Open Collections

Field, Rachel D.

University of British Columbia

Ecosystem functions operate across multifunctional landscapes to produce and connect supply areas of multiple ecosystem services (ES). However, conventional approaches in spatial ES assessment typically map discrete areas that produce one or several ES, which ignores the complex functional interactions among ES. Managing a network of connected ES and maintaining their heterogenous distributions and interactions at the landscape scale is crucial for supporting the health of people and nature. However, spatial network models have not represented the functional interactions between multiple ES in large landscapes, nor have they been translated for practical governance applications. The goal of this research was to develop a novel spatial network approach to represent and quantitatively assess the functional interactions between multiple ES. First, we illustrate this approach using a small, hypothetical landscape, and provide landscape connectivity-based methodology for how to represent ES supply nodes and the functional links between them. We then evaluate the approach using existing ES supply data from a large, real-world landscape to build a spatial multi-ES network model. Our network mapping results reveal long-distance functional interaction corridors, land-use and land cover types not typically associated with a particular ES, and high-value areas that are not present on individual supply area or pairwise link maps. Quantitative network analyses show redistribution of the highest-value nodes and links when comparing single- to multi-ES networks, and that certain potentially important supply areas not detected by traditional valuation protocols are discovered through network analyses. These results show how a network approach can identify potentially important areas on the landscape that might be overlooked by conventional, single-jurisdiction ES assessments. Lastly, we use a network community detection algorithm to partition the landscape into highly functionally interacting clusters of ES supply areas, then assess the alignment of these with a social network layer represented by the spatial jurisdictions of agencies involved in relevant ES governance in the region. We identify which specific areas and among which agencies opportunities exist for multi- sector, cross-scale coordination, and find that, regardless of cluster size, all agency scales are relevant to coordinated governance of multiple ES across the multifunctional landscape.

Text

2024-04-30

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/88128

Biology

University of British Columbia

UBCO

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/