Open AccessAssessing impact of land use and climate change on regulating ecosystem services in the Czech Republic
Author(s) -
Krkoška Lorencová Eliška,
Harmáčková Zuzana V.,
Landová Lucie,
Pártl Adam,
Vačkář David
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
ecosystem health and sustainability
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.956
H-Index - 21
ISSN - 2332-8878
DOI - 10.1002/ehs2.1210
Subject(s) - ecosystem services , environmental science , ecosystem , arable land , climate change , carbon sequestration , land use, land use change and forestry , land use , environmental resource management , environmental protection , ecology , agriculture , carbon dioxide , biology
Ecosystem services, defined as benefits provided by ecosystem functioning to society, are essential to human well‐being. Due to global environmental change and related anthropogenic drivers, ecosystems are often degraded, which hinders the delivery of ecosystem services. This study aims to quantify the impacts of land use and climate change on two regulating ecosystem services—carbon sequestration and water purification in terms of nitrogen retention in the Czech Republic. While employing approaches of scenarios and modeling, we illustrate current and potential future status of these ecosystem services. Our results show that among the ecosystem change drivers, one of the dominant domestic land‐use change of ALARM BAMBU (Business‐As‐Might‐Be‐Usual) scenario is change of arable land and grassland to forest area that increases by 4.5% in 2080 compared to 2000. The results of ecosystem service modeling based on BAMBU scenario for the years 2050 and 2080 indicate that the highest yearly carbon sequestration rate occurred in 2000–2050, reaching 640 GgC·yr −1 , 2000–2080 shows decline in this regulating service by 16%. Average nitrogen leaching to water streams reached 0.75 kgN·ha −1 ·yr −1 for BAMBU in 2050 scenario and 0.80 kgN·ha −1 ·yr −1 for BAMBU in 2080 scenario as a result of decreasing nitrogen load, which suggested a decrease in nitrogen pollution compared to 2000. Since ecosystem services have not been extensively mainstreamed into research and policies in eastern European countries, we aim to contribute to improvement of knowledge on current status and potential future pathways of the provision of regulating ecosystem services in the Czech Republic.