Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services 2021

Biodiversity and ecosystem services 2021-2022
Ward Boven
B&ES 2021 Ward Boven 1

Introduction
Poll everywhere
 When did species start to get extinct due to human activities
o Since the modern human species left the African continent and began to colonise the
rest of the earth.
o It’s not a new phenomenon.
 What’s the most important cause of biodiversity loss
o The destruction of natural habitats into agricultural land
o Climate change is also one of the big five.
 Should we do something about biodiversity loss
o Yes, because it has a big impact on humanity
 While drinking a cup of fairtrade coffee this morning, you unconsciously made use of an
important ecosystem service. Which one?
o The insects that pollinated the coffee plant
o 57% of our cultivated crops are pollinated by insects
 Which one is the natural ecosystem?
o What is natural?
o The grassland/steppe is natural
o Meerdaalforest is not natural anymore
o A lot of students think that forests are the only natural ecosystems, but that isn’t
true!
Course & content

 Concept map
o Biodiversity: what is it and how to measure it?
o Ecosystem functions
o Ecosystem services, followed out of biodiversity and ecosystem functions.
o All these concepts are affected by global change
 We have three parts: 10 lectures (3 ECTS)
o Definitions and concepts: 4
o Biodiversity loss: 2
o Management: 4
 There is also an exercise part  two Toledo pages (1 ECTS)
o Group work: write paper + presentation
o Topic is related to this course
o Mandatory to be present at both presentation sessions!
 Exam: MPC and written, exercise + peer assessment
 Key paper is additional information, that you need to know.

Part I: Definitions & concepts
Chapter 1: Biodiversity: from genes to ecosystems

Some definitions
 Ecology is studied at different levels
o Organism: lowest level  individual of a certain species
o Population: several individuals that live together in a group/in the same space
o Community: different populations of different species group
 Plant community
 Bird community
 …
 Different species group together
 Only biotic part
o Ecosystem: we also include the abiotic part
 Soil, climate, precipitation, sun energy, …
o Biosphere
 All the livings things on earth
 Land cover vs land-use. There is another interpretation
o Cover: dominant land cover: physical land type, dominant vegetation
o Use: how are we using it
 Biodiversity
o “The variety of plant and animal life in the world or in a particular habitat, a high
level of which is usually considered to be important and desirable”
 Biodiversity is more than plant & animal life!!!
 Bacteria, fungi, …
 Google gives a bad definition
o 1992: CDB
 “from all sources”: all different kingdoms
 Different levels
 Genetic
 Species
 Ecosystem
o Concept is simple, but it’s challenging to measure it.
Species diversity
 Species: group of individuals that actually or potentially interbreed in nature (= reproductive
isolation).
o Problem: a lot of species form hybrids
 Off-spring: donkey – horse, dromedaries – camels
 These are still different species
 Only genetically related species can be crossed!
 A cat and dog are too far away to interbreed
o Problem: asexually reproduction
 Bacteria: budding/splitting
o Problem: organism that belong to the same species could be reproductively isolated

 All dogs belong to the same species, but not all dogs are going to interbreed
with all other dogs.
o Problems < human-invented concept
 Difficult to find a definition that covers all
 How to name species?
o Common names
 Every language has its own name for each species
 Communication is hard
o Universal name: scientific names
 It’s not Latin names. Often there is a Greek part in the name.
o Originally: long, descriptive names, very long.
o Carl Von Linné = Linnaeus
 New naming system, explained in two book.
 He described a lot of animal and plant species
 Binomial naming system
 1: genus name
 2: species name
 Suffix < author of description
 Some species have different scientific names!
 He introduced hierarchical classification system
 Five levels: kingdom < class < order < genus < species
 These are based on morphology: how do they look like?
o Current hierarchical system
 Based on genetic similarities: DNA
 8 levels.
 For the most species, it has been stayed the same
 Species diversity can be measured
o Richness: the number of species in a sample or area
 Sample A has higher diversity
o Evenness: equality in abundance between species
 Sample B has higher diversity
 Conclusion: more facets
 Species diversity does not account for differences in characteristics between species
o Species Richness (SR) is two for both communities
 Two different butterflies
 A cow and a butterfly
o Different species perform different functions  other ecosystem (services)
 Example: Link between biodiversity on dikes and erosion control
o Hypothesis: higher biodiversity  higher ecosystem services/functions
o Two communities
 A: SR = 3
 B: SR = 2
o Rooting system is correlated by erosion control
 There is a negative correlation, the opposite of our hypothesis
 Species richness is not a good measurement
o We have a positive relation with diversity in root characteristics
 Example: link between biodiversity and pollination

o Hypothesis: more biodiverse  more pollinators  more ecosystem services
o Two communities
 A: SR = 4
 But they will affect only one pollinator because they all look the
same
 B: SR = 3
 But they will have more pollinators: more diverse in
characteristics/functions of species: functional diversity
 This definition is on equal level as species diversity
Genetic diversity
 The diversity within a species: amount of naturally occurring genetic variation among
individuals of the same species
 Intermezzo: species response curve
o X: environmental condition
o Y: abundance of species
o There is always an optimal environmental condition
o Niche: is the range of environmental condition where a species can live/survive.
 Narrow range: specialist. The species is very well adapted.
 Broad range: generalist. It doesn’t really matter
o You can use a 2D-graph for environmental variables.
 There is a link with the genetic diversity. But it’s not necessarily related to each other.
o Genetic response curve
 Narrow range < low genetic diversity
 Broad range < high genetic diversity
 It can survive/cope (=omgaan met) in/with different conditions
o The genetic diversity can be different in different populations of the same species
 Response diversity = the ability to respond/adapt to new circumstances
 Genetic diversity = a buffer against changing conditions: climate change, diseases, stresses, …
o Extreme situations: often the survival of the population
 Example: huge decline in livestock/cultivated crops species
o A lot of decreasing trends in the last decades
o Every summer is different at this moment, so it’s important to have a field with
wheat with a high genetic diversity
o Why is it declining?
 Domestication: artificial selection
 Example: 1854 Irish potato famine
o 1530: Solanum tuberosum < South America
o 1800: staple food
 But there was still a low genetic basis
 Small number of potatoes introduced = genetic bottleneck
 Potatoes usually multiplied asexually: it’s always the same genetic
material.
o 1845: Phytophtora infestans affected the harvest for several years in a row
 25% of the Irish population was decimated.
 Example: Panama disease (Fusarium oxysporum)
o 1950: one main cultivar (Gros Michel) disappeared

 Cavendish was resistant
o 2019: new strain of Fusarium can attack Cavendish
 Do we learn?
o We are making the same mistakes again & again
o FAO: we lost 75% of all crop-genetic diversity since the lost previous
 Of the remaining 25%; 1/3 will disappear by 2050.
o 30% of livestock breeds are at risk of extinction.
 A lot of conservation programs often focus on species diversity and not so far on genetic
diversity
 Wild species are genetically related to cultivated crops
o Could be interesting for breeding! Why?
 They have desirable characteristics
 Not taste, not production
 Drought, stress-resistance
 Why would they have these desirable characteristics?
 They are more exposed to natural selection; they evolved
 Difference in reproduction between crops and wild plants
o Crop: we want the same crop, we reproduce asexually. We
don’t know who the male father was (due to insect
pollination). The genes will not change
o Wild: sexually: only seeds that are adapted to the new
conditions will survive; so they adapt to new diseases, stress
conditions etc.
o Example: three different tomato wild species have a drought, frost and disease
resistance
Ecosystem diversity
 The variation in the ecosystems found in a region or the variation in ecosystems over the
whole planet (different biomes)
 More ecosystems  more species diversity
 Different ecosystems perform different functions
o Each ecosystem has its own functions
Patterns in species richness

If we are using one level, we often use the species diversity and there in the species richness: how
many species?
 Catalogued: the species we know that exist

 Predicted: 86 % of the total species are unknown
o Insects is the biggest group!
 Often in tropical regions
 Which factors determine the species richness of a local site
o Tropical forest has a higher species richness than a temperate forest. Also, two
temperate forests of the same region have a different SR.
 Factors influencing global species distributions
 Climate  see species’ niche
o Single and most important driver
 Tropics: high SR in mammal and plant richness

 Latitudinal diversity gradient
o Species-energy hypothesis
 More energy  more species
 When temperature or precipitation
increases, SR increases.
 There is more photosynthesis!
o More herbivores, more carnivores,
…
o Out of the tropics hypothesis
 Until 30-40 million years ago, earth was mostly
tropical due to Pangeae. Tropical species have had
more time to evolve than temperate ones
o Less extinction in the tropics
 Tropics have known a stable climate
 Not/less affected by ice ages
 Factors influencing regional species distributions
 Filter model explains the observed SR in a certain community
o Regional species pool: all the species that occur in a wider
region. (This region isn’t defined well)
o Three different filters
 Dispersal filter: species must be able to
disperse/move through the region.
 Colonisation capacity: birds can just fly for
example
 Environmental filter: not all species that will disperse
to another location can survive under the current
circumstances.
 This is an abiotic filter
 If we have more different environmental
conditions (more ecosystem diversity or
more heterogeneous habitats)  higher SR.
 Homogenisation of environmental
conditions (due to human activity) decreases
SR.
 Biotic homogenisation: homogenisation of
local communities = only the generalist
species will survive after human activity.
 Interaction filter: this is again a biotic filter, but now
based on other species
 Competition, predation, mutualism, …
Key paper: getting the measure of biodiversity

Chapter 2: Ecosystem services: from ecosystem functions to benefits
for people
 1970: “forests are multifunctional: nature gives a lot of services/products to humans”
 2005: Global report where ecosystem services are clearly defined
 2010: further development of the concept of Ecosystem Services
Definition and types of ES

