Instituto Pirenaico Ecología, IPE-CSIC, Spanish National Research Council, Avda. Montañana 1005, 50192, Zaragoza, Spain,
Environ Manage. 2014 Jun;53(6):1132-45. doi: 10.1007/s00267-014-0264-4. Epub 2014 Apr 13.
Semi-arid Mediterranean regions are highly susceptible to desertification processes which can reduce the benefits that people obtain from healthy ecosystems and thus threaten human wellbeing. The European Union Biodiversity Strategy to 2020 recognizes the need to incorporate ecosystem services into land-use management, conservation, and restoration actions. The inclusion of ecosystem services into restoration actions and plans is an emerging area of research, and there are few documented approaches and guidelines on how to undertake such an exercise. This paper responds to this need, and we demonstrate an approach for identifying both key ecosystem services provisioning areas and the spatial relationship between ecological processes and services. A degraded semi-arid Mediterranean river basin in north east Spain was used as a case study area. We show that the quantification and mapping of services are the first step required for both optimizing and targeting of specific local areas for restoration. Additionally, we provide guidelines for restoration planning at a watershed scale; establishing priorities for improving the delivery of ecosystem services at this scale; and prioritizing the sub-watersheds for restoration based on their potential for delivering a combination of key ecosystem services for the entire basin.
半干旱地中海地区极易受到荒漠化过程的影响，这些过程会降低人们从健康生态系统中获得的益处，从而威胁到人类福祉。欧盟 2020 年生物多样性战略认识到需要将生态系统服务纳入土地利用管理、保护和恢复行动。将生态系统服务纳入恢复行动和计划是一个新的研究领域，关于如何开展此类工作的方法和指南很少有记录。本文针对这一需求，展示了一种确定关键生态系统服务提供区以及生态过程和服务之间空间关系的方法。西班牙东北部一个退化的半干旱地中海河流流域被用作案例研究区。我们表明，服务的量化和制图是优化和针对特定地区进行恢复的第一步。此外，我们还为流域尺度的恢复规划提供了指导方针；确定了在该尺度上提高生态系统服务提供的优先级；并根据其为整个流域提供关键生态系统服务组合的潜力，为恢复确定了子流域的优先级。
