Landscapes' capacities to provide ecosystem services - A concept for land-cover based assessments

Landscapes differ in their capacities to provide ecosystem goods and services, which are the benefits humans obtain\udfrom nature. Structures and functions of ecosystems needed to sustain the provision of ecosystem services are altered\udby various human activities. In this paper, a concept for the assessment of multiple ecosystem services is proposed\udas a basis for discussion and further development of a respective evaluation instrument. Using quantitative and\udqualitative assessment data in combination with land cover and land use information originated from remote sensing\udand GIS, impacts of human activities can be evaluated. The results reveal typical patterns of different ecosystems‘\udcapacities to provide ecosystem services. The proposed approach thus delivers useful integrative information for\udenvironmental management and landscape planning, aiming at a sustainable use of services provided by nature. The\udresearch concept and methodological framework presented here for discussion have initially been applied in different\udcase studies and shall be developed further to provide a useful tool for the quantification and spatial modelling of\udmultiple ecosystem services in different landscapes. An exemplary application of the approach dealing with food\udprovision in the Halle-Leipzig region in Germany is presented. It shows typical patterns of ecosystem service distribution\udaround urban areas. As the approach is new and still rather general, there is great potential for improvement,\udespecially with regard to a data-based quantification of the numerous hypotheses, which were formulated as base for\udthe assessment. Moreover, the integration of more detailed landscape information on different scales will be needed\udin future in order to take the heterogeneous distribution of landscape properties and values into account. Therefore,\udthe purpose of this paper is to foster critical discussions on the methodological development presented here