 Diagram: 4 big groups of ES
o Supporting
 They are not supporting the people, but support the other ecosystem
services
o Provisioning: physical products
o Regulating: flood control, storage, temperature, …
o Cultural
 Definition: “ES are the benefits that people obtain form natural and human-managed
ecosystems, some of which can be valued economically, others having a non-economic
value.”
 Different colours relate to different ES
o Different types of ES occur together
o Supporting: you need these ES so that other ES can happen
o You must be able to give one example of each group.
 How to classify ES in logical order?
o Common International Classification of ES (CICES)
o = hierarchical
 Overall: all ES
 Sections = main classifications: 3 sections: regulating, provisioning and
cultural.
 Know these and be able to give one example of them
 Groups
 Classes
 Types
 Is biodiversity an ES?
o No! it’s a feature/characteristic or structural base of an ecosystem
o Biodiversity leads to ecosystem functions
o Sometimes biodiversity is supporting or cultural service (watching different birds is so
beautiful)
Conceptual background
 What is relationship between nature and human life?
o Human beings are part of nature. We had co-evolution, together with nature.
 Three stages in our relationship
o Primitive society: we were one with the ES. (Pleistocene)
 Human = hunter
 Harmonious way with nature

o Agrarian society: invention of agricultural system (Holocene)
 Crop- and livestock lands are separated from ecosystem
o Industrial-urban society: there is an urban system (Anthropocene)
 Sun-energy is not the only energy source anymore
 The Ecocrisis
o There are a lot of different facets in the ecocrisis
o Biodiversity loss is already tremendous!
o This graph shows the bigger issues
 Not all problems are in this graph
 Example: plastic in oceans
 The problems are already outside the planets limits, but the planet won’t
die, we will.
 We are destroying the ecosystems  sustainable development
o 1987: Brundtland Report; our common future on sustainable development
 Norway prime minister
o 1992: Conference: UNCED (United Nations Conference on Environment and
Development) in Rio
 They signed three conventions
o Temple model of sustainability; three pillars
 Social
 Environmental
 Economic
o Three P’s
 People
 Profit: this has been considered as the most important and nothing changed
 Planet
o Nested model
 Service to people
 People is more important: happy and healthy
 Planet’s boundary: you have to stay in the lines of our planet.
 Empty world model  full world model
o Empty: theory (< Marx) about welfare and labour
o Full: Costanza took nature on board. Natural capital & biodiversity have been added.
This capital gives ecosystem services  human wellbeing. We give value to nature.
 Some nature ES are private/public.
 They can go through market values or not
 The ES cascade
o Human system and ecosystem-biodiversity system
o Ecosystems have functions that give a certain service. These can be taken by human
and so they are benefits. These benefits might have an economic value.
Mapping and Assessment of Ecosystems and their Services

How can we map ES, make an inventory, categorisation? We want to give them a value so we can
compare. We can assess the importance of ES.
 One kg of biomass = 0.5 kg carbon.

o Universal law of life: 50% of dry mass is carbon.
 Value of CO2 in international market

 Example: value of pollination
 We can quantify ES. There is a logic way to do this
 ES assessment pyramid
o Base: all ES, but not all of them are used
o Some of them are described in a qualitative way
 Which ES are related to nature?
 Why are you using this? Interviewing
o Quantitative: some ES are quantified
o Monetary: you need markets. The quantified ES are now expressed in a value.
 Methods for quantifying ES
o Expert knowledge
o Observations
o Experiments
o ES characterisation models
o Mapping: upscaling in space and time
 Quantify on lifetime,
 It’s important for controlling
 We start with basic maps
o Landcover map: what the satellite sees.
o Landuse
o Biotic
o Abiotic information: soil/geologic map, map of all rivers
 With all this information, we can see map-relationships
o You can combine it with the yield; monetary values. Which landuse leads to how
much money? What is the yield?
 Example: Burkhead, Landscape online
o Step 1: Create matrix for CORINE land cover classes: ES vs landcovers
 Wherefore is the land used?
 Columns: all ES
 You use scoring system: qualitative/ranking
 Each ES scores differently in different categories (regulating, provisioning, …)
 You start to see some patterns.
o Step 2: add quantitative data
 We have numbers now
o Step 3: Produce maps. You can use the qualitative or quantitative data. We can
produce a map for each ES.
 Example: Flanders
o Nature value explorer. It’s an online tool to calculate the loss of ES if you make a
certain change in landuse. This is expressed by monetary values.
o The value is often lost, but nobody pays for it = externality
o Valuation method
 Cultural ES  interview: if this is closed, how much would you pay for this?
o Green ring in Antwerp
 All emissions will stay inside
 Platform: new parks/forests
 What would be the ES of this area?
 Which ES would improve?

 Physical values  monetary units
 Monitoring = assessing trends over time
o What is the evolution of some ES? Is it getting more valuable or not?
Relationships between ES
We’ll now look to several ES who work together. Are there some ES who are correlated?
 Correlational vs causal
o Are the ES correlated or is one the cause for the other?
o Make a matrix of all your ES: cross table (slide 37)
 Are there feedback/feedforward mechanisms?  Causality
 Do they always do the same?  correlation
 !! Biodiversity should not be in this table because it’s not an ES anymore!
o Trade-off: situation where one thing has a negative impact on another thing
 Forest  agricultural
 More food
 Less wood
 There are different kind of trade-offs
 Example: evapotranspiration model
 If you restore forest, you can combat climate change
 Evapotranspiration will increase because bigger leaver
o More rain
o Less infiltration  less water in the rivers  less water for
irrigation. This is a trade-off.
o This effect depends on the location. In some areas, this
effect is negligible. Now we can decide in which areas we
should irrigate.
 Positive vs negative
 Linear vs non-linear relationships
o Tresholds
o Tipping points: two stable ecosystems
 Savanna can be rainforest sometimes
 There is more, (un)controlled factors
o Site-specificity
o Management
 Role of external drivers
o Deforestation is a driver. It can influence the moisture retention and wood
production. These two factors influence each other as well.
o Unidirectional or bidirectional?
 Example: spatial patterns of individual ES
o Different ES: crops, meat production, …
o Low to high: how important is the ES?
o All ES (except for tourism) are spatially clumped, they are related to certain
landcovers.
 We can make a correlation table between ES.
 Which relationship can we find? We can quantify this relationship.

o There is a pattern of trade-offs between provisioning and regulating/cultural ES.
 Bundles of ES: some ES go nicely together repeatedly  spatially and temporal bundled.
 Maximizing ES: land sharing (all ES together, multifunctional) or land sparing (each ES
individual separated)?
o Do we have to go 50/50?
o See part IV. No clear conclusion
Key Publication: Understanding relationships among multiple ES
Chapter 3: Biodiversity & Ecosystem functions

What relationships do exist between biodiversity (BD) and ecosystem functions (EF)?
Biodiversity & Ecosystem function (B-EF): from hypothesis to facts

 1859 – Darwin (productive hypothesis): diverse ecosystems show higher productivity than
monocultures. It was just intuitive
o No data to prove
 1958 – Elton (stability hypothesis): diverse ecosystems show higher stability
o Stronger resistance or faster recovery
 1993 – Schulze & Mooney: book about BEF.
o Biodiversity is wide: we can look to species, but also to diverse traits
 Example: how big are the leaves?
 All these kinds of biodiversity contribute to the ecosystem functions
o Global change is a better word than climate change: everything is changing
 Possible BEF relationships
o We take mixture of two species. There is a 50/50-mixture. Wat is the performance of
the EF?
 Example: (harvestable) biomass
o Three possible relationships
 Antagonistic: 1 + 1 < 2
 Additive: 1 + 1 = 2
 Synergistic: 1 + 1 > 2
o If we’ll bring species together, which relationship is there?
 Species – Niches and response curves
o If there are two species who have the same requirements. They compete with each
other, and we expect an antagonistic relationship
o If the two species need other conditions, it will work synergistic.
o Net diversity effect (NDE) = observed ecosystem function – expected ecosystem
function.
 Expected = additive
 NDE < 0  antagonistic. There is a competition
 NDE > 0  overyielding: positive effect.
 Transgressive overyielding – extra test
o Dmax = observed EF – max. single species effect
 Max single species effect = the level when there is monoculture of one
species. (see response curve)
 When Dmax < 0: overyielding
 Selection or complementarity effect
 When Dmax > 0: transgressive overyielding

 Only by complementarity effects
 Species work together
 Dedicated community experiments
o USA: different plots of grass with different levels of biodiversity
o The same in Europe.
o Main result
 Linear increase in plant biomass if you increase biodiversity
 Positive relationship: more species in grassland, more biomass
 Darwin was right with his productivity hypothesis
o Main result 2.0
 Stability indicator: mu/sigma
 Positive relationship
 Elton was right (in the grasslands)
o These results are valid in grasslands. But what about in forests?
 There is more competition for light between different trees
 FORBIO: Belgian forest BEF experiment
o 42 x 42m-plots, runs for 30 years
o Biodiversity is manipulated: monoculture, two-, three- or four-species mix (species-
gradient)
 Evenness between species
 Buffer zone between different plots
 Ethiopia diversity experiment
o Smaller plots
o Different treatments
 Shading: what is the effect of shading?
 FunDivEUROPE EU FP project
o Measuring productivity
o There is a saturation point!
 Ideal experiment has three aspects and is hard to set up.
o Orthogonality: gradients are orthogonal to each other. You avoid correlation
between biodiversity and other factors (climate, soil, …)
 Inventories are just representative
o Comprehensiveness: you look to different functions. Not only looking to productivity
o Representativeness
 This is often a problem with experiments
 Conclusions on BEF relationships: synthesis of all results of all different experiments
o When biodiversity increases, the EF also increases asymptotically
 There is saturation
o Uncertainty is decreasing by increasing biodiversity
 The stability increases by increasing biodiversity
o Upper and lower dots show us the kind of overyielding
 The endpoint of the curve is not higher than the upper dot, so no
transgressive overyielding
Biodiversity & Ecosystem Function: from observations to mechanistic explanations

What are the mechanisms that can explain these positive relationships?
 Productivity

o Complementarity effects
 Niche differentiation: different preferences and different species can profit
from each other.
 If you have more species, the overall root system is better because
they can reach more parts of the soil. This is to a certain saturation
point.
 Facilitation: one species helps actively the other by enhancing resource
supply or change the environmental conditions
 Example: nitrogen fixation
 There are different types of facilitation
o Indirect biotic facilitation
o Abiotic facilitation: nutrient enrichment
o Abiotic facilitation: amelioration
 Example: observations of tree defoliation
o Recent years: negative relation
 The more diverse  the less vitality
 Climate change: monocultures do not function. We
need the mixtures because they are more stable.
o Mixture has hydraulic lift < different rooting depths
o Selection effects
o Sampling effects
 Increasing tree biodiversity  increasing biomass (productivity effect)
 Is this relationship complementary or due to sampling? We can separate this
by looking to the monocultures and native species. We can decide that both
are correct and take a part in this story.
 Stability
o Portfolio effects
 Spread your risks
o Insurance effects
 More species = higher probability of alternative pathways available
 If there is a disease  one species got lost  other species takes over (and
this can be more/less performant).
o Asynchrony effects: temporal stability
 More different species compensate each other. The variability in wild species
is higher than in monocultures. If you see the average, you can decide there
is a stabilizing effect.
Ecosystem engineers: species that make the difference

Ecosystem engineers = the best species. They determine how the system is working.
 Species identity: which species?

