistic, context-specific pathways toward sustainability is necessary. This paper provides a detailed quantitative assessment of ecosystem services over time in Biscay, Basque Country, Spain. The aim is to identify ways of balancing the local provisioning ecosystem service supply and demand and to enhance sustainable land use. We studied the ecological footprint evolution of the province for 11 years and its relation to ecosystem services. We determined that the replacement of the current forest plantations’ monocultures to a multifunctional landscape reinforces food security and enhances biodiversity and essential ES. This place-based ecosystem services assessment, which integrates ecological footprint calculations into an ecosystem service framework, demonstrated that provisioning ES-scale mismatches may be confronted locally by implementing sustainable landscape management strategies, including actions focusing on the supply and demand of ES. The current globalised economy promotes a global reduction in ecosystem integrity and ecosystem services. Reducing the ecological footprint at the local scale would contribute to the reduction of provisioning ecosystem services’ demand at the global scale. Thus, maximising a mosaic approach to land use locally would help improve the provision of ecosystem services and therefore also contribute to the global footprint reduction.