 Autogenic engineers: change environment with their own physical structure
o Example: corals  the build a system where other species make use of.
o Example: tree  structure of tree, canopy, … will make a lot of different new niches.
 Allogenic engineers: they change the environment by their activity
o Woodpeckers  changes in trees
o Beaver  build something and creates something for everyone else
o Humans: we act as agencies.

 Six factors that scale the impact of engineers. The more you have of each, the more engineer
you are!
o Lifetime per capita
o Population density
o Spatial distribution of population
o The length of time the population has been present at a site
o The durability of constructs
 How long ‘lives’ a construction of the beaver
o Number and types of resource flows that are modulated
 How strong is the effect?
 Different groups
o Mechanical engineering
 Beavers
o Bioturbation
 Earthworms
 Example: manipulation of earthworm populations density
o Rock concert  beats/drops + electros in the soil 
earthworms will come to surface (alive) and they were
removed to another site. They created a gradient in density
of earthworms.
o They put artificial rain  run-off and erosion risk
 If there is nothing on your field  erosion
 Hypothesis: more worms  more air spaces in soil
 more water infiltration  less erosion.
o Conclusion: negative correlation
 Soil work
 Birds do turbulence in air
o Light engineering
 Filtering light
o Chemical engineering
 Trees determine the acid buffering regime of a soil by their leaf litter quality
 Fabaceae: nitrogen fixers modify the fertility level of soil.
 They give minerals to other plants  productivity of others is better
(facilitation)
 The omission of a nitrogen fixer causes a decrease in biomass!
A new BEF hypothesis

< 2016: “there is still a third important hypothesis” = More diverse systems are more multifunctional.
 We need evidence and ways to measure this.

 Multifunctionality = jack-of-all-trades-and-master-of-none
o They can do everything, but they are not the best in something.
 An all-arounder!
 What does this mean for diverse systems and monocultures?
o Monoculture is expert in a few EF.
o Another monoculture is expert in a few similar/different EF
o A mix of them can handle all EF (weighted mean of two), but not at the highest level.
 Is this true in real systems?

o There is a positive relationship between biodiversity and multifunctionality
Conclusions on BEF
 Biodiversity supports major EF and its multifunctionality
 Species identity is major driver of EF: species matter
o Engineers!
 Species diversity -> (mixture of) selection effect & complementarity effects
o Facilitation and niche differentiation
 Experiments  quantify effects and understand mechanisms
 BEF relationships  influence level of ES delivered to humans!
o Positive Biodiversity – ES relationships!
Key publication
Biodiversity loss and its impact on humanity

Chapter 4: Biodiversity & Ecosystem services
BD – ES cascade model
 Top: biodiversity leads to EF (reactions of the factory)
o These functions lead to products that lead to human well-being.
 This model is too simplistic. How can we make it more sophisticated?
o Including feedback loops of intentional management
o Including economic law of supply and demand
 Alternative social-ecological model: BD – EF – ES relationships
Ecosystem on the left and the social system (right) communicate by ecosystem services. It’s
more sophisticated because the feedback loop + parallel way (order & buffering)
o Ecosystem
 Structural component: composition = biodiversity
 Ecosystem function for its own use. It’s protecting itself: buffering.
o Ecosystem services: ES Potential. If we don’t use it, it’s still potential. If we make use
of it, we call them ES benefits.
 Provisioning
 Regulating
 Cultural
o Social system
 The ES lead to prosperity and well-being. Cultural leads only to well-being
 The social system depends on the ES, provided by the ecosystem
o Feedback loop: intentionally or non-intentionally
 Land use change
 Management: we change intentionally the ecosystem (and therefore the ES)
 Immission
 Climate change
 Alternative service provision model
o A: society is dashed line. Even if you put the demand higher, the supply can’t follow.
What do we need to do when the supply is not sufficient enough?
 You can plant exotic species who are more productive. They don’t have
enemies, are better adapted to the environmental conditions… There are a
lot of reasons why an exotic species can be more productive.
Types of diversity/ES relationships

 BD – EF – ES relationship: EF is the essential link
o Pollination is also an EF.
o BD can produce a stable system
o Example: coffee plants use the shade of the higher canopy. The production is less,
but the crop is more stable and has a higher quality. EF (shading by canopy) leads to
a certain EF
o Example: eroded area; it’s a lost bad land. They planted resistant grasses to reverse
the land. The roots penetrate the compacted soil  more water infiltration.
Photosynthesis  biomass  dies  degradation. There is also more water
evaporation  less run-off  less erosion
 BD – ES relationship: EF is not involved

o Just the presence of a certain species leads to an ES. This happens more in the
cultural ES.
o Example: fetisj tree (holy tree).
 No relationships
o ES that have no link with biotic part of life.
o Sandstone formations, volcanic activity, …
Complexity of BD-ES links implies need for modelling

 Models  predictions, explanations, …
 There are a few challenges
o Oversimplification
o It’s hard to quantify. Often it’s easier to determine it qualitatively.
BD – ES relationships in practice
 Crop rotation: the practice of growing a series of dissimilar/different types of crops in the
same area in a logical sequence
o History: Middle Eastern
o Four-year rotation in Flanders
o Extra: Brassicaceae have isothyocyanates. Those molecules give the spicy flavour.
o Benefits
 Decreased pressure of pests and diseases
 Improved conservation of soil fertility
o Assumed mechanisms
 Portfolio effect
 Insurance effect of food policy
 Sampling effect
 Facilitation effect of pest resistance in time and space
 Agroforestry
o Agriculture combined with agriculture
o Benefits
 Reducing poverty < more wood
 Food security by restoring the soil fertility
 Less nutrient & soil runoff
 More drought-resistant trees
 Reducing deforestation
 Reducing the need for toxic chemicals
 Improving human nutrition
o Assumed mechanisms
 Portfolio
 Complementarity
 Insurance effect
o Graphs
 Bonus in good years
 The worst results in the monoculture of maize. The gap is increasing in the
good years.
 Fisheries
o Less species
o In more rich mixed regions, the collapse is less intense.

 Diversity seemed to increase robustness to overexploitation.
 Non-wood forest products
o Edible mushrooms
o Contribution to rural economy due to ecotourism
o Mushroom story (mushrooms are not cultivated here)
 Cascade in the economy due to ecotourism
Conclusions
 Experiments are often artificial
o Not supporting bold generalisations to other spatial and temporal scales
 Agricultural intensification can/do affect ES
o Agricultural production increases
o Side ES decreases
Key Publication: Biodiversity and ES in agricultural landscapes – are we asking the

right questions?

Part II: Biodiversity loss
Chapter 5: Biodiversity loss – trends

5.1 Biodiversity crisis
There are different types of species diversity loss. There is also loss in diversity of genetics and the
other one, but we’ll focus on the species loss.
 Global scale: extinction

 Regional scale: decline or range contraction
We start with global extinctions
 There have been 5 mass extinctions in the past

o Definition: more than 75% of the species must die
o Last one: 66 million years ago
 Meteorite  dinosaurs died
o Ice ages were no mass extinctions.
o These extinctions events happened during million of years.
 Together: 99% of all the species that once lived on the earth are extinct.
 Normal background rate: we lose some species
 Proposed causes
o Global cooling or global warming
 Sixth mass extinction
o Anthropocene
o Some types of animals already reached 44% of extinction
o Can we compare this extinction compare with the previous ones and the
background?
 How do we measure these extinctions?
o Rate/speed
 Counting the extinctions per year. There are several things we must take into
account?
 We need to take the relative rate
o 10 out of 100 is worse than 10 out of 10000
 This sixth extinction rate is going faster than the previous ones
 Index: Extinctions per millions species-years
 1 E/MSY = 1 extinction per 10 000 species per 100 years.
 Comparison with the background rate (slide 12)
 It’s more than ever!
 Problems
 Only 14% of the species on earth today is known.
o Only 6,2% of this percentage is evaluated for extinction
status. We don’t have any data for the other species.
 Estimations of past extinction rates
o Based on fossils = biased sample of the past
 There are a lot of biasedness.
 Comparing the two

o We only have extinction records during very short time
spans of years, decades and centuries. It’s hard to compare it
with events of million of years. Different lifespans.
o How severe is the extinction?
 Future extinction rates
o Magnitude
 Percentage of species that are lost
 There are a lot of uncertainties about the past extinctions
 Cretaceous: we don’t know if the extinction happened over million
of years or that it happened faster
 There are a lot of threatened species.
 Absolute magnitude of extinctions
 Cumulative extinct mammal genera
We go further with the local/regional species decline
 Contraction of geographic range: region where that species occur.

 Decline: the range stays the same, but the amount of individuals decrease
o Biomes
 Wetlands increase
 Grasslands decrease
 Population decline: living planet index
o Based on the monitoring of 21k populations of 4,4k vertebrate species!
 Comparisations with previous
o Since 1970 (start of following of the populations)
 Average Living Planet Index declined by 68%
 Europe already messed it up before 1970.
o Limitations of the index
 Tropes are unrepresented although they have highest diversity and are most
threatened.
 Covers small percentage of species
 Many species groups are not covered (like insects)
 68%: how do we have to interpretate this percentage?
 All these interpretations on the slide are wrong.
 Example of black rhino’s
o Two different populations (Tanzania and Botswanna)
o Decline of 96 percent in Tanzania
o Conservation process in Botswanan
o In total: we would say there is an average declining of 95% of
black rhino.
o The living planet index would report the average of the two
population. So the LPI would be 45% (or something like that).
 There are a lot of outliers of small populations.
 Slide 23: -29% is righter, it’s based on the amount.
Let’s go to the local/regional species decline! Where does it happen? Every species has an other
declining rate on different continents.

 Tropics: highest declining rate, but is the biodiversity loss the highest there caused by
humans?
o Compare by the species richness. The species richness is the highest in the tropes. If
you have more species, you can lose more!
o You have to take the percentage decreasing species
 Now you see a different figure: north-Africa, Greenland.
 Highest by more human activity
 Cultural diversity and the loss of it
o Human tribes that are not contacted by the outside world.
 Most of them are located in the Amazon
 How do we know that they are there?
o < pictures (by drones)
 Survival international protect the tribes
 We are in contact with some of the tribes. Some of the tribes have
specifically said that they don’t want to have any contact.
o Yellow colours: plant diversity
 Highest in tropics
 Every dot on the map is a new language  cultural diversity
 What is the relationship?
 More diverse  autonomous is easier: more ecosystem services.
 More diverse  environment is harsher to see each other.
 According to KVM: environment is driver
o Plenty of rain and sun: everything you need, is there!
o Amazon conservation team
 Fighting for their rights
 Involving them in decisions and learning from indigenous tribes!
International Union for Conservation of Nature: IUCN Red List (°1964)
 Global inventory of conservation status

 Critical indicator of the health of the worlds biodiversity
 KVM doesn’t know if it’s a good indicator
 Problems
o 94% of known species (14%) is not evaluated!
 We can categorize the evaluated species in different groups
o Threatened species < vulnerably + (critically) endangered
 Included information
o Red list category
o Number of individuals
o Population trend
o Geographic range
o Threats
o Conservations actions that have been taken or that must be taken.
 Trendlines
o More species are assessed
 Currently more than 138k species are assessed and 38,5k are threatened with extinction.
o Extrapolation to all unknown species  1 in 8 or 1 in 9 are threatened.
 Different groups of animals

o Proportions differ in different groups
 Cycads, conifers and amphibians are the most threatened.
Biodiversity loss effects on regional scale (slide 46)
 Resulting regional species richness?

o Impact of regional biodiversity loss of regional SR for oceanic islands and continental
regions.
 Interpretation of the graphs
 SR of initial time vs SR now
 Grey line: it’s the same
 There is an increasement in regional SR?
 How can we fit this in the global story?
o Zero line (slide 47) is the 1/1 line of previous slide.
 Global scale: extinction
 Local scale: wide uncertainty. At some places we are
losing species, at others we gain species.
 Colonisation (usually nonnative)
 Conclusion
o High proportion of endangered species
o Predicted number of extinctions is high
o Extinction magnitude may not yet be so big, but extinction rate is unprecedented
 The sixth mass extinction is ongoing!
 Overview of latest knowledge
o Some cool papers
We end this part with some positive stories
 Green list: successful conservation projects!
5.2 Planetary boundaries

We need some control variables to measure some processes. For each variable, there is a boundary,
a sort of threshold. If the boundary is crossed, there is a high risk of generating large-scale abrupt or
irreversible environmental changes.
The green zone is the safe operating space. We have already crossed some boundaries. The paper is
of 2015. The data is thus older than that.

Chapter 6: Biodiversity loss: causes
6.1 Anthropocene
 Population growth
 Not only number of people is increasing, but also our ecological footprint. Increasing
consumption
o Caloric demand: the amount of energy that people take in.
 Human Development Index
o Number of earths that is needed
o The higher the HDI, the more earths we consume.
o World biocapacity
o Global sustainable development quadrant: we have to reach this region
 Term < 2000  a new epoch/area?
o Human impact
o Nor an official a geological correct name
 There is no change in geological process
 Although it’s an interesting term because a lot of other processes are
changing caused by human activities. We have a huge impact
 The great acceleration
o Since the 1950s: Great Acceleration
 After World War II: technical revolution
 Green Revolution in Asia and South-America: agricultural welfare
 Oil as a new source
 Big machineries, fertilisers, …
 “Hockey stick theory”: you can put a hockey stick on the trendlines
6.2 DPSIR-framework
 Developed
o to describe environmental problems: causes and consequences.
o To communicate between scientists and policy makers
 Cycle of impacts and responses! You can name every single part of the cycle and visualise the
complexness and communicate it to the policy makers
 Abbreviation
o Driving forces
o Pressures
o State
o Impact
o Response
 Example 1: Amazon deforestation
o Fucking Bolsonaro
o Driver: Economic development: higher demand for meat (main cause)  creation of
grasslands
o Pressure: deforestation
o State: forest loss
o Impact: species lose their habitat. Human society: climate change due to a lose of
carbon sink.
o Response: there are a lot of protest by the election, …

 Glasgow: “cut down the deforestation”.
 Example 2: Plastic soup
o Impact is big
o Most of the plastic comes from South-East Asia
o Driver: increased consumption
o Pressure: pollution (of oceans)
o State: polluted ocean
o Impact (on natural ecosystem)
 Not healthy: not digestible
 Blocks sun to sea
 Impact on human population: we eat it.
o Response
 Ban in single-use plastics
 Overall trends
o State is declining
o Pressures are increasing
o Responses are increasing
 Terminology
o Other terms than we just used. They distinguish indirect and direct drivers. (drivers &
pressures).
o Different frameworks are used/applied.
o Slide 88: genetic diversity is missing
 Relative importance of different pressures
o Impact of different drivers on terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecosystems.
 Land/sea use change is the biggest driver!
o 5 big drivers. We will discuss them next week!
6.3 Pressures
We can define five major pressures for biodiversity loss
Pressure 1: land-use change
There are different kinds of changes. We will focus on forest loss. Taiga and savannas can also
change. Forests are the major type of ecosystems in the world.
In the last 20 years, there is a huge loss of forests. There is a small gain of forests (actively
replanting). We lose 10 million of hectares each year and we gain 5 million of hectares  yearly loss
of 5 million of hectares.
 Deforestation: 59% happens in tropical region (Latin-America, South-East Asia, Indonesia)

 Greener colours do have an increase in forests. In the north, there is reforestation
o More developed countries: very interesting trend
 Slide 11: increasing/decreasing
o 1360 in France < 1/3 died due to the pest.
o Overall trend: four stages
 First decrease, then increasing forests
o Countries are in different stages of this trend.
o Duration of the curve/curvature differs for countries
 Costa Rica saw the value of their forests and started reforestation.

 Why do we change land-use?
o In the beginning: more people  more resources are needed for cooking and more
space to live/agriculture.
 This is the Malthusian view
o More people = more brains = more innovation = agriculture becomes more efficient -
 more trees
 Boserupian view
 Map shows the different phases of (de)forestation.
 Globalisation (global trade) do influence deforestation rates. We are responsible for
deforestation in the south.
o HIC import products/food of other countries. They can protect their own forest but
do deforest in other countries…
o The major amount of deforestation is still due to their own developing and need for
more consumption.
 17: bottom is reached around in 1800 in Europe
o This is only in quantity: the area. It doesn’t say anything about the quality!
o Unmanaged forests are still decreasing
o Land abandonment
 Not so efficient for agriculture. They were used for agriculture but we don’t
need them now as agricultural land.
 There are different drivers
o Taiga has a lot of wildfires
o Urbanisation is a big driver
o Commodity driven deforestation: permanent conversion from forest to
mining/agriculture.
o Shifting agriculture: slash & burn. When the land is not productive anymore  they
leave the land.
 The high rainfall leaches the nutrients away. If they burn it, they have some
nutrients.
 There is more slashing & burning than regrowing.
 Tropical deforestation
o Food types drive deforestation
 Beef!
 Soy production
 Palm oil is the main driver in Indonesia
 Productivity is much higher than other oil seeds! We’ll discuss it next
week
 Oil seeds in general
 Vegetables has a small share
o Huge wildfires in the Amazon
 Wildfires are normal, but now they are increasing
 < Land clearance + droughts
 Farmers started some fires but the fires escaped
 How does land-use change affect ES?
o There are different kinds of change
 Habitat area loss (quantity)  less productive
 Fragmentation (theoretically)

 Roads through forests: barriers for some species
 Habitat degradation (quality)
 Harvesting specific species
o Impact of habitat loss
 Species richness vs area size
 The bigger the ES, the more species we find.
 Theory: island theory
 The bigger the island, the more species
 Hypothesis 1: habitat diversity hypothesis
o More place, more variety of habitats and therefore more
species
 Hypothesis 2: the area per se hypothesis: larger areas can sustain
more individuals. More individuals = more species.
o Last step is due to genetic diversity! There is lower chance
that the species will extinct.
 Hypothesis 3: the passive sampling hypothesis. Species can disperse.
o When batch is smaller; individuals can not easily find the
new batch.
 These 3 biological mechanisms are important to have the island
effect.
o Impact of habitat fragmentation
 You have always a small part of habitat loss
 Increased edge length
 Effects on the edge between two different ecosystems.
 Wind
 Fluxes of nutrients/pesticides/… They don’t stop at the border.
 There are some species which really need a lot of space: interior
habitat  interior species decrease. Edge species increase.
 Generalist and specialist species
 Isolation
 Exchange is not possible: two separated populations
 Meta-population: separate, non-isolated areas.
 70% of remaining forest is within 1km of the forest’s edge.
Pressure 2: Biological invasions
 Alien/exotic species: introduced by humans (accidentally or intentionally), outside of their

natural geographic range into an area where they were not naturally present.
 Indigenous = native
 Invasive species = alien species that cause economic or environmental harm or adversely
affect human health (negative impact).
o Blossoms of trees with a high production of pollen  allergy
 Alien and naturalised: it doesn’t have to be invasive.
 From introduction to invasion
o Species overcomes geographical barrier  exotic species
o Barrier of environment  acclimatised species
 They can live in these conditions
o Barrier of reproduction  naturalised species

o Barrier of dispersal  expansion
o Impact  invasive
 Ten’s rule of Williamson & Fitter
o 10% of the species can reach the next step
o Invasive: only 0,1% of all introduced species.
 Meta-analysis
o 25% of non-native plants and invertebrates
o 50% of
 Examples
o Intentional introduction
 Garden plants
 Pets (turtles)
 This can be due to escape/release
 Turtles become big and people release it outdoor
 Forestry
 Pest control (you introduce an enemy) 😉
o Accidental introduction
 Introduction of plant was meant to be, but there were small animals in the
plants which were invasive.
 Marine ecosystems
 Loading and discharging ballast water
 Water is needed to keep the boat in balance
o Number of established alien species
 Globalized: entry routes
 Coastal countries: marine life
 Islands < a lot of trade
 Effects on native biodiversity
o Predation
o Competition: you take the place of another species
 Competition for pollinators
o Alteration of environment: heavily impact
 Cheatgrass catches easily fire! Nature species are not able to survive often
wildfires
Pressure 3: Climate change
Global is warming. There is an overall pattern: northern hemisphere is getting warmer. Sea ice is
white that reflects sunlight  ice melts and sea absorbs sunlight (reflecting  absorbing). Antarctica
is land and is higher in elevation.
Intergovernmental Panel on climate Change: they review the research that has been done 
assessment report. The last complete one is of 2014.
Conclusion: climate change < human greenhouse emission
Temperature is increasing. Warmer air can trap more water  more droughts and more intense
rainfall.
Paris Climate Agreement (2015) aim to keep a global temperature rise this century below 2 degrees
Celsius but if possible 1.5°C. There was an additional report in 2018 where they said there was a huge

difference between 1.5 and 2 degrees warming. This number is global yearly mean temperature. So it
is possible that there is no warming in winter, but 4 degrees in summer. Policies do not enough, and
we will reach a higher warming than we want to.
What happens with different policies?
Species niche will not change, environment does  species will die. Species can migrate.
Unfortunately, projected climate shifts will be to fast for a lot of species. Moving towards poles. This
graph is the maximum migration speed of species towards poles. If there is too much fragmentation
 lower speed.  adapt or extinct
When temperature increases  bleaching events of corals.
Species are linked with each other by food webs. When one species is affected, it will have an impact
on other species. A lot of species will extinct due the cascade-effect: not every species reacts the
same on changes in climate and not at the same speed. We call that a temporal mismatch in
foodwebs.
Pressure 4: Pollution
 Different kinds of pollution: metals, pesticides, acid rain, …

 Remember planetary boundary!
 Nutrient loadings
o Excessive use of fertilizers on agricultural field: N, P
o Livestock production: urea
 Nitrogen deposition in West-Flanders
o Burning of fossil fuels
o There is a direct effect and indirect effect (atmospheric deposition and run-off)
o Effect on filters
 Euthrophication
o Stimulates plant production and favours competitive/N-philous species: competitive
filter
o Acidification of soil: environmental filter
 Critical load: threshold level
o We have these values for a lot of nutrients
o N: 10 – 15 kg N/ha/year
o Recent research has shown this is even lower.
 Effects in aquatic ES
o Run-off and leaching  growth of algae
 Blocking sunlight  under blanket living species die
 Package of algae will die  consumption of all O2  other species die
  dead zones are hypoxic in oceans and lakes < nutrient pollution from
human activities
 Example: Gulf of Mexico
 At endings of big rivers
 Equator: trade winds come together
Pressure 5: Overexploitation
Decline of animals due to overexploitation

 Fish stocks and deer
 This is already going on for a while
o Thousands of years
 Homo sapiens migrated and there is a high correlation between extinction of big mammals
and the arrival of humans.
o Largest – slowest animals were hunted down first
 Trade
o Rare species are traded most
o Relationship between trade and species richness
Interactions between pressures
Vulnerability can be four kinds
 Dispersal ability: move away

 Exposure: magnitude of the disturbance
 Sensitivity to the disturbance
o Threshold and niche. Different pressures have a common threshold.
 Adaptability
Biotic homogenisation: everything is gonna look the same due to globalisation.
Key paper: boecht

Part III: Management
Chapter 7: Conservation
7.1 International policy
The great acceleration (two lectures ago, 1950’s). it was after WWO I. There was an increase in
consumption and technology after WO II. This big acceleration had also a big influence on the
environment. Since the 70’s; there was a start of global protection and the being aware of climate
change.
Rome: limits to Growth: resources are limited  economical growth is limited. People were aware of
climate change.
The overview of global biodiversity policy
 Bold: important words
Vocabulary words
 Agreement: “afspraak”, overeenkomst

 Convention: legally binding agreement
 Treaty
 Protocol
 Declaration: document: what do we want to do? Not-binding.
COP: Conference of the parties
 They come often together: Paris Agreement (COP 21)

o Governed by conference of the parties
 Governments are responsible for implanting the rules (but without forcing/obligation).
o A lot of countries won’t legally binding conventions because otherwise they won’t
sign it.
 There are a lot of negotiations, and they will come to an agreement. They often have to ratify
it in their own country. That doesn’t always happen.
 Wetlands – use (Ramsar)
o Goal: conservation and wise se of wetlands and their resources
o Three pillars
 Wise use of all wetlands
 Create Ramsar site list
 Cooperate internationally
o There are no sanctions, but it was very useful/successful to create some awareness.
 UNESCO world heritage convention
o There is also a natural heritage protection
o It has to be a natural and cultural heritage of Outstanding Universal Value
 More than one group is responsible to protect an area
 Graph:
o Yellow: mixed sites
o Red: endangered
o You want as much as points/places on the list (as a country) with heritage sites
 Europe can pay more to get a sign on the list
 More tourism

 More prestige
 More …
In 1992, there was the UN conference on Environment and Development (Rio de Janeiro)
 Three very important conventions, we will focus on the one of biodiversity

o It covers biodiversity in general: biodiversity is important for human being in general.
 Graph:
o Two different countries didn’t sign the biodiversity convention
 The biodiversity convention has three aspects
o Conservation
o Sustainable use
o Fair and equitable sharing of the benefits of biodiversity (benefits)
 2002: COP6 adopted the 2010 biodiversity target
o They wanted to stop the loss of BD in 2010
 But that didn’t happen
 2010: COP10 at Nagaoya
o Strategic plan for BD 2011-2020.
o 5 goals and 20 targets
 Underlying drivers and direct pressures
 Enhance the benefits and implementation of these goals.
They declared that declared as the UN-decade of BD. The IPBES monitors progress and provide
scientific basis for future policies. They synthesize important information, they do not research by
itself.
In 2019, the IPBES wrote an important article
In 2022 (COP15) will a new biodiversity framework
The result of these policies
 There are a lot of policies, but the declining trend is still going on
o Tragedy of the commons
o Very easy to sign, but it’s not enforceable
 If it’s enforceable, countries won’t sign
 Even legally-binding countries do not reach their goals (see later)
 Sustainable Development Goals (2015)
o Follow-up of the Millennium goals
o Globally sustainable goals
 17 different goals
 Pyramid: biosphere is foundation. Everything has to be in the boundaries of
the other category.
We will now talk about the EU biodiversity policy
 First conventions in ‘70s

 EU Birds directive and EU Habitats directive are legally binding.
o Birds Directive
 Implemented in individual countries
 Updated version in 2009

 Aim: protection of wild birds in EU.
 5 different categories
 Annex I: 200 bird species are threatened  you need to designate:
special protection area
o Habitats Directive
 Animal and plant species
 Threatened habitat types
 All listed in different annexes.
o Natura 2000
 Almost 20% of land
 These areas are not strictly protected areas.
 Activities can take place if area is not negatively affected
o They are legally binding laws + enforceable
 Directives are EU law  implemented in national laws
 Judicial enforcement in national courts
 Government has to check everything; they are responsible for reaching the
goals.
 National laws do have to follow the EU laws.
 When governments agree on these directives, they didn’t
understand the goals very well. They didn’t expect it was that strict.
The enforcement systems are very strict
o Concrete cases (that went to court)
 Transportation company. One of the hubs is in Flanders and they wanted to
double it in seize
 That forest is protected and government didn’t give a license.
 Butterfly won the battle <3
 New road that went through natura 2000-site
 Netherlands (Groningen)
 Opening canal for tourism
 Dragon fly didn’t win  court said that opening the canal was too
important for the society.
7.2 Conservation strategies

How do we protect the BD?
 In situ: conservation in natural habitats

 Ex situ: zoos (breeding programs), botanical gardens, seed or gene banks
o Outside natural habitats
 Millennium Seed Bank UK
o Wants to protect 25% of plant genes by 2020
o Wild plants
 Svalbard has the largest collection of crops
o Very north, inside a mountain
o Preservation of seeds at -18°C.
o Climate change
 2017: extreme heat event at north pole  inside is kept untouched, but
there will be taken measures in the future.
 Protected areas are the key of in situ conservation

o Marine and terrestrial areas
o Not every protected area is the same, there are 6 different categories
 Stricter protection or just sustainable use
o Focus was on nice views and species, not really on BD.
 Yellowstone was first protected area < tourism
 Focus shifted towards BD during the last decennia
 Status of protected areas: do they achieve the goals?
o Target 11: at least 17% and 10% must be installed as protected areas
o Slide 41: it’s not enough
 Terrestrial areas were almost good enough
o Effectively managed
 Less than 50% were effectively managed
 PA status is often not enough to stop BD loss
 It was often not well managed by the local communities: reason of
failure.
 What happens in the surroundings of protected area is also very important
 It doesn’t stop at the boarder of a PA.
o In collaboration with all stakeholders and indigenous and local communities
 Purple: government
 It’s a small share where locals are involved
7.3 Conservation priorities

There are not enough resources to protect. We have to prioritize which BD we want to protect more.
How can we support them most species at the lowest cost!
Protected area selection < vulnerability (how much threat?) and irreplaceability (how unique are
species?). These regions do not always overlap.
 Endemic areas: high irreplaceability

o Endemic species do live in one geographic region
 If you lose it there, you will lose it in general.
 Belgium: one endemic plant
 It was long considered that we lost it
 Threatened species area: high vulnerability
o Based on the IUCN red lists
 Overlap: biodiversity hotspots
o 17,3 % of Earth’s land include 77% of all mammals, bird, reptile and amphibian
species.
o Would it be a good idea to replace the protected areas (already 17%) to these
regions?
 BD is everywhere important
 You need everywhere protection
o There is a small overlap
 This is focusing on current situations. We also must look to the future: spatial and temporal
priorities!
o In future more chance on extinction?
o Proactive vs reactive approaches
 Proactive is better of course!

7.4. Protected area management
Should we intervene or not intervene in a protected area? Should we manage for the protection of
BD?  large cultural differences: the landscapes we have now < human activities. There are only
small areas which are still untouched. The cultural landscapes have often very high biodiversity. We
consider them more or less as natural areas: semi-natural areas.
In Western world/Europe, there is a recognition of human management (< grazing, hedging, …). The
perception of nature is therefore different.
In the rest of world: nature = wilderness (as opposite of culture). They see protected areas as
exclusion of human presence and activities. The native communities affected the landscapes as well.
Colonists thought that it was real nature (but it was already affected), so it was a mistake. The
colonists’ vision was more important.
There is need of more management: human intervention is needed to counter the consequences of
climate change. Humans had also important ecological functions in some ecosystems.
Rewilding movement: we need to decrease the need of human intervention and let the nature doing
its job.
 Examples
o Re-meander the rivers
 Remove dams
o Re-introduction of big herbivores
Every protected area is different  management is different for each area.
What is the end-result? Protected areas aren’t enough. Do we have to focus on something else?
What happens around these areas, these have a high impact! We are going to focus on the food
production. “Global food production is the single largest driver of environmental degradation”
7.5 Land sharing vs land sparing

What is our impact due to food production/agriculture? How do we produce food enough but still
protect the BD. This is called the food dilemma.
 Organic agriculture: less fertilizers, and therefore better

 Intensification: if we increase the yield, we need less land and we can protect the other area.
o Organic agriculture has a lower yield
Which one do we have to do?
 Land sparing
o Intensify and spare land
 Land sharing
o Low-impact farming and try to protect BD
Example: palm oil is highly productive. We can really focus on the production of palm and spare some
land.
Agri-environment schemes are subsidies to stimulate the farmers to protect the BD.
Is sharing or sparing better? It depends on the species.

 Density vs yield-graphs
o If you need a high density  intensification and land sparing
o Understand the graphs
 Most of the species: land sparing
 But different studies. The answer is not that clear.
These two different visions do have assumptions
 Land sparing
o “no external effects of high yield-farming”
 There is effect  degradation of boarders
 Assumption is not universal applicable
o “intensification guarantees sparing”
 We know from the past that intensification does not mean that we can spare
land: Paradox of Jevons
 Intensification leads to population increase and economical
development  more land is needed due to higher demand.
o “high-yield farming is sustainable”
 High-yield  reduction of ES  reduction of yield
 There is trade-off between crop production and other ES. Therefore
it’s not sustainable.
 Soil erosion / salinization
 Land sharing
o Sharing leads to benefits for nature
 People think that organic agriculture is good for BD, but not really true.
o Sharing has lower impact on environment
 You have to study the organic/conventional yield ratio
 Is it less or more than 1?
 Is organic impact smaller of higher than conventual impact?
 Often it’s higher because more land is needed
 EU Green Deal: 25% of agricultural land needs to be organic. If we de-
intensify here, we have to import more from other continents.
 Three compartment landscapes as a solution? (Without really fragmentation, but still
theoretically)
o Natural habitat (land sparing)
o Low-yield farming
o High-yield farming: enough food production
 Do we need actually increase food production? NO
o We produce already enough, 25-30% of the produced food is wasted.
 LIC: during harvest and production
 HIC: after production
o Demand side changes too
 Development  higher demand of meat
o Land demand of meat and dairy
 29% of the planet is covered by land
 71% is habitable (useful)
 50% is agriculture
 77% is for livestock that only give a small share of calorie-supply.

 Stop eating meat!
 What changes in our footprint if we have other diets?
o Greenhouse Gasses
 Only for food system: there are already enough emissions in agriculture to
NOT reach the 1.5°C increasement. We have to change our diet.
o Water production
 Enormous amount of water is used
o We talked already about the health of our planet, but it’s also healthier for yourself
o There is a diet developed that is good for planet and people!
 16kg meat/year per person (in stead of the current 71kg)
 Should the whole world become vegan/vegetarian?
o No
 A lot of land can only be used for livestock
production. You can’t grow crops over there.
 Planetary health diet: average for whole world
 We have the choice to eat less than 16kg meat
Key paper

Chapter 8: Restoration & Corona special
8.1 Restoration?
 Why do we need restoration?
o Conservation: current resources keeping available
o Restoration: regain functions and healthy ES
o To achieve the BD-conservation-goals
 Examples
o Overgrazing / pollution  ecosystem have been rapidly transformed  it has to be
restored for communities to survive
 There are also global restoration goals
o 2014: important global platform
 “Bonn challenge”  restore our future
o UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration: 2021-2030.
 Focus and money on ES restoration
 Definition: “ecological restoration is the process of assisting the recovery of an ES that has
been degraded, damaged or destroyed”
o Example: River restoration in Florida
 Free Meandering
o Recovery?
 An ES has recovered when it biotic and abiotic parts are sufficiently restored
to continue its development without further (human) assistance or subsidy
 Nature = wilderness
 Nature is self-organizing and self-maintaining
 Example: heathland restoration (= heide)
 There are many rare species
 This landscape is cultural and is made due to human activities
 Without human management: evolution to shrubland and forest
o We would lose all those rare species: loss in BD.
o 20th century: abandonment of traditional land use practices
on marginal lands due to the intensification
o We want them now back as heathland
 Removing shrubs and trees
 Reinstallation of human activities
o Degrade, damaged, destroyed?
 Deviations from the normal/desired state of an ES
 Degraded: subtle or gradual change
 Damaged: acute and obvious changes
 Destroyed: everything’s gone
o SER = society for Ecological Restoration
 Organisation that brings knowledge and people together.
 They do no restore by itself
o We need a reference state: going back to predisturbance conditions
 Reference state
 It’s useful to have a reference so you now where you have to go

8.2 Reference state
 Historical accounts and oral histories
o You can do some research, but that’s not always true/correct
 Ecological descriptions, species lists and maps of the project site
 Historical photographs: usage of pictures
 Remnants (non-damaged parts) of the ES or similar sites
 Which historical state do we want to restore?
o Recent past?
o Beginning the Holocene? Start of agriculture
o Pleistocene (before any human impact)? Start of hunting
o None of the above
Example of degraded heathland
 It would have look three times differently

 Still again: what is nature? Wilderness/cultural
 There is no one answer
 Belgium: restore heathland (= reference state)
 Others: forest
8.2 Reference state

What do we know from the past?
 Define recent past as a state we know and can recollect

 Ongoing degradation, shift in baseline
 Graph: three different time-periods
o Each generation can only recollect an own baseline
o Shifting baseline syndrome
 Lack of experience and memory
o Has a big effect on how we define the reference state and how set up goals.
8.3 Ecological constraints

Is restoration of the historical state still feasible? Sometimes it’s just not possible anymore. There are
a lot of conditions that block a possible restoration
 Persisting impact of the past land-use

o Example: Maya culture
 Population density: suddenly collapse. They had a hard impact on the
soil/landscape. It didn’t change for more than 3000 years.
o Example former agricultural cultivation of forests
 Fertilizers/plowing have a long-term effect
 A: humus/soil organic matter
 Left: cultivated, a lot of accumulated fertilizers
 Table: two forests, one is plowed, the other isn’t
 Every species reacts differently
 There are species that occurs more in the unplowed or plowed
forests. There are species who do not care.
 Dispersal limitation
o Remember filter model.

o Regional pool must be intact.
o The genes/species must be allow to disperse to your targeted area
o Even it’s possible: colonization speed of forest plant species is often very low.
 Alternative stable states
o The ecosystem state decreases linearly when disturbance/degradation occurs
o Sometimes it’s not linear. There are intermediate stable states.
 This can happen due to internal feedback loops
 This cause “hysteresis”: s-shaped curve
o Example: clear and turbid water lakes and increasing nutrient loading
 Clear water keep itself clean
 Different species
 Turbid water keep itself turbid: a lot of algae
 Species that hunt in the soil  more turbid
 Both lakes are stable states
 More growth of algae  fish and plankton eat algae: clear stays clear
 When it’s turbid: fish disturb the soil (behaviour). The Algae blooms can
cause anoxic condition when they decompose. That anoxic condition leads to
the dissolving/releasing of toxic components/nutrients of the soil.
 These two stable states make it hard to restore it.
 Lake Wingra: green – clear water
Is the restoration of a historical state wanted? Do we need to take the future into account? It’s not
always a good idea to go back to the past stated. Some species will just not live here anymore.
 more or less recent recovery + taken into account what the future will bring us.
8.4 Restoration practices

There are different steps in the process
 Restoration goal (reference state)

 Identify physical conditions
 Identify disturbance factors  regulation or re-initiation
 Identify biotic resource needs & sources
 Interventions for short-run
 Interventions for long-run
We discuss several examples
 Shrub encroachment in calcareous grasslands in W. Europe

o < extensive human cultivation
o Most species-rich habitats in Europe on very small scale (m²)
 Record: 80 plant species on small scale
o Goal: We want to restore the grasslands
 Physical condition: Remove threes and shrubs
 Reinitiate grazing
 Are there still seeds in the soil?
 Degraded heathlands
o Causes of degradation: lack of management, lowering of groundwater, nutrient
enrichment
o Degraded heathland is monotonous and looks like a purple grassland

o Steps
 Goal: recreate optimal conditions for heathland
 Physical conditions: sod cutting  remove the nutrients because heathland
vegetation needs nutrient-poor soils
 Reinitiate grazing for keeping the vegetation open
 Straightened streams
o Steps
 Goals: natural stream conditions
 Physical conditions: Remeandering
 Invasive species in New Zealand
o New Zealand consists of different islands. Some species do not have any defence
mechanisms because they don’t have enemies. (example: no fly behaviour)
o Humans (accidently) introduced a lot of invasive species
o Goal: eradicate all invasive species by 2050 (= uitroeien)
 Restore indigenous populations
 Eradicate invasive species: hunting, traps, …
 In some cases, you have to reintroduce the indigenous species
 Monitoring + management (long-term): prevent reestablishment
 Some islands are already invasive species free. They can see the benefits of
it.
We will now talk about some concrete practices:
 Translocation: intentional movement of species to new sites

o Reintroduction: individuals are moved into area where they used to occur
 Focus on animals
 Success is quite low. There are some supposed reasons
 In a lot of cases: unknown
 Habitats are wrong. They are not the same anymore as in the past.
 Ethical issues: reintroduce some wild-life can lead to biological conflicts
 Example: beaver
 Illegal reintroduction in 2003 in Belgium  reintroduction was
successful
 They build dams in the same environment as humans live  flooded
land of farmers
 Example: grey wolf
 Some regions were already recolonised naturally
 Reason of come-back: species is protected (no hunting anymore).
The wolves are taking their territories back.
 Highly controversial: wolves are shut by hunters
o Registered attacks of wolves are increasing  economic
costs
 Example: brown bear
o Restocking/re-enforcement: adding more individuals to an existing population
o Ecological replacement: restore lost function through the establishment of an
ecologically similar or closely related taxon with the same functions
 If your species dies out, you can use a similar species that has a similar
function.

 Restoration of functions
 Example: Galapagos island
 A tortoise species died out  other tortoise species of other island
 Example: Mauritius
 Dodo passed out
 Introduce of radiated tortoise to restore functions
 Example: large herbivores in Netherlands and Germany
 Keeping grasslands open  grazing function
 Wild horses are extinct  use other species
 Tauros program comes close to the aurochs (= oeros) by
crossbreeding.
o !!! Recommended only when causes of decline are known and have been removed!
We talk a while about monitoring
 To document change over thime through repeated observations

o Conservation/restoration successes
o All parts of the DPSIR
8.5: Corona special: link Covid-19 and biodiversity loss

“Biodiversity loss and anthropogenic degradation of natural landscapes is one of the causes of the
pandemic”
 Sudden collapse < restriction measures or lack of information

 In total already 58,7 million reported cases: confirmed and probable
 It’s not even distributed
o Latin-America has high number
o Australia and China do have high restrictions
o Africa is other story: less open countries
 Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus: SARS-CoV-2
o Looks like crowns
o A group related is relatively known: 7 identified species who are able to infect people
 MERS-CoV: Middle East respiratory Syndrome
o Covid-19 = zoonotic disease
 Pathogen jumped from a non-human animal to a human
 Natural host: horseshoe bats
 Jumped by markets/wild animals
 There must be an intermediate host but still unknown
 Last 60 year: 72% of new infectious diseases are caused by zoonotic diseases
o The (intermediate) hosts are often now
o Bats and rodents are reservoirs of the highest number of viruses because they are
the most species rich animal groups. One of 5 mammal species are bats.
 These group are often generalist species
 Is there a relationship between zoonotic diseases and BD loss?
o Link is complex because it depends on the ecology of the diseases
o Three possible explanations for link
 Relationship between BD and occurrence of diseases
 Higher diversity  host diversity  more diseases
 Biodiverse regions are a source pool of pathogens

 For some diseases: BD loss leads to less infections
o Example: deforestation leads to less Malaria (less
mosquito’s)
o For a lot of diseases, it doesn’t go this way
 Dilution effect
 Higher diversity  dilute effect
o Density of hosts are lower because other species live there
as well.
o Two host individuals have a higher chance to meet/bump
into each other if there is lower BD.
 Biodiversity is not the only explaining factor
 New infectious diseases < China & India
 Increases human wild-life encounters with land-use change
 People gets more in contact with wildlife  more chance to receive
a potential pathogen
 Human  wild habitats
 Animals  cultural habitats for food
 Changes in species composition with land-use change
 We will use specialist species and gain in generalist species
o Bats and rodents increase
o Specialists suffer more from BD loss
 Generalists use everything: high investments in growth and
reproduction
o But no defence against parasites, viruses  a lot of species
evolve to new species: evolution or extinction
 Globalisation: large-scale exploitation of natural systems leads to new
encounters
 Indigenous people have immunity for local diseases
o When there is more globalisation and trade  non-immune
people will get in contact with the diseases
 Bushmeat goes from local markets to big cities
o People moved to cities and they wanted to have their rural
food (as tradition, …). But these species are often specialist
and do not carry a lot of pathogens
 International trade
o New infections in Europe, NYC, Indonesia
 Future?
o Vaccins  results are quite okay
o Virus is getting less virulent: less deadly
 Rapidly spreading is more important than killing the host
 If the host dies, the virus can not be given to another host: that
deadly strain will die out
 Mistakes in genomes  less virulent
Key paper: “Committing to ecological restoration”

Chapter 9: Biodiversity & Ecosystem Services from a social
perspective
Completely different chapter: same problem but viewed from a different angle: social perspective.
There are a lot of Ecosystem Services who are very critical from a social view.
9.1 Setting the scene on the role and contribution of the social sciences
What are social sciences?
 There are different sciences

 We’ll look at human society, behaviour, …
o Holistic perspective
o Relationships/variables are difficult to measure
o Multiple paradigms, multiple truths. There is no one objective truth.
 Environmental social sciences: link between social sciences and environmental issues
o Human beings – nature/BD.
o Normative layer: “things could be better”
o We need to include the political-ecological-geological issues/negotiations/…
 We can’t formulate a sentence why deforestation is going on if we don’t
know the topics/people included.
o Spatial and temporal scales
 Systems/policies are made differently through time and space.
 Framework: Political Ecology
o Goal: who are the winners/losers of decisions about environmental issues
o There is a gap: the winners and losers are often the same
 Power and human being are central
 Framework: Environmental Justice
o You add the court and sue some organisations/countries to counter that gap
between losers & winners.
 There are many other frameworks
o They highlight different human aspects
9.2 Biodiversity loss and other environmental problems from the eyes of the social
sciences
How do these sciences look to the environmental problems? There are many papers/cases/… that
show BD conservation was always difficult. This generates social conflicts that affect different groups,
actors, …
 Example: planet is worried about deforestation, but some groups want to do something else
and they continue the deforestation.
 Why is it so conflictive?
o Nature and environment are seen, perceived, appreciated by different people
 Everyone sees nature differently
 We don’t have the same values for environmental aspects: other priorities
o Which group has more rights? What do the policies have to do? Supporting which
group?
o BD and ES-services have different view-points/perceptions.

o Economical development vs conservation of BD
o There are different governance types, actors involved and mechanisms
 Often market-based mechanisms are used (kind of kosten-baten analyse).
 Communities, global, national parks (central states), regional/municipal
parks, community-based and private/third sectors
 These are different actors
 Which actor would take the lead/pays for it? Who takes the responsibility and which
mechanisms are being used?
9.3 The ecosystem services framework

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
 Very important finding about received benefits thanks to ES

 Different categories of ES and ES-services
o Perspective/framework: benefits are central  one way of understanding nature-
society relations.
o Message is clear: take care of ES.
 Creating awareness of human dependence
 It was easy taught to human
o Idea of benefits is an economic approach
 “Ecosystem services are free of charge”
 We have to valuate these benefits: entering the market
 Then we take more care about them
9.4 Zooming into cultural ecosystem services

 What?
o Education, spiritual, recreation, … [= non-material benefits]
 These do not have the same value/accessibility for everyone
 Valuating and the perception is different for us, indigenous people, companies, …
 You need a lot of people for that Assessment: how can you make an agreement about that
 Importance of Cultural ES
o Tourism: big business  generates a lot of money
o Culturally and socially meaningful
 Symbolic place
 Social values
 Not everyone wants that there is a big touristic impact
 Finding the balance between spiritual – mass tourism
 How do you construct these maps/assessments if the POV different for everyone? You need
to fulfil a lot of different opinions. This answer is not that clear.
o ES do change along space and time. How do you take that into account?
o How do you get people to talk about their priorities?  meaningful assessment
 Who is leader? Who needs to decide?
 How to prevent a failure?
 Participatory methods
o Involving different actors: different knowledge and priorities
o “inclusive”
 Example of photo voice
o Pictures taken combined with personal benefits and values

Policy intention: ES  payments
9.5 From the ES framework to payment for ES

We have to include all these different valuations/perspectives
 ES = connection between those services and human well-being

o Without nature: human life is not possible
 How and why did this framework become so popular?
o Frustration: the current tools are not working (enough)
o Utilitarian view on nature: if we don’t take care, humans will suffer
 Simple but powerful message
o We should put a price on the services  control of trade/degradation
 Economic methods to (e)valuate the services: new tools
o Stakeholders/policies are involved in these decisions
o  mutual strengthening of market environmentalism and ES framework  new
policy agenda
 Identifying ES
 Assess and estimate the ES
 Capture and manage the value of these ES
 !!! An economic value is not a unifying value
o Cultural perspectives!
o Mechanism: ES  economic valuation  trade and market of ES + system of
payments for ES (= PES)
 Payments/incentives offered to people (farmers, landowners, indigenous people) in
exchange for managing their land to provide some sort of ecological service
o Transparent system
 How transparent is the system? Is the information available for everyone?
 Balanced and equals powers
o PES: effective and cost-efficient
 Is this true?
 How to secure the conditional payment?
o Some assumptions
 Economics concepts are true
 Free and open trade
 This is never true…
 Centrality of markets and limited role for government
 What role does a state have?
o Conclusion: the reality shows that the economical framework is not always good.
 NGO do often have the same power and works +- transparently
 But the idealised view of PES is not healthy
o Redd+ Program: implementation of PES in a lot of countries.
 Important mitigation programme
 Stops deforestations
o Deforestation emissions > all global transport
 Industrial countries would pay countries where deforestation happens to
contribute to their forests
 Different stakeholders need to cooperate to make this work
 Monitoring, local communities and companies

 People get not only money for the cut trees, but also money/aid to
sustain their forests: sustainable management
 Countries find that this is a good system/program
 It’s still challenging and going on
 Triple win: locals, climate and economy
o REDD+ is still cheaper than doing nothing
 Challenges: policies, corruption, …
 Implemented in Peru (for example) and its Amazon
 Generating attracting products
 Peru has a lot of forests: 60% of the surface
 Peru is active in the climate debate
o Benefit for itself and sustainability
 National law of REDD+
o Cash transfer to indigenous people
 2,6 € x hectare x year
 Debate: is this a good price?
 Reduction of forest-value to economic price
is a problem
 Lowest price if you compare it with other
countries
 Economic pilar: indigenous people can’t sell their
wood so they need to survive with these 2,6 €. This
is still challenging than cutting enormous amounts of
wood
 Region of San Martin
o Working with REDD+-community; how does the program
work? Is it going well?
o Payments are used for: cacao & coffee plantations,
ecotourism, wildlife/chicken farms and monitoring/patrolling
of forests
o Problems
 Plantations < who owns it? Infrastructure?
 A lot of animals died due to a lack of
knowledge
 Ecotourism: why suddenly starting ecotourism
 Is this ecological? People need to fly to Peru
to see it.
o Positive aspects observed
 Local communities
 Knowledge co-production & environmental
awareness
 Renewed rights for indigenous people
 Reality is more sober than the romantic/ideal system/concept of
REDD+.
9.6 Final reflections on limits of the ES and market-based approaches/conclusions

Do these frameworks have a good contribution? What is the roll of PES to stop the climate
degradations?

It has critics & supporters!
These argues are true
 Supporters
o Inclusive: private sector
o Utilitarian sustainability approach
 Critics
o Commodification of nature and neoliberal governance
o Inequality improver
o It’s not a good idea to put value on natural items
o How do you make a calculation of the value?
o There are different papers of the criticism
 Cascade
 Example: the illusion of efficiency
 This is not the most efficient way, it’s just an easy thing
 It’s not cost-effective and efficient
 Example: the paradox of selling nature to save it
 Capitalism/consumption destroys the planet
 Paying for cut trees to save them?
o Paying for killing humans to save human being?
 Would be true, but not ethics
 Tree is more than a tree; human is more than a
human.
o Critical voices and controversies around REDD+ & PES
 Mainly focusing on CO2
 What about the other gasses?
 Responsibility of the north & south?
 Big industries must stop in stead of giving the responsibility to the
local communities.
o Market-based solutions to all kind of environmental problems? Characteristics of this
Neoliberal conservation
 Privatisation
 Marketisation: PES
 Deregulation
 Reregulation
 New policies & new mechanisms
 New mechanism  new logic  new knowledge, …

Chapter 10: Optimization of ES
Manage the tools to optimize the ES over space & time. Models  decision support systems.
Basic inputs for management optimization

 What is ES?
 Understanding of value & trade-offs between ES
 Modelling capacity to simulate the effect of management
Three different tools definitions

 Model: mathematical description of the real world
o Simplification
o Explore to understand the real world
 Simulator: tool that calculates results for a model using a sample of representative scenarios
o Outcome of scenarios
 Decision Support System DSS
o Ill-structured decision problems: you have to solve it with computer systems. Three
are for example too many variables. It contains a simulator and other features:
algorithms, database management, …
o Evaluation & choice
o Artificial intelligence
You can also put these in a van diagram with some important characteristics.
Aim of management planning: providing multiple ES benefit under global change

 ES  ES monitoring  information  database  runs simulations (ex: what would be the
production of our ES)  simulator is part of decision support system (optimalisation tool) 
management planning.
 These tools are more and more used
o Global change: more possible scenarios
o Calculating power is cheaper than ever before
o Opportunity: scientific simulators  policies & management support tools
Models & Simulators

 Conceptual theoretical models
o Dynamic steps in the model: ES do change over time & space
 Cascade model needs to be re-interpreted.
o Goal function of evolution in ES
 Maximizing buffer exergy flows by maximizing the exergy storage
 Exergy = extern useful energy
 For plants: light radiation
 ES doesn’t want to do it, but evolution showed that by maximised
buffering, the ES is more stable and will survive more
threats/disasters.
 Exergy storage: biomass, structure and DNA

 Buffering activity: Temperature, rainfall, sediment loss, wind, radiation, …
They are all buffered/tempered.
 Main exergy source: solar radiation
 Memory and learning: mainly DNA in living organisms
 There is a kind of heritage in the ES.
o Buffering  regulating: protecting ES and human life.
 Dynamics of an ES
o Number of ES attributes
o Stages
 Abiotic
 Developmental
 Provisioning services are the highest here
o Agriculture: this is what we do
 Mature: climax vegetation
 Information & BD is highest here  most supporting services: best
buffer.
o We want to have a mixture between developmental and mature ES because we want
both provisioning & supporting services.
o It’s very simplified
 New model: stability & landscapes
o Performance is changing due the thermodynamic equilibrium
 Changes can lead to a change of equilibrium
 Different equilibria have different ES.
o Changing species pool can lead to different equilibrium
o Changing disturbance regime
 Climate change
o Paraclimax: an anti-climax with low performance
o Some managements can increase the performance
 Measuring the thermal buffering: exergy
o Sensors measure the heat fluxes.
o When sun is shining
 High T-differences by buildings: no buffering
 Low T-differences by croplands & forest
o You can calculate the thermal buffering capacity
Trends in modelling
 Model realism
o Beginning: models were primitive, now they are more sophisticated.
o Mathematical equations representing Eco-physiological processes
o Example: GOTILWA: Growth Of Trees Is Limited by Water
o Regression models between input & output
o You can make some easier model  easier to integrate & use in simulation.
 You select the most important variables  less calculating time
 Example: Metafore (not shown in slides)
 Input parameters
 Output: ES
 It calculates fast the simulations

 Customizing for end users
o End-users  transparency/credibility/interaction; ownership
 User group develop model together
o Nice output: attractive visualisation
 Simulations and optimization
o Easy access, web-based
o Connection to SQL-based relational databases
o Software modularity
 Spatially explicit simulation
o You want to know what happens on different places. There might be interaction
between different spaces.
o Artificial intelligence
o Visualisation in 3D of GIS.
There are some recommendations
 Models: relevant outputs and the most important ES and trade-offs.

 End-use: integrate social science
 Simulation & optimization: scheme
 Spatial: integrate single land use simulators into landscape simulators
Example: GOTILWA+
 Simulator
 This follows a complex model < physiological features
o If you want to run out this model  a lot of combinations & high calculation time
 GOTILWA+ has a new algorithm to speed it up.
 Input variables  prediction of growing trees under climate change scenarios &
management variables.
 Particle swarm Optimizations algorithm will identify/define the scenario’s where the output
of the ES are optimized.
o Which land management will lead to the possible best ES?
o You work with a trade-off analysis because not every ES can be the highest.
o Algorithm prevents that we have to run each combination
 Randomly/particle selection of a few combinations
 Different outputs  you decide which combinations you want to explore
more in detail  particles / run have velocity and direction to the optimal
output.
 Multidimensional space of inputs and outputs.
 You have to start with different particles so you make sure they move
together to the optimal combination/overall solution and not only a local
maximum.
 Multiple Particle Swarm Optimizations: more ES-outputs. You optimize the
overall combination/sum-ups of the different ecosystem services.
o This can lead to an optimal management plan  management design.
 Results/graphs
o Different scenarios
o For each of the ES (wood production, WUE, …); there is a trade-off. You can have
more wood production or a high WUE.

o Which management is the best?
Conclusion on simulation
 Integration of economic cost benefit
 SWARM is good
Decision support systems (DSS)

What is it?
 Computer software package

o Structures and solves difficult problems
o < data base management: often GIS (spatial)
o There is an end-user management  easy to interpret as non-pc guy.
 The building blocks of an DSS
o Intelligence
 Based on information from stakeholders
o Design
 Concept  language
o Choices
 Field work, models, scale, which database, optimization, …
The stakeholders are therefore important for giving information and fulfil the database.
 Decision support concept for forest management

o You start with initial system and its conditions: soil, climate, land cover, composition,
location, …
o The output will be dependent on the time & scenario (climate and management).
o The future systems < model < initial system, time & scenario.
o Therefore, there are three groups of inputs.
 You can specify everything (even the future systems, what do you want?), except for 1 input.
Then you know where, how long or how you reach that future system.
 Some questions
o Q1: open question because not everything is specified: climate conditions/change
 Simple question because only one ES-output.
o Q2: complex because double optimalisation problem
 Where?  What is the initial condition?
There is a beautiful tool/flowchart
 Input data  model  output data

o Inputs and outputs are stored in databases
o Databases are queried & optimized: this is not visible for users
o The end-output is transformed/translated into an user interface
 The end-user can have an input and that’s why the arrow is in both directions.
o You can make guidelines for the end-user.
From mechanistic model to DSS model
 We need complex models, but with simple inputs

 AFFOREST sDSS
o Spatial input database < 4 inputs (with sub-input possibilities)

o Transfer functions from these (non-mathematical) input variables to model
parameters  model  output  database
o Complex modelling is not necessary to see  database
o Input & output combinations for different times
 Tree ES services are all in the database by querying the input-database.
o You can solve the previous questions
 Result is a range < different soils & different climates
 A number of pixels is selected  different spots
 A third step of multicriteria decision: different algorithms to do it
 Result is a map  best solution spots
 Guidelines for complex
o You always start from real life-questions
o Question example: find good conditions to find the 30 000 best pixels/spots
 You get clear guidelines where to reforest.
Future challenges of DSS

 Different scale levels
 Including more services & increasing the complexity
 Adjust models to needed input & output
 Spatial interaction between pixels
 Outputs are not the only truth  there are always uncertainties
o Giving information about this uncertainty/probability is useful
Some overall conclusions

 Optimizing ES < non-linear exercise
 Regulating services < late successional phases; provisioning services < developing/early
phases
 ES might be higher/sustained in diverse systems
 Management < process-based modelling + advanced optimization algorithms
 Optimizing ES < on-site & off-site effects at different scale levels
Key paper: Simulation tools for decision support to adaptive forest management

Tips & tricks for the exam
 5 questions
o 2 < KVM: one open, one MPC
o 2 < BM: one open, one MPC
o 1 < CP: open question
 Exam: 15/20, paper: 5/20
o Peer assessment is obligated
 Study PowerPoints + key articles (as part of the course)
 There are some examples of questions
o MPC
 Energy  providing energy
 The rest is regulating ES

Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services 2021

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Biodiversity and ecosystem services 2021-2022

B&ES 2021 Ward Boven 1

Course & content

B&ES 2021 Ward Boven 2

Chapter 1: Biodiversity: from genes to ecosystems

B&ES 2021 Ward Boven 3

B&ES 2021 Ward Boven 4

B&ES 2021 Ward Boven 5

Patterns in species richness

 Catalogued: the species we know that exist

B&ES 2021 Ward Boven 6

Key paper: getting the measure of biodiversity

B&ES 2021 Ward Boven 7

Definition and types of ES

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Mapping and Assessment of Ecosystems and their Services

 One kg of biomass = 0.5 kg carbon.

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B&ES 2021 Ward Boven 10

B&ES 2021 Ward Boven 11

Key Publication: Understanding relationships among multiple ES

Chapter 3: Biodiversity & Ecosystem functions

Biodiversity & Ecosystem function (B-EF): from hypothesis to facts

B&ES 2021 Ward Boven 12

Biodiversity & Ecosystem Function: from observations to mechanistic explanations

B&ES 2021 Ward Boven 13

Ecosystem engineers: species that make the difference

 Species identity: which species?

B&ES 2021 Ward Boven 14

A new BEF hypothesis

 We need evidence and ways to measure this.

B&ES 2021 Ward Boven 15

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Types of diversity/ES relationships

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Complexity of BD-ES links implies need for modelling

B&ES 2021 Ward Boven 18

Key Publication: Biodiversity and ES in agricultural landscapes – are we asking the

B&ES 2021 Ward Boven 19

Chapter 5: Biodiversity loss – trends

 Global scale: extinction

We start with global extinctions

 There have been 5 mass extinctions in the past

B&ES 2021 Ward Boven 20

We go further with the local/regional species decline

 Contraction of geographic range: region where that species occur.

B&ES 2021 Ward Boven 21

International Union for Conservation of Nature: IUCN Red List (°1964)

 Global inventory of conservation status

B&ES 2021 Ward Boven 22

Biodiversity loss effects on regional scale (slide 46)

 Resulting regional species richness?

We end this part with some positive stories

 Green list: successful conservation projects!

5.2 Planetary boundaries

B&ES 2021 Ward Boven 23

B&ES 2021 Ward Boven 24

Pressure 1: land-use change

 Deforestation: 59% happens in tropical region (Latin-America, South-East Asia, Indonesia)

B&ES 2021 Ward Boven 25

B&ES 2021 Ward Boven 26

Pressure 2: Biological invasions

 Alien/exotic species: introduced by humans (accidentally or intentionally), outside